The Diehard is my first published novel, but not the first I wrote. I wrote this book in 1975, while living on a small ranch in western Montana, about twenty miles from Missoula, up the Blackfoot River (the famous "river that runs through it") owned by Dave and Annick Smith. I had helped the Smiths build their home up there, recycling three or four log buildings that had been erected some fifty miles farther up the river around the turn of the century. By this time, Dave had died, at an appallingly early age of 42. I had returned from getting a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing, at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. I had written one mystery novel, with the kind assistance of David Morrell, an English professor at Iowa, who had written the wildly successful novel about John Rambo, First Blood. Morrell had also helped me get an agent, but that novel, titled The Very Dead of Winter, had not sold. I wrote another, incorporating some elements of that first novel and then I took off for southern California, to La Jolla, to spend most of the winter working on houses, doing some remodeling and general carpentry. Eventually, I learned that the new novel had been bought by Random House, so I bought myself a good used pickup truck and returned to Montana to write another novel, which became The Blind Pig.

          The Diehard incorporated a good deal of the knowledge I had picked up working in Detroit. For a time, I’d had a fascinating job with the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, as a group insurance representative. All that means is that I was to go around to the various group insurance contracts that the company had in the Detroit area and make sure that the contract was being complied with -- everybody was properly enrolled, claims were being properly handled, and so on. The job took me into an enormous variety of small businesses in every part of the city, from tool and die shops and taxi cab firms, to makers of brewing vats, foundries, even detective agencies. I enjoyed the work very much and learned a lot about the city and about people, but eventually the Sun Life began to demand that I also sell insurance, increased benefits and new contracts. I didn’t like that and I was soon let go. But, I had acquired an amazing education that stood me in good stead when I started to write. All of my novels have benefitted from this experience.

          In this novel, the chief character, besides the detective I created, Detective Sergeant Mulheisen of the Detroit Police department, is an insurance executive who gets into trouble financially and tries to bail himself out by writing phony policies. It’s an elaborate scam and it now appears that his wife is about to blow the whistle on him. He hires some guys to bump her off for an insurance settlement. That’s about all of the story I should tell here. It’s not, admittedly, an innovative story. But the characters of Mulheisen and what I feel is an innovation -- a free-lance detective who works for the Mob -- Joe Service, gave this novel a lot of interest in the mystery genre. The editor who bought it was Lee Wright, a very highly respected editor in the mystery trade. This was probably the last manuscript she bought before she retired and she died not long after. She turned the manuscript over to her very capable assistant, Barbe Hammer, who also bought and edited my next novel, The Blind Pig.

          The character, Mulheisen, is based on a variety of police officers and other people that I knew. I gave him no first name. I think I thought that was cool. My brother was a police officer in Detroit (now he is one of the longest serving detectives on the Missoula County Sheriff’s department, in Montana), and he helped me a good deal on this book and later ones. He’s the one who, reading my rough draft, suggested that Mulheisen, who has rather long teeth, might have acquired a street name, "Fang." My editor liked this and so I kept it as Mul’s "other" name.

          The Diehard was nominated for the "best first novel" award by the Mystery Writers of America. I don’t remember which book won. This novel did very well and got excellent reviews. It went to paperback, was sold to the Germans, the Spanish, the Japanese, and even the Scandinavian market. It was also a monthly choice of the Mystery Book Club.

          I think The Diehard holds up pretty well, for a first novel, and I still like it. Some of the characters in this book are still around, seven novels later. I hope you enjoy it.