Setting a crime/detective novel in New York or L.A. is a no-brainer. While both cities are major cultural centres, they’re also known for having a seedy underbelly, which makes them the perfect settings for classic whodunits. Canadian author Howard Shrier, meanwhile, literally took the road less traveled and chose to situate the protagonist of his books, Jonah Geller, in Toronto.
“My agent has often said ‘Mystery stories set in Toronto are hard to sell,’” says Shrier. “I don’t know if people have an outdated idea of what Toronto is like, but honestly it’s a fascinating city. It’s gritty, it’s dirty, not that I’m terribly proud of that, but it has become much more of a big city and there’s plenty of crime to write about.”
Shrier’s most recent entry in the Geller series is Boston Cream, which once again throws the protagonist in harm’s way, this time in the heart of Beantown. “So far, what I’ve done with the series is to start the books in Toronto and then send Jonah into even deeper waters where he goes up against people who have much easier access to guns and are much more likely to use them,” he says.
An unabashed fan of the detective genre, Shrier says that treading in such familiar territory can be a double-edged sword. “I started reading the great private eye writers over 30 years ago and I loved them all, from Raymond Chandler to Ross McDonald to Robert B. Parker and yes, on the one hand, you know you’re going to be compared to them eventually if you’re going to write first person, private eye stories,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been compared favourably to some of these people who I greatly admire. So far it’s worked out all right. But I also know that I’m taking my own path; my character is very different from theirs, so I’m hoping that I’m adding something that they didn’t or couldn’t.”
“I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been compared favourably to people I greatly admire”
While Shrier says that he and Geller share some personality traits, he admits that he could never live up to his hero’s bravado.
“It’s been said about a lot of writers, especially those who write in the first person, that the detective is a version of themselves, and I think that’s true to a certain extent,” he says. “Jonah is a lot like me. His sense of humour, his observations, his sense of what’s right and wrong is similar to my own. What’s different is he does something about it in ways that I can’t. He’s Howard 2.0.”
The Geller series has so far proven fairly successful for Shrier. After the publication of the [first] novel Buffalo Jump, the rights to the franchise were sold to CTV who in turn will be developing a TV series based on the material. Although he says he has been hands-off on the adaptation for the most part, Shrier seems relatively confident that his creation is in good hands. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” he says.
While it may be tempting to approach the genre in an ironic fashion, sending up the same clichés seen time and time again, Shrier continues to approach the franchise with a unique sincerity, rather than churning out pulp.
“I don’t think I’m going for the pulp thing because, frankly, I think it’s been done and it almost sounds like a parody of itself,” he says. “I think today’s reader is looking for something different. My books take that P.I. sensibility and updates it to the year 2012. The funny thing is that some Canadian readers have said that these books are kind of violent but compared to a lot of stuff coming out of the States and even the U.K., they’re not violent at all. I guess every writer finds their place in the great continuum of crime and where they feel most comfortable.”
— By Walter J. Lyng, The Suburban (Montreal), August 29th, 2012
