When I first created him, I wanted a character who was a kind of nameless prototype of a bloated mobster. He was jovial, ruthless, and sometimes crude, but he was also an intelligent, not to say shrewd, henchman who basically had to do the dirty work for the elegant, but shallow and incompetent nominal boss, Carmine Busoni. When Humphrey at last came to power, I felt that he had to do something to symbolize his change of status, his ascension to genuine leadership. So, I had him go on a diet. At the time, I had recently discovered the remarkable world of chile peppers. I was engrossed in the topic. I’d always eaten chiles, in one form or another, but not with the enthusiasm that I soon experienced. I’d also had the fascinating experience of losing weight, myself, through incorporating a lot of chiles into my diet. It seemed to me that chiles had a generally unremarked effect of alleviating hunger. They weren’t in the least fattening, themselves, and when used in a variety of fascinating ways, I saw that they could be the cornerstone of a general weight-losing regimen. So I made Humphrey into a chile fanatic.

The key element in this process was Humphrey’s naive belief that peppers not only contributed to weight loss through hunger satisfaction, but that they actually burned fat! When I wrote this, I meant it to indicate that Humphrey was the kind of guy who gets hold of a few facts and leaps to conclusions, and acts on them. Imagine my surprise when, after the book was written, though as yet unpublished, I came across an amazing study from Oxford, that suggested just that! In an earlier study, this same laboratory had documented that subjects given a modest amount of capsaicin (the active substance in chiles that makes them "hot"), had experienced a measurable degree of appetite suppression. The laboratory study suggested that this might be useful in weight-loss programs. I had read this study. But now came a follow-up, in which it was determined that there was, in fact, at least preliminary evidence that capsaicin acted to consume calories.

I was delighted. Admittedly, the study did not say that capsaicin burned fat stored in the cells, nor did it suggest that ingesting capsaicin would actually cause weight loss. There may be other, unknown factors here. But I hastened to write, in my next book, a scene where Humphrey discovers this study and triumphantly shows it to his skeptical chef, Pepe.

As a writer, the great thing about this chile pepper business, is that it provides a humanizing bit of material for developing a character who is basically (pardon the pun) not very appetizing. A boss of organized crime cannot be a very pleasant guy, one would think. He is involved in the most sordid of human activities, especially murder, and not just involved, but essentially the responsible figure. And yet, I had the feeling from my own experience with a couple of these men in real life, that they were fundamentally ordinary men in an extraordinary line of work. They liked to dramatize themselves, it seemed, but they also knew that it was wise not to be too public -- the careers of some flamboyant types like John Gotti, notwithstanding. They knew that their real activities didn’t bear the light of day.

I’ll go into this more in some other forum. But chile peppers! Oh yeah, they’re great. I heartily recommend them. As it happens, I write a lot about food, mostly for Big Sky Journal. (You can link to BSJ, for information on back issues or subscriptions -- my food columns appear in nearly every issue.) I also do a weekly radio show, with my friend, former chef and cookbook author Greg Patent. The show, "The Food Guys," is presently a five-minute broadcast that airs on KUFM, in Missoula, Montana, a local affiliate of National Public Radio. We are hoping to get the show on NPR’s "Weekend Edition." I’ll keep you posted on that. Greg Patent, by the way, is the author of several cookbooks, including most recently, New Cooking From the Old West, published by Ten-Speed Press. He and his wife, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, will soon have their definitive book, A Is For Apple, published by Broadway Books.