- The Wolf in Winter A Charlie Parker Thriller.
Author One on One with John Connolly and Karin Slaughter
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Karin Slaughter Photo Credit: Ivan Gimenez Costa
Karin Slaughter Photo Credit: Alison Rosa
Karin: The Wolf in Winter is the twelfth Parker novel (and the
thirteenth story, if you could "The Reflecting Eye" novella). How
difficult is it to keep a series like this fresh, both for
readers and for yourself?
John: Well, I still enjoy writing the Parker books, which helps
a lot! I suppose that I made a few decisions early on which have
stood me in good stead. One of those was to let Parker age
gradually, so that the nature of the books would change as he
changed. I always think of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series: I
liked those books a lot, and they were always entertaining at the
very least, but Spenser is vaguely ageless, and so the books
remain kind of static. By contrast, James Lee Burke's Dave
Robicheaux is now a man in his sixties, and his capacities—and
his fears—are not the same as they were in his youth, which gives
both a potency and a sadness to the books.
A second decision I made was to have a larger narrative slowly
being constructed over the course of the novels. While a reader
can start anywhere in the series, by reading in sequence it
becomes clear that there is a connecting thread running through
them. I suppose it's a little like the difference between the TV
crime series of the seventies—Columbo, The Rockford Files and
their ilk—where each episode was entirely self-contained, and
modern series like The Wire or The Sopranos, where part of the
pleasure lies in watching the story unfold piece by piece.
And finally, I take detours to do other books, like The Book of
Lost Things, or the Chronicles of the Invaders, or the Samuel
Johnson novels, which allows me to exercise some different
muscles, and come back to Parker refreshed and maybe with one or
two new skills under my belt.
Karin: Like most of the other novels in the series, The Wolf in
Winter touches upon the supernatural. There is more of this
blurring of the distinctions between genres now than in the past,
but is there still an element of resistance to it among more
traditional readers and critics?
John: I think a generation of mystery writers has emerged that
is perhaps a little more experimental, and more willing to
explore the areas of crossover between genres. I love the
traditional mystery novel, whether hard-boiled or less explicit,
but this doesn't mean that I consider the traditional form as the
only way to write mysteries. I've always been curious to explore
ideas of justice, compassion and redemption in my books. Because
I was raised a Catholic, that word "redemption" comes freighted
with a certain a of spiritual baggage for me. I think it's
interesting that the writers I admire a lot—James Lee Burke,
Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane—are also exploring that notion of
redemption through their central characters, and all come from an
Irish Catholic background.
In the end, though, there remains a pretty conservative rump in
mystery fiction which doesn't care much for the mixing of genres,
and has a particular loathing for any hint of the supernatural.
That harks back to the rationalist roots of the mystery novel,
but I've always believed that life, and people, are much odder
than an entirely rationalist viewpoint can encompass.
Karin: The novel seems fascinated by the Green Man mythos,
which might not be familiar to readers from outside Europe. Where
did that come from?
John: A lot of older churches throughout Europe often feature
pagan symbolism, particularly faces that appear to be constructed
from wood and ivy, and the name given to such depictions in
England is "Green Man." I think it was a way for the early
Christian Church to acknowledge certain beliefs that were, if not
quite pagan, then very much manifestations of the people's
connection to the land. Some of them are benevolent, but some of
them are quite horrifying. So at the heart of The Wolf in Winter
is one of these old churches, transported stone by stone from
Northumberland to the United States. And if you bring the church,
then you also bring the beliefs...
Karin: What next?
John: I've finished Empire, the second book in the Chronicles
of the Invaders, which I'm writing with my better half, Jennie
Ridyard. It was easier to write than the first one, I think.
Collaboration is difficult for many writers, mainly because
writing is, by its nature, quite a solitary profession. I
struggled a bit with it for the first novel in the series,
Conquest, because I'd become so used to working alone over the
course of twenty books. But Jennie's input has made those books
better.
I'm also pretty close to finishing another Nocturnes collection
of short stories and novellas and, as I write this, I'm working
on the draft of the next Parker book. I'm going through a phase
of being pretty prolific, and I'm making the most of it while I
can. After all, who knows how long it will last?