Part One (2001)

HIS HEAD FRAMED BY A SOFT HALO OF GYRO GEARLOOSE CURLS, STEVE LOOKS LIKE AN INVENTOR, AND IN FACT HE STILL WORKS FOR IBM AS A SOFTWARE DESIGNER. BUT HIS ENTRY INTO THE CRIME WRITING FIELD CAME ABOUT IN AN UNUSUAL MANNER:

His head framed in a halo of Gyro Gearloose curls, Steve Hamilton looks like an inventor, and in fact he still works for IBM, as a software designer. But he’s also one of the best new crime writers to come out of America, and his entry into the field came about in an unusual manner.

I was born and raised in Detroit, went to the University of Michigan, it was all very midwestern. I’d won a writing award at Michigan, and when I moved to New York to work for IBM I said ‘I’ll keep writing in my own time.’ I’m sure lots of people make that promise, they tell themselves they’ll keep up the dream, and like most I just didn’t do it. Ten or twelve years went by and I just hadn’t kept that promise to myself. But someone at work was in a writer’s group, they met in a cold basement…

SORT OF LIKE AA MEETINGS?

Yeah, it had a strange feeling to it, but all sorts of people, and I began bringing stuff there because the others expected it. I was writing ‘literary’ short stories, but I also published a mystery short in a small mag called Pirate Writings, they paid a penny a word, $44, and I thought, ‘hey, big bucks! I’m a pro!’ That felt more exciting, the fulfilment of a dream I’d had since I was 12 years old. I fell in love with Agatha Christie then, the Poirots were the first mysteries I really loved, and I didn’t start on the hardboileds until later.

I wanted to write a novel, I felt maybe I could do this, but it seemed like you’d have to have been 50 and lived a hard life to write hardboiled. Then I read Dennis Lehane and Harlan Coben, and I was blown away.
St Martin’s Press had this competition for a first private eye novel, a great idea, no agent, just a cover letter, sample and synopsis, and then the judges narrow it down to six. I figured I knew how to do it, it had to be straightforward, right? Chapter One, the eye at his desk, gun, bottle, beautiful blonde, wisecracks. I figured you had to honour the formula.

Well, I had 16 days off, with nothing to do, and after those 16 days I’d written two words: Chapter and One. I felt like I’d failed. I went home on a Monday night, it was January, there was no football, and I thought, ‘I’ll write about someone in as bad a mood as I am, why he’s in such a bad mood, he’s in a cabin in the woods.’ I didn’t know how to deal with it, but I made him a cop and an athlete, a baseball player, got an image of a catcher, with a bullet inside him, and I just followed that. He’s from Detroit, but he has to leave the city, get away. He gets manipulated, and he has to face his past. The writing just flowed.

THE RESULT WAS A COLD DAY IN PARADISE?

Right. Bob Randisi called to tell me I’d won, I’d get the prize at Bouchercon in Monterey, and it was overwhelming. Then the Edgar Award (ed. Note: for Best First Novel), and I’ve been lucky ever since. St Martin’s launched the new Minotaur imprint, the Edgar came and they redesigned the covers, it’s been amazing…

BUT YOU KEPT YOUR DAY JOB?

IBM, and my boss, have been very accommodating. I could’ve quit a BAD day job, in fact Julie quit HER bad day job, but I stay partly because the benefits are nice.

 YOU MENTIONED REDESIGNED COVERS. THEY’RE SO IMPORTANT BECAUSE THE SETTING, MICHIGAN’S UPPER PENINSULA, WHERE MC KNIGHT HAS RUN AWAY TO, IS LIKE A CHARACTER ITSELF…

That’s right…though you should see the cover they used in Italy: a doctor with a surgeon’s mask, a scalpel in one hand and a gun in the other! There’s not even a surgeon in the book!
But when you’re in the UP it feels like you’ve left the country, you’re not in Canada, but you’re not in Michigan any more. It’s a different world, so remote…all pine trees, cabins, Indian casinos and little else. And it’s dominated by the Lake. They should call Lake Superior a sea, it’s huge and dark, and so cold you can’t swim in it even in August, there are hundreds of ships and thousands of men lying at the bottom. But for a couple of months it’s so beautiful. It’s so natural, but it’s unforgiving.

THE THIRD MCKNIGHT BOOK IS ALREADY OUT?

In America, yes, it’s called Hunting Wind. It comes out in the UK in November 2001. I tie up some of the loose ends in the third one. I told my agent that and she said if I tied up ALL of them she’d hunt me down like a dog. But I’ve already turned in the fourth book, which’ll be out next year. Eventually all the fish will end up in the boat.

THE THING I FIND MOST INTERESTING ABOUT THE FIRST TWO BOOKS IS THAT IN BOTH THERE ARE CHARACTERS WHO THINK ALEX IS THEIR BEST FRIEND, BUT HE’S NOT

No, there’s very little reciprocity, because Alex doesn’t know exactly how bitter or twisted he is, he’s retreated into his shell, Jacky’s the one to drag him out, but there is no easy answer, you don’t just snap out of it.

IN COLD DAY, ALEX IS RUNNING AWAY, BUT IT’S HIS FRIEND WHO ACTUALLY DOES RUN AWAY

It’s kind of a quintessential noir, everyone else benefits, or manipulates, or at least moves towards their own ends, but Alex is stuck.

THERE’S A MORE COMIC EDGE IN WOLF MOON WHICH SUGGESTS HE MIGHT BE STARTING TO SNAP OUT…

Well, I don’t know where the story’s going. It’s like driving a car in the fog. I’m still terrified, I’ve pulled it off four times but I have less and less idea of where I’m going. I know people who work from detailed plot outlines, I both hate and envy them! I see other people writing stand alones, Lehane and Michael Connelly, and I admire them. But if you do it for the wrong reasons, you’d fall flat. If another story came to me—it has to make itself felt and refuse to go away—then I’ll write a fifth Alex novel. But he’s definitely NOT going to Florida or California, he can’t live anywhere else but the UP!

Update: Alex most definitely did NOT move away from the UP, but there were signs his character was beginning to lighten up. In the fifth McKnight novel, the excellent Blood Is The Sky, Alex meets Ontario Provincial Police officer Natalie Reynauld. Like Alex, her partner has recently been killed, and in the course of the novel her police career suffers another set back. But Alex comforts her on New Year’s Eve, and it is after that point the story picks up with the latest book in the series, Ice Run. I talked with Steve by phone in August 2004 about where it’s going and where it’s been, and the novel that was to become NIGHT WORK, which was already in progress…..

Part two (2004)

THINGS REALLY TOOK OFF SINCE 2001?

Yes, Blood was a bit of a breakthrough book; it had more going on and was received better. I just signed a contract for the Russian translation today!

BUT DON’T GIVE UP THE DAY JOB?

Well, I’m still hanging in with IBM…they’ve continued to be great.

BLOOD IS THE SKY IS REALLY A STORY ABOUT FRIENDSHIP AND LOYALTY…

How a friend becomes a brother…in fact, the book’s dedicated to my brother.Plus romance is a whole new thing for Alex, to be involved with somebody. It’s funny how readers reacted to it,to Natalie, a lot of women especially didn’t like her. I was doing a reading and a little old lady put up her hand and said ‘she’s a bitch!’

SHE’S SORT OF A FEMALE VERSION OF ALEX

But there are abuses, and it’s interesting to see that process, of overcoming them, become hyper real

WHAT’S YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ALEX?

I wish I was more like him, and that he could be more like me in some ways!

THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF MASOCHISM ABOUT HIM

He gets beat up. There’s nothing fun or noble about it, he just can’t help himself.

AND A SORT OF ROSS MACDONALD ELEMENT TOO

I loved reading those novels, where the past came out of the ground, and still comes back to find you. That’s the stuff I love to read. I go to the UP every summer for two weeks, and I drove all over this time, sort of to say, thank you, Michigan. My next book won’t take place there…it will be a stand-alone, set it upstate New York. But in Michigan you can drive for so long, you can drive forever, to the loveliest, loneliest little places. It’s just beautiful in summer. I did a small book tour, not like the one that nearly killed me the summer before, and did a few key spots and anywhere in Michigan that wanted me. I’m amazed when I’m on tour, because everyone knows me. I’m not a celebrity in the real world. And the readers in the UP love them, because I’m halfway OK as a Michigan boy, but I don’t make fun of the UP, the half-Canadian accent, the slowness--you could perceive it as a backwater. They treat me like I’m one of them, not even a hint of resentment. Not even in Paradise. I spent the whole day there, and probably met half the town in a bookstore while Eddie did his chainshaw sculpture and Pete from Shreveport played country music.

HOW ABOUT THAT NEXT BOOK?

It’s not with Alex, as I said. He’s got to be tired, and he’s got to be at least half happy.
He needs a break and I did too. I didn’t want to be mailing it in, you know, drag out the same old guys and throw something new in. Dennis Lehane once said ‘no one ever tells you that the twelfth book in your series was the best!’ I’m sure I’ll go back to Alex, but after something different. The other big thing is to write it in a different style, in the third person, with a multiple point of view. When I go back to Alex it’ll be first person, and he’ll have a new problem.

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