A Visit from Nick Petrie

INGRID THOFT

Last year I had the immense pleasure of sharing a couple of tour dates with the wonderful Nick Petrie.  The author of the Peter Ash series, heir apparent to Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, Nick is a terrific writer and friend.  One of the highlights of the Toronto Bouchercon was wandering the streets on an epic 3-hour walk with Nick, during which we discussed life, literature, and the mystifying number of vegan bakeries we passed.  

Nick's newest book in the Peter Ash Series, "Light It Up" will be out on January 16, and it's fantastic.  Nick was kind enough to chat with me recently, and he'll be here today to answer your questions.

INGRID THOFT:  “Light It Up” focuses on the legal cannabis industry in Colorado and the birth of a related security industry.  I was particularly interested in learning about the intersection of those security firms and veterans, a fact that dovetails perfectly with Peter Ash’s background.  Can you tell readers a little bit about that?  

NICK PETRIE:  I first learned about this in a series of article on the subject in the New York Times.  Because of federal banking rules, the recreational cannabis industry, now legal in six states, has little to no access to the banks.  They can’t write checks or accept credit cards.  They pay their suppliers, their employees – even their taxes – in cash. And their product is lightweight, portable, and very valuable.  

At the same time, small security companies are springing up, many owned and staffed by veterans, to help protect cannabis entrepreneurs from those challenges. I’ve talked to many veterans who really miss the sense of mission and camaradarie they had in the military, and this work checks a lot of those boxes – plus it provides badly needed jobs for veterans.  

From a crime writer’s point of view, this setup was irresistible.  Guns, drugs, and money – what could possibly go wrong?


IPT:  Is there a type of scene you particularly enjoy writing?  Action?  Dialogue?  Description of settings? 

Nick braving the Milwaukee cold

NP:  I love all of those kinds of scenes, but I think my favorite is the moment of gathering tension before the characters do something big and emotional.  That might be an act of violence, a personal confrontation, or a move toward some kind of discovery or revelation.  I really enjoy that moment when the emotion and tension are building, but still held in check.  For some reason, I often set these scenes in the dark, or in a car – or in a darkened car – where the characters are with each other, but not necessarily looking at each other.  Waiting.

Funny, I never seem to write these scenes on purpose – they just develop naturally.  At first I think I’m just killing time, but eventually I realize that something else is happening.  These scenes tend to use all the tools you mentioned above – setting and description, along with dialogue, to create that mood, which usually leads to action.  

IPT:  I loved seeing the names Jon Jordan and Ruth Jordan appear as character names.  Am I right in assuming this is in honor of our Crimespree friends?  How did that come about?

NP:  This is absolutely in honor of Jon and Ruth, the founders, editors, and publishers of "Crimespree Magazine," founders and head potentates of the Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee crime fiction conference, and multiple past co-chairs of Bouchercon.  One of the pleasures of being a writer is that you can toss in these little Easter eggs for people you love and admire.

  
I have the great luck of living in Milwaukee, just a few miles from Jon and Ruth.  Before my first book came out, they took me under their wing and gave me the best introduction to the crime fiction community anyone could ask for.  Unfortunately, as so often happens in crime fiction, Jon (the character, not the human) had to die.  But that was part of the fun.  I’m so glad and proud to be part of their community.

IPT:  What’s next for you and Peter Ash?

NP:  I’ve finished a good working draft of Peter #4, which is set in Memphis, and I’ll be diving into edits while on tour in mid-January.  Tour events are on my website, www.nickpetrie.com, and also on my Facebook page.  

Ingrid and Nick 

I’m also thinking quite a bit about Peter #5, which will be set in Iceland.  I already have a fair amount of early thinking done on it – which is very unusual for me – so I’m really looking forward to seeing that book unfold.  2018 is already getting quite full – I’ve been invited to the Tucson Festival of Books in March, I’ll be at Thrillerfest in New York in July, and of course Bouchercon in Florida in September.  Plus my son and I plan to go back to Iceland this summer, to circumnavigate the island in the name of literary research – we have a great time bumming around together.  Then there’s that book to write….

IPT:  Those pesky books!  Always needing to be written!

Not only will Nick be here to answer your questions today, but he's also giving away a copy of "Light It Up."  Just comment to enter!

Light It Up - click here to read an excerpt

In this action-packed thriller starring war veteran Peter Ash, a well-planned and flawlessly executed hijacking reveals the hidden dangers of Colorado's mellowest business, but Ash may find there’s more to this crime than meets the eye. 

Combat veteran Peter Ash leaves a simple life rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon to help his good friend Henry Nygaard, whose daughter runs a Denver security company that protects cash-rich cannabis entrepreneurs from modern-day highwaymen. Henry’s son-in-law and the company’s operations manager were carrying a large sum of client money when their vehicle vanished without a trace, leaving Henry’s daughter and her company vulnerable.

When Peter is riding shotgun on another cash run, the cargo he’s guarding comes under attack and he narrowly escapes with his life. As the assaults escalate, Peter has to wonder: for criminals this sophisticated, is it really just about the cash?

After finding himself on the defensive for too long, Peter marshals his resources and begins to dig for the truth in a scheme that is bigger—and far more lucrative—than he’d ever anticipated. With so much on the line, his enemy will not give up quietly...and now he has Peter directly in his sights.

Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. His story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. His first novel, The Drifter, won the 2016 Thriller Award and the 2016 Barry Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for 2016 Edgar and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel, as well as the 2016 Hammett Prize for Best Novel. He was named one of Apple’s 10 Writers to Read in 2017, and won the 2016 Literary Award from the Wisconsin Library Association.  His books in the Peter Ash series are The Drifter, Burning Bright and Light It Up. A husband and father, he has worked as a carpenter, remodeling contractor, and building inspector. He lives in Milwaukee.

Serendipitous Research: A visit from Ann Parker

RHYS BOWEN: Another visit from an old friend today. Ann is a Bay Area resident and I have enjoyed her Silver Rush mysteries since the first one was published. I have been impressed by her meticulous research in Colorado. If you want to read a historical mystery that is pure and true history (as well as a rattling good story) then these books are for you.

Ann Parker here, with a thank you to Rhys Bowen and the Jungle Red Writers contingent for allowing me to step in for a day to talk about one of my favorite subjects… research!

When I spin my Silver Rush historical mysteries, I like to be surrounded by images and objects that capture time, place, and people. Luckily, since my era is mid- to late(ish)-nineteenth century, I can access a lot of material online, including the digital imagery from the Lake County Public Library, in Leadville, Colorado (start here http://www.lakecountypubliclibrary.org/ and click on the “Local History” tab at the top), the Denver Public Library photo collection (https://history.denverlibrary.org/photos), the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/), and so on and so forth.

However, nothing digital beats the “real thing,” in my view.

And nothing beats the serendipitous find that sends a little shiver up the spine when spotted.

I had several such happy circumstances during the drafting of the just released fifth in my series, What Gold Buys.Mercury’s Rise) to be part of the new story. But there they were, stepping off the train in Gold, ready to burn through their monthly remittance allowances in Leadville. (For those who are wondering who, exactly, a remittance man is, Wikipedia has a nice little definition here: “In 19th century British usage, a remittance man is an emigrant, often to a British colony, supported or assisted by payment of money from his paternal home. …

Such a person may be seeking business fortune, education, extended vacation, a new place for the family to move, employment, or safety from personal, family, or legal troubles.)

Indeed, serendipity (or the sneaky workings of the unconscious) played a significant part when it came to forming the story and assembling the cast of characters. I truly hadn’t expected the “Lads from London” (a motley crew of British remittance men who first crashed the party in the fourth Silver Rush book, I already had a good handle on Terrance Epperley, who played a fairly major role in Mercury. In fact, “way back when” during the research/writing phase of Mercury, I found a photo of a gentleman that was close to how I pictured Epperley and his facespanner mustache right here on a blog titled “Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century” (although I envision Epperley with a more narrow face and white-blond hair). But who were the other fellows? Now, I had to conjure up more than vague half-formed visages, since they insisted on wandering in and out of Gold and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

This is where lovely serendipity walked in.

I was at a tiny, local antique store (which, in addition to selling this and that and the other, just happens to sell See’s Candies, to which I have an unapologetic addiction), when I saw… THE LADS! They were properly displayed in a lovely carte de viste, resting atop a finely brushed top hat in a display case. After scooping up my weekly allowance of See’s (heavy on their “Awesome Peanut Brittle Bar” which is very very awesome), I asked if the photograph was for sale. The salesperson was a little nonplussed… apparently the photo was supposed to “sell” the top hat, not vice versa. However, he checked around and finally said, yes, I could buy it.

So I did.

Oh, I also bought a 1940s vintage typewriter, apropos of nothing other than I had recently been paid, was feeling “flush,” and thus in a mood to throw my money around.

: The “Lads from London” atop another serendipitous purchase…]

A bit like The Lads when their remittances came in, I suppose!

But that’s not the only way I burn through my research “mad money.” Online venues such as Etsy and eBay prove dangerous to my fiscal health… especially if I am searching for an image (just an image, mind you) of some object, just to get a handle on it so I can describe it more effectively. And if I’m zooming around on these come-hither-and-buy sites late at night, when my will power is weak, well, the results are as can be expected.

For instance, I was looking around on the Internet one night for images of a piquet card deck, circa 1870s. Piquet, which may have come to France by way of Spain, is one of the oldest card games around that is still played. More to my fictional purposes, it is (and was) also used for fortune telling. And what to my wandering eyes doth appear but a c1875 piquet deck on Etsy. At a reasonable price! A quick back ‘n forth with the seller, the deal was sealed, and I am now the proud owner of a piquet deck. (Note: I am playing with a “full deck” here… A piquet deck is composed of 32 cards, including face cards, 7s through 10s, and aces.)

 PIQUET.  My Etsy score: A c1875 deck of piquet cards.]

There is something magical about holding these cards in hand. I wonder about the people who handled this deck more than a century ago, when the faces of the cards were new and unmarked—Who were these folks? Where did they live? What were their lives like? It’s all a mystery, and my imagination begins to wander… spinning tales….

And that is half the fun (and reward) of serendipitous research.

--------------------------------------------------

Ann Parker lives in Northern California and is a science/corporate writer by day and a crime fiction writer by night. Her award-winning Silver Rush historical series, set in 1880s Colorado, features Leadville saloon-owner Inez Stannert—a woman with a mysterious past, a complicated present, and an uncertain future. Her books have won the Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction, the Colorado Gold Award, the Colorado Book Award, and the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award. In its starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the newest in the series, What Gold Buys, “emotionally and historically convincing.” Ann’s website: www.annparker.net

RHYS: I know exactly how Ann feels about research and when you stumble upon that perfect object. I was walking along the Portobello Road in London one day when I heard a dealer say, "The bracelet is from 1930". A woman was holding it. I willed her to put it down then snatched it up myself. Georgie's bracelet!
And Ann asked me to tell you that she'll give away a signed copy to one of today's commenters.

Insider--the Colorado Sheriff's Office

The Arkansas River, heart and soul of Salida, Colorado, fuels the small town’s economy and thrums in the blood of river ranger Mandy Tanner. When a whitewater rafting accident occurs, she deftly executes a rescue, but a man dies anyway. Turns out, it wasn’t the rapids that killed him—it was murder.
*** DEADLY CURRENTS



Hank: Beth Groundwater--one of the hardest working authors is the biz!--made me laugh with this topic. I'm nearing the end of a manuscript (crossing fingers) and looking for that one final twist--and I kept thinking--"I'm up the creek without a paddle."

And then Beth (whose new series stars a cool and fearless whitewater ranger who always has a paddle) suggested she write about her adventures putting together this story!

Ah, worlds collide.

Anyway--ever heard of "fourteeners"? or The Angel of Shavano? You can't make this stuff up.

How a Rural Colorado Sheriff’s Office Works
by Beth Groundwater

Deadly Currents, the first book in my new RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, takes place in rural Chaffee County, situated in the upper Arkansas River valley in central Colorado.

The county has about 17,000 residents in the winter. Most of them live in the small city of Salida, where my whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner lives, and in the two towns of Buena Vista to the north and Poncha Springs to the west, at the base of the Monarch Mountain ski area, where Mandy works as a ski patroller in the winter.

The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area (AHRA) headquarters building, where Mandy works spring-fall, is in downtown Salida, one block from the river.

The county population doubles in the summer when tourists and part-timers flood in. They scamper around the county, engaging in whitewater rafting, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, fly fishing, off-roading, birding, horseback riding, antiquing and all the other warm weather activities the valley offers.

One fourth of Colorado's 54 "fourteeners," mountain peaks measuring over 14,000 feet in altitude, are located in Chaffee County.

One of those, Mt. Shavano appears on the patch of the Chaffee County Sheriff’s office.

The patch shows the “Angel of Shavano,” an angel-shaped area of snow that appears on Mt. Shavano each June as snows melt.

HANK: Oh, I found a photo of it. Cool.

BETH: To learn how the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office operates, I interviewed Undersheriff Keith Pinkston, who is their lead detective. He is in charge of two other detectives in their small Investigations Division. He educated me on how their procedures differ from those I learned in El Paso County Sheriff’s Citizen’s Academy, where I live. Because the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office has only three detectives, patrol officers conduct their own investigations of crimes, except when the crimes are major, such as murder.

Chaffee County averages about one murder case a year, though the detectives need to investigate many more unintended deaths, fatal accidents, and suicides to rule out murder. Their (imaginary) murder rate is about to soar!

Since the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office is small, they request outside help for many of the tasks associated with a murder investigation, and they are adept at coordinating with outsiders. They rely on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to process much of the forensic evidence they collect at crime scenes. They may call in the investigator from the District Attorney’s Office to help. And, they may request officers from the Colorado State Patrol to work with their detectives to solve major cases.

While the county has an elected coroner, he is not a forensic pathologist. So, if an autopsy is needed, the body is sent outside the county to the coroner’s office in the city of Pueblo, Colorado. This is what happens to the body of Tom King, the person Mandy Tanner pulls out of the Arkansas River in Deadly Currents, who dies on the river bank.

Keith Pinkston also explained how the Sheriff’s Office works with river rangers like Mandy who discover dead bodies in or alongside the Arkansas River, or who pull people out of the river who later die. While the Sheriff’s Office is responsible for investigating deaths, the river ranger(s) who are the “first responders” are a part of the investigative team. The river rangers’ primary responsibility is extracting the body from the river, but they also share information with the detectives about what they found, and they may testify in court.

Mandy Tanner has a personal stake in the death of Tom King, both because of her own involvement and the impact the case has on her Uncle Bill, so she gets tangled up in the investigation much more than river rangers usually do. Victor Quintana, the detective assigned to Tom King’s case, is willing to share information with her, because in Chaffee County, as in many rural counties, all of the law enforcement and fire/rescue personnel work and train together on search and rescue teams and become a close-knit community.

The vehicles the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office use are 4-wheel drive Ford Broncos (for frequent snowy or muddy road conditions) and Crown Victoria patrol cars. Every vehicle contains a rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun with lethal ammunition, and another one with non-lethal ammunition, all stored in brackets. Each deputy has their own patrol car.

Like many rural Sheriff’s Offices, Chaffee County’s constantly could use more funding. Only some of the deputies have Kevlar helmets and vests. And, the deputies are responsible for supplying their own sidearm, so there’s quite a mixture. They also carry shoulder radios, handcuffs, pepper spray, and either an ASP tactical baton or a TASER.

The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office may be small, and on a tight budget, but the deputies I met there had a friendly, professional attitude and took their assignments very seriously.

What else would you like to know about how a rural Colorado Sheriff’s Office works? Or about how Mandy Tanner interacts with Victor Quintana, the detective assigned to Tom King’s case? Remember, everyone who comments will be entered into a contest for a free copy of Deadly Currents.

If you’d like to see what the other stops are on Beth Groundwater’s virtual book tour and what other topics are covered, go to: http://bethgroundwater.com/2011_Virtual_Book_Tour.html , and if you’d like to order an autographed copy of Deadly Currents, go to the website for Black Cat Books (http://manitoubooks.com/) and click on "Contact Us”. Either call the phone number or fill out the form with your contact information.

Beth Groundwater writes the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series (A Real Basket Case, a 2007 Best First Novel Agatha Award finalist, and To Hell in a Handbasket, 2009) and the Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventures mystery series starring whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner. The first, Deadly Currents, will be released March 8th. Beth lives in Colorado and enjoys its many outdoor activities, including skiing, hiking, and whitewater rafting. She loves talking to book clubs, too, and not just for the gossip and wine! Please visit her website at bethgroundwater.com and her blog at bethgroundwater.blogspot.com.

The Arkansas River, heart and soul of Salida, Colorado, fuels the small town’s economy and thrums in the blood of river ranger Mandy Tanner. When a whitewater rafting accident occurs, she deftly executes a rescue, but a man dies anyway. Turns out, it wasn’t the rapids that killed him—it was murder. Tom King was a rich land developer with bitter business rivals, who cheated on his wife, refused to support his kayak-obsessed son, and infuriated environmentalists. Mandy’s world is upended again when tragedy strikes closer to home. Suspicious that the most recent death is connected to Tom King’s murder, she goes on an emotionally turbulent quest for the truth—and ends up in dangerous waters.