Q: Did you try and start another novel, or did you try
to sell Grootka to other publishers?
A: Along came Dennis McMillan. He said to me, you
know you wrote those two novels which were very well received and you haven't published
anything since. I said, It wasn't as if I didn't want to. So, he agreed to publish a
special edition paperback of THE BLIND PIG. That was very encouraging, and he liked the
manuscript of Grootka. I also got some interest from Sam Lawrence at Delacorte. Sam wanted
to publish Grootka and we talked about doing a five book contract. I think he may have
been encouraged on my behalf by people like Jim Harrison who knew him. I felt very
encouraged. I went ahead and finished GROOTKA and in the meantime Sam Lawrence died. Then,
people didn't seem all that interested in GROOTKA -- it had been some time now since I put
out a book, and they weren't interested in me so much as a writer. So I published the book
with the help of Dennis, who alerted some editors at The Countryman Press, up in Vermont.
I especially had the help of one editor there who was one of the partners of this small
firm, a guy named Lou Wilder. Lou Wilder was terrific, but I also have to thank Lou
Kannenstine. Tragically, Lou Wilder died, just as the book was coming out and Kannenstine
was the guy who got the job done. He and Wilder really helped me get that book published,
and once it came out then things began to happen.
Q: You once said that GROOTKA was your breakthrough book.
Where did the idea for this book come from?
A: I got the novel idea from a dream! It was really
unusual, I've never had that happen before. I was living in Helena, this was before we
moved to Butte, maybe a year before my wife died. I woke up in the middle of the night,
and I had this vivid impression of this character, Grootka. I had the whole novel, it was
clear in my head, right? So I rushed downstairs to my study and I typed it all down, and I
thought, now I've got it all down on paper for a change. I'm thinking , I'm not going to
wake up in the morning and have some scribble, or forget what it was all about. But when I
woke up in the morning and looked at it, it was maybe a paragraph. It didn't give much of
a story. But, I had the character firmly in mind. I had a little of the story and I was
able to go on from there.
Q: Tell us about your main character in the series,
Detective Sergeant Mulheisen.
A: The character of Mulheisen is sort of a
compilation of the personalities of some people that I have known that are extremely
competent and very intelligent. They seem like loners in a curious way and they seem
perfectly self-reliant. He is not even remotely a pathological character like Grootka. He
is a guy who seems to be self-sufficient. I like that character, I think for me he is a
tremendous character. I have to move him into his fifties shortly. He has to be fifty, his
romantic life is sort of passing him by. A lot of people write to me and ask about the
romance. I mean he is a good man and has plenty to offer a good woman, if only I could
find the right woman for him. Dorothy Johnson, the wonderful western novelist who wrote
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "The Hanging Tree," and "A
Man Called Horse," lived in Missoula. She used to chide me about how mean I was to
Mulheisen, depriving him of rest and not providing any romance.
Q: Do you visit Detroit much to research your novels?
A: Yes, I do. I am impressed with what is happening
in Detroit right now. It is experiencing a great comeback. They call themselves the
Renaissance City, which curiously enough it sort of is. It keeps having these little
periods of depression which somewhat reflect the auto industry, in a way. One of the
things that amazes me about the place is that it has largely moved into the outskirts.
But, now people have to move back into the city. There is a lot going on in Detroit, but
there is still a lot of work to do. There is still a lot of urban decay that needs to be
cleaned up. It looks to me like the neighborhoods are making a come back and they need to
get after the infrastructure, but that is hard to come by these days. They are going to
have to get industry involved in it. They are involved to a certain extent, but we will
see.
