MICHAEL Z. LEWIN:
INDIANAPOLIS CRIME
By C.M. McDonald
MICHAEL Z. LEWIN:
INDIANAPOLIS CRIME
By C.M. McDonald
The Indianapolis-native turned expatriate-British-crime writer earned early support from the late great Ross Macdonald.
Lewin made his mark with the creation of one of the first private eyes to move outside the milieu of Los Angeles: The often destitute Albert Sampson traipsed the "mean" streets of Indianapolis, Indiana, lived over his mother’s restaurant, and when last seen in 1991, faced a very long jail sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.
Lewin’s other major character is no-nonsense cop Albert Powder, another Indianapolis native.
An acclaimed and often-awarded short story writer, Lewin has fashioned several shorter pieces around thick-as-a-brick former U.S. Vice President (and Indiana native) Dan Quayle. In 1999 he published a novel structured around a multi-generational firm of Italian private investigators.
Following a long hiatus, Sampson and Powder are slated to return in 2003 in Lewin’s new book, Eye Opener.
Although the majority of his novels and short stories are set in the American Midwest — chiefly Indiana — Lewin has lived in England since the early 1970s and now makes his home in Bath.
In autumn 2002, Lewin toured with fellow crime writers Liza Cody and Peter Lovesey in a special how-to crime writing show incorporating music, juggling and acting.
McDonald: How did you end up living in England?
Lewin: After I graduated from college I went to England to study some more — I was studying chemistry at the time — and while I was there I met the woman who I then married and was married to for a long time, though no longer. She was English, and, after a time back over here (in the U.S), we decided to give it a try over there. There were some advantages like free medical services and no tuitions for college…certain attractions. But basically, because my then-wife was English and, at the time, we were living in Manhattan with two children who were both under the age of 2, we thought having to cross the street to find a blade of grass was maybe not the right place.
McDonald: Is your self-identification that of an expatriate?
Lewin: I certainly am recognizably American by speech over there. Most of my books are set in the U.S. The one that will probably come out (in 2003) is set in Indianapolis again. My childhood and my emotional template is certainly American, although I am basically very comfortable over there, as well.
McDonald: Joyce had to go to Paris to write about Ireland. Hemingway had to go to Idaho to write about Paris. Is there an advantage having that distance in terms of being able to capture Indianapolis in your books?
Lewin: It would be for other people to decide how well I actually do it. Writing about Indianapolis is a kind of reconnection with my childhood and with those early things that stay with you forever. My mother came from a long line of Hoosiers. There is still family — they’re much more distant — scattered around Indiana and a bit of Ohio, Michigan and so on. Half of it is a kind of an excuse to keep in touch and to keep connected with all those things in my personal history as a kid, as well as the stuff that went on before I was born. How well I reflect Indianapolis, I don’t know.
McDonald: They’re very Midwest books. When you’re in America, do you feel some urge to write about a vicarage, or the moors?
Lewin: I have, in the past couple of years, written a couple of books set in Bath, but at the time I didn’t live there — I do now — I lived 15 miles away and I certainly understood the advantage of writing about a place where I could do research by driving half an hour, as opposed to flying 4,000 miles. There is a logic that I understand. In a way, the truth of the matter is that at the core of the stories I write, tends to be people talking…tends to be parents and children and generational issues. The choice of friendship and loyalty. People-things rather than place-things. Maybe that allows me not to know Indianapolis intimately by not living there all the time, but, that said, I do come back at least once a year.
McDonald: There are palpable changes, obviously.
Lewin: Oh, many physical changes. When I come back, it will be for a few days, or a week or something and I usually will have a story I’m working on in mind and I will usually have a list of particular places to go to.
McDonald: You actually scout locations for the books?
Lewin: It’s locations, but it’s also getting an idea of what people at the places are like. I just go and talk or hang out and listen. It’s not interviewing in fact, very much, but I’ll very often go to places, take pictures, hang out, talk to people, browse in shops. But where I will go is usually on a list of places I want to go for sure, and then other places that take my fancy.
McDonald: The character you’re most identified with is Albert Sampson. You left in him rather a precarious place in the last book you wrote about him.
Lewin: As it happens, the book that I’ve just finished and that will probably be out in 2003, is a new Albert Sampson novel.
McDonald: That’s the first one in more than a decade, right?
Lewin: About 12 years. It will be called Eye Opener. I do in fact intend to write at least a couple of more Sampson novels sooner rather than later. I’ve got ideas for a couple and I found it very comfortable returning to him after having written a number of books that were quite different.
McDonald: How is time moving for him in your mind? The books that you had written — until that last one — spanned a couple of decades of publishing.
Lewin: After I made the mistakes that young writers make of being specific with ages and numbers, I’ve become increasingly vague. I’ve come to think of him as aging maybe one year for every two I age. At this point, although he’s clearly older, I don’t put a number on his age and don’t actually think of a number. But a number of people in his life, his mother, and, indeed, his daughter who comes back in this book, are important. I’ve been comparatively fickle about this sort of thing. I suppose it’s easier for somebody who is getting older to be vague anyway.
McDonald: What about Powder? Any more plans for that character?
Lewin: He appears in the new book. A lot of my regular characters do tend to appear in other characters’ books. Sometimes they appear in important roles. One of my books, Underdog, was about a different character, but Powder was a key figure in that, through a lot of it. I tend to think of them as my repertory company. There is a relatively recent Powder short story of a couple of years ago, which is the first solely Powder thing that I’ve done, and just about the first short story with a series character as the central person.
McDonald: Your recent short story If the Glove Fits was nominated for an Edgar Award. Do you have a preference between the novel and short story forms? Is it easy for you to toggle between the two?
Lewin: I enjoy short stories and I enjoy novels. Basically, they’re both telling stories, but the forms are different ways of telling stories. I tend to write short stories a bit in batches. But that’s more because I’ll have a bit of time. For instance, I sent this recent (Sampson) novel off about six weeks ago. In this period of about six weeks, I didn’t want to start something big, so I’ve written a few short stories. Or at least the first drafts of them.
McDonald: Is it important for you to write every day?
Lewin: I enjoy it. That’s the nice part of the day, which maybe tells you something about the rest of my life. It’s not an effort — it only will be if things get in the way. It’s not that I have to make myself to do it. But if I don’t write on a certain day….
McDonald: You’re not overcome with guilt?
Lewin: No no. I miss it. It’s not a guilt issue. If I have a choice, I will write, though that doesn’t mean I will write what somebody says they want me to write. I write for pleasure and I write a lot of things — a lot of things in number, but not really of length — that I’m not really expecting to publish. Or they are not at least initially intended for publication. The book Rover’s Tales, if you know that one.
McDonald: The one written from the perspective of the dog.
Lewin: Right. Those stories began, in a way, in a period of time like this recent one, but basically I had no real expectation that they would ever be published. It wasn’t that I sat down and wrote them as a commercial project. I just got the idea, and as I wrote one, I got an idea for another one. Over a couple of months, I wrote quite a few of them. They were for me and for friends. It was through the encouragement of them at that level that they ultimately ended up in a book.
McDonald: Dan Quayle — the esteemed former U.S. vice president. You’ve used him a couple of times. Do you have a sense that he is aware that you’ve done this?
Lewin: (Laughing) I have no reason to believe that he is aware of many things.
McDonald: You’re welcome for the set up for that one.
Lewin: As far as I know, he’s basically not really in public life anymore. As long as he is not trying to offer advice and direction to the public, I feel that it is not really fair for me to write stories about him. The most recent book that I’ve had out is a short story collection (The Reluctant Detective and Other Stories) and it has those stories and the Powder story, as well as the one that earned the Edgar nomination.
McDonald: Do you read a great deal within genre?
Lewin: I read a lot, but not that much in the genre. I read general, modern fiction, mostly.
McDonald: Who do you enjoy?
Lewin: Recently I’ve been reading short stories. Things like Raymond Carver, Alice Munroe. Amy Bloom, as well. I found a book of those last time I was here that wasn’t published in the U.K. and it was sort of a discovery. I will also quite often read books by people who I’m going to meet, or who I have recently met. It’s the way that I tend to do the reading in the genre. But I don’t consider myself "expert"…as widely read. I don’t really know the literature in the field. There is Walter Mosley — he’s one of the comparatively few within the genre who I will seek out as new books appear. I particularly loved his Socrates Fortlow stories.
McDonald: You’ve had a fairly long career in terms of published books.
Lewin: Thirty years, now.
McDonald: Almost to the year — 1971, right?
Lewin: Well, I had a nonfiction book before that, called How to Beat College Tests.
McDonald: Written by a former educator. That’s great.
Lewin: It was sort of interesting: The editor who bought it quit not long after that to write books himself. A guy called E.L. Doctorow.
McDonald: There are obviously trends within the crime fiction genre. Do you find yourself coming in and out of phase with those? You said you don’t read a great deal within genre: I’m wondering how much of a sense you have of shifting markets?
Lewin: I don’t read, but I hang out in bars. There have been a lot of interesting things happen during the period of time that I’ve been writing. I was sort of at the front of one of them. When the first Albert Sampson book came out, there were virtually no books set in places other than New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
McDonald: You opened up the American Midwest.
Lewin: Well, as I said, I’m not a scholar so I’m sure there were others, too. But certainly the principle of regionally-set books is one of the dramatic changes in the course of my career. And there have been several others, including the emergence of the wonderful women detective writers, including the one I’m traveling with for this tour (Liza Cody). That has all happened during the time I’ve been writing — the general fashions both of the way things go in terms of readers, but also in terms of general publishing trends…sometimes mysteries are a bit more popular and sometimes a bit less. I’ve been through a number of cycles, both up and down.
McDonald: It’s been 63 years since Chandler published The Big Sleep. After a long hiatus you’re bringing back a private detective. What do you think about the private eye as a literary device this far along?
Lewin: From the beginning, the idea of a fictional detective has functioned in many ways. Clearly, the characters present a language and the stories, but the whole idea of the detective itself is a kind of fictional device that gives a reader an excuse to find out things about people in stories that they otherwise have no legitimate reason to know about. You’ve got a private detective, and you’re told it’s his job to find out private and secret things. In the abstract, we as readers have no business snooping in dirty linen. In that sense, as long as there are fictional stories that clearly relate to real life, where there are secrets, then there has got to be a functioning place for private detectives or detective fiction. They are a way of examining stories that have things in them that are not the way they appear to be. That’s at the core of the whole deal. That said, I do find it important for myself, if I’m writing either new stories about a private detective, or about new private detectives, to have some reason why what I’m doing is different than all the other novels out there. For instance, to the two novels set in Bath — and indeed there are six stories about those characters — those are private detective novels, but at the core of it is taking the old convention of private eye as a loner and turning that upside down. It’s a private detective agency run by three generations, which, as far as I know, had never been done before. The fact that it was — even at this late date in mystery fiction — a new twist on the private eye territory, well, that interested me.
McDonald: Several of your biographies mention your love of basketball and your efforts to ‘bring the gospel of basketball to England.’ How successful has that campaign proven?
Lewin: I’m not involved in basketball in England anymore. I’m a bit past that. In the town I lived in, there was a basketball club that began as kind of eight guys playing in a local league. For a while, that became the biggest basketball club in that part of England. During that time, I coached a women’s national league team in England for five years. The idea of national teams is more common and routine in European countries.
McDonald: You’ve lately been touring with Liza Cody and Peter Lovesey in a kind of mystery writers’ road show. How did this kind of performance book touring come about?
Lewin: We did a first version of the show that the three of us are now doing in 1994 (Murder We Write). One of the things that has happened during the course of my career is a much greater stress on the importance of writers going out and doing the selling of their books. When I began, in our innocence, we thought that was the publisher’s job. There is a wonderful side to it: In a writer’s natural working life, there is no time where you meet the people who consume what you produce. You meet editors and agents, but unless I went out to do promotional things I just otherwise would not have contact with the people who read what I write. Together with my colleagues — who are friends and, in fact, neighbors — we tried to think through together how we would enjoy doing that (promotion) the most. When we go out to hear or see a writer we like best, the people who don’t just tell us what they have to say, but who demonstrate it somehow. Following that, if we are then doing a program together which is directed at talking about what it takes to start a new novel — what is wanted for a murder mystery — we sort of talk together about how we can make various of the points more vivid rather than less. It then grows into us doing some of the things on stage together rather than just going up individually, although we do some of that, too. It arises from our talking through how we would enjoy seeing something most and hoping at least some people would have the same reaction.
McDonald: What draws the three of you together?
Lewin: We first met in the mid-1980s. The fact that we lived nearby made it easy to follow up on the fact that we seemed to get along. The three of us, in particular, basically have the same attitude toward public appearance. There is no ego involved. If Peter does well on a night, I’m really pleased for him. We seem to approach this sort of thing the same way. We have great respect for one another professionally and personally. There are other people who we get along with in the crime writing fraternity, as it were. Tonight the three of us are going out to dinner with Sara Paretsky.
How to Beat College Tests (1970)
Ask the Right Question (1971)
The Way We Die Now (1973)
The Enemies Within (1974)
Night Cover (1976)
The Next Man {novelization for Sean Connery film} (1976)
The Silent Salesman (1978)
Outside In (1980)
Missing Woman (1981)
Hard Line (1982)
Out of Time (1984)
Late Payments (1986)
And Baby Will Fall (1988)
Called by a Panther (1991)
Underdog (1993)
Telling Tails (1994)
Family Business (1995)
Rover’s Tales (1998)
Cutting Loose (1999)
Family Planning (1999)
The Reluctant Detective and Other Stories (2001)
VISIT MICHAEL Z. LEWIN’S OFFICIAL SITE
