Sisters in Crime

M.D. Lake,
Author of Peggy O'Neill mysteries



M.D. Lake is like the postman. Through snow and sleet and flood he's there. Flitting from place to place, PC to PC (from a "fuzzy" monitor in California to a PC in "chilly" Minnesota that lived in the year 2099), hurdling software problems like a man possessed, M.D. Lake was there. There, to respond to this interview. What a man! Determined. Destined. Delirious, with fever, too.

M.D. is author of the Peggy O'Neill, campus cop, series of mysteries. His latest, tenth in the series, is Death Calls the Tune, soon in your bookstore. He's been presented with two Agatha awards for short stories by Malice Domestic, the first in 1994 for "Kim's Game" (Malice Domestic 2, edited by Mary Higgins Clark) and the second in 1998 for "Tea for Two" (Funny Bones, edited by Joan Hess). Known by his friends for his outrageous sense of humor he has also been referred to as a member of the Minnesota Mystery Mafia. Who said a virtual killer can't have a sense of humor?

He'd like us to think he's well-traveled and heroic. Isn't he though? What can one say about someone who leaves a warm, pleasant, climate, while incubating pneumonia, for chilly Minnesota? See the results.


It was a few minutes after eleven and the other cops had already gone out on their patrols, but I was still in the squad room, fiddling with the Christmas tree, blissfully unaware that on the New Campus across the river, a man was about to be murdered.

-- Grave Choices, M.D. Lake


IC
You chose this quote because?

M.D.
This isn't the greatest sentence I've ever written (honest!), but I like it because in one sentence -- the opening sentence of the book -- the reader is plopped down into a setting and given the information that the narrator is a cop on a campus, that it's Christmas time, and that a murder is about to take place. I especially like the way the gentle act of fiddling with the Christmas tree is followed immediately by the announcement of a murder to come.

I take a lot of care with the opening paragraph of my books because I believe most browsers make their decision about buying a mystery on the basis of the cover, the back-cover text, and a glance at the first paragraph or two.

I don't always, or even often, mention murder in the first paragraph, as I did in Grave Choices. It's not necessary to start with that kind of bang because, after all, readers know they're in for murder when they pick up a book in the mystery section of a bookstore. What I mainly want to do with the first paragraph is hook readers into Peggy's voice. If they don't like the voice telling the story, chances are they aren't going to buy the book. Another of my mysteries begins like this: "If you've been paying attention, you'll know that in September I got hit on the head with a pistol and thrown down a flight of stairs." How could anybody resist an opening like that?

Now, if you want a profound quote that's meaningful to me, let me give you this one, which comes from Oscar Wilde: "There is such a thing as robbing a story of its reality by trying to make it too true." I believe this. Whenever a book begins to drag, whether it's one I'm writing or one I'm reading, it's usually because the author is trying to make the story too true.

IC
Do you want to be addressed as "Allen" or "M.D." ?
M.D.
I'd prefer "M.D." "Allen Simpson" is a totally fictitious character in this context. He's never sold a mystery in his life. M.D. Lake is real!
IC
Who is Hawkeye to whom Flirting with Death is dedicated?
M.D.
Hawkeye was Max and Roger Linehan's Maine Coon cat, a very remarkable animal. Not only did he floss his fangs every morning (this is true), he also could be found sometimes in the basement, sitting and staring into a corner where the previous owner of the house had hanged himself (this is also true). He got cancer and, after a long, painful and expensive attempt to save him, had to be put to sleep. His vet was the doctor whom I acknowledge in the book for the help he gave me with the details of the (fictional) School of Veterinary Medicine.
IC
All your books seem to be paperback originals. Is that true and how has that experience been?
M.D.
I've only been published in paperback. This is in part because when I started with Avon, Avon only published paperbacks. Also, I got a lot of advice, from people I believed knew what they were talking about, to stay in paperback. Although I sometimes hear a voice in the back of my mind telling me that paperbacks aren't "real" books, I still feel good when I walk into a bookstore and see my paperbacks on the shelves. I'm proud of the colorful little things!
IC
What's the most memorable reaction by a fan to M.D. Lake being a man?
M.D.
Depends on what you mean by "memorable" and "fan." I've received one negative reaction (at second hand) from somebody who said that, when she found out I was male, felt "tricked" and vowed never to read another of my books. I've also heard about a supposed fiction writing teacher who discourages her students from writing from the point of view of the opposite sex. She'd probably have tried to discourage Tony Hillerman from writing from the point of view of Native Americans or the male, Caucasian, author of the best-seller Memoirs of a Geisha from writing from the point of view of a geisha, or the American Deborah Crombie from writing from within an English village setting, using English characters. I feel sorry for the students of such "teachers," who must feel threatened when their students want to take risks. All creativity is a matter of taking risks, and should be encouraged, not stomped on. I've met many female mystery readers who are surprised and delighted when they discover that I'm a man. One woman once came up to me and said, "I can hardly wait to tell my sister! She loves your books too."

However, when they tell me, as they sometimes do, that I'm good at "getting into the mind of a woman," I point out to them that the only mind I can get into is my own. But I can create female, black, Asian, young, old, good and evil characters -- and many others besides! -- because I'm both fairly observant and fairly imaginative, which are other essential elements of creativity, along with risk-taking.

IC
Before you began writing Peggy O'Neill mysteries what did you do for fun?
M.D.
I read mysteries, of course. I also played the piano -- in my next life, I'm either going to be a world-famous concert pianist or a fat Italian tenor. I once wrote a "serious" novel that dealt in a feverish way with how "Absurd" and "existential" the world is, based on my having been rejected in my senior year of high school by a girl I'd carried a torch for since fifth grade. It was a truly dreary novel -- but it was fun to write, and later burn.
IC
Were there any books you hated to read during high school? If so -- what were they and why?
M.D.
Now, that's an original question! I hated Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter because we read it in a hot, stuffy Southern California classroom. The class was taught by a thin-haired, elderly, unmarried woman (just about the only kind of English teacher they had back then) who pronounced "literature" and "temperature" to rhyme with "manure." I've tried to read that thing several times since, but can't -- I always see Miss Lovejoy and hear her prissy Southern drawl, and smell the oppressive smells of an eleventh grade classroom just before summer vacation. The novel's oppressive enough without all that!.
IC
Is the rumor true that your day job is that of owner of Abdul's Camel Stop?
M.D.
Owning Abdul's Camel Shop was the day job I quit to become a mystery writer. From a financial standpoint, that was a disaster, although there are some good things to be said about writing mysteries for a living too.
IC
You are a former U.S. Marine. What's your favorite memory of those days?
M.D.
There are three: Almost blowing myself and a drill sergeant up with a grenade, impaling myself on a bayonet during bayonet practice, and getting out.
IC
Some writers require oodles of pages of character and plot outline and others maybe a few scribbled lines. Do you think the way a writer writes reflects their approach to life?
M.D.
Not really. I know some writers who don't start the book until they've written an outline and character descriptions that end up being longer than the finished product, and these people seem to make up their lives as they go along. I know other writers who have no idea where their story's going or who's going to pop up next and, from the way they behave away from their desks, you'd think they were accountants or Mormons, or both. There's no one way to write a book. Anybody who tells you there is, is (perhaps unconsciously) trying to keep you from being creative.
IC
What was your least favorite course in college and why?
M.D.
Biology. I had to dissect a frog who seemed to be both pregnant and anorexic. I spent most of the course in a coffee shop across the street, smoking nervously and hoping the frog would somehow hop away by the time of the final exam and the course would turn out to be just a bad dream, but neither of those things happened. I still smell formaldehyde in my nightmares sometimes, and see the mild look of disapproval on that frog's face. I got a D.
IC
If you were free to read any type of book, fiction or nonfiction, what would choose?
M.D.
Fiction, of course. It's much harder to write than nonfiction, since it has to be plausible. Reality doesn't have to be plausible and therefore nonfiction is frequently tedious, sloppily written and its characters poorly motivated.
IC
Think you can weasel out with a generic answer? Nope. Tell us what specific fiction book you would read, given time, and why?
M.D.
They used to ask movie stars what they'd read if they were stranded on a desert island -- implying, I guess, that that's the only way a movie star would read a book. But there's no book that, "given time," I'd want to read, because I'm a reader, I have all the time in the world, and I read whatever I want. So there!
IC
Of all the people you've never met, living or deceased, who would you most like to spend a few hours with?
M.D.
There are too many. I guess a top priority would be my parents before they were married. Christ, his mother, and Oscar Wilde also come to mind. Casanova, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley. Beethoven.
IC
Why did you make your series character a campus cop?
M.D.
I was motivated to write my first mystery by a horrible incident that happened to a student I knew. I wanted to murder the professor involved, but decided I wouldn't be clever enough to get away with it, so I sat down to write a mystery instead in which I killed him. I'd known a campus cop since she was a child -- the second woman hired by the University police -- so I decided to pick her brains to see if a campus cop would be a viable protagonist. She turned out to be just what I wanted. I was as surprised as some of my readers are when my protagonist turned out to be a woman.
IC
Any comments on being a male member of Sisters in Crime?
M.D.
There's something redundant about "male member," isn't there? Other than that, I have nothing to say, except that I'm grateful to be part of such a worthwhile and useful organization.
IC
You were a professor in your previous life. Of what?
M.D.
I taught Scandinavian literature and the Norwegian language. It was fun for a lot of years, but after a while I got tired of it and decided I wanted to write something that wouldn't be read by only a handful of people in Scandinavia and the U.S.

I should add that I have no Scandinavian blood in me at all. I got interested in Scandinavian culture from reading--while killing time in the Marine Corps -- an historical novel, Kristen Lavransdatter, by a woman named Sigrid Undset (who won the Nobel Prize). The reason I picked that novel up to read was because, through most of my adolescence, I'd been madly in love with a girl of Norwegian descent who wouldn't give me the time of day except to talk about how wonderful Norway was. So really, my choice of profession was her fault.

IC
If I say embarrassing moments and classroom, what's your first thought?
M.D.
I had no embarrassing moments, but I did have a defining moment. My first year of teaching, I was extremely nervous and had to write out every lecture, right down to "Good morning, class!" I couldn't ad lib anything. One day, however, towards the end of the year, I ran out of material with about twenty minutes of class time left to go. In a panic, I started babbling. I babbled for about ten minutes and then looked up at the class, expecting to see them all staring at me in disgust or leaving en masse. Instead, their heads were bent over their notebooks and they were earnestly taking down my every word. I never wrote out a lecture after that day.
IC
You live in the university town where you taught and you write mysteries about a campus cop. With friends and associates eagerly searching for themselves, or others, in your books, has this crimped your creativity?
M.D.
I have to be careful, of course, but people's talent for self-deception makes it easier. For example, at a business lunch on campus once, I found myself sitting next to an unusually fatuous associate dean. At one point, he nudged me and, nodding in the direction of another associate dean sitting across the table, whispered to me how much he'd enjoyed my caricature of him in my latest book. The thing was, the character in the book was based on the man sitting next to me, not the one across the table.

Several people have told me that my fictional faculty characters are too caricatured, but unfortunately, they're all too life-like, most of them. There's one professor on campus who, over the years, goes out of his way to tell me that he's never read my books: no matter where we meet, or how often, he brings it up, in spite of the fact that he's quite a distinguished professor and shouldn't have a problem with my writing. On the other hand, I've encountered many faculty members over the years who are thrilled by my books, and enjoy the satire on campus life in them.

M.D.
Genre publishing seems to have peaks and valleys. Where on the wavy curve do you think mystery publishing currently is?
M.D.
I have no idea and I don't think anybody else does, either -- especially publishers.
IC
What do you think is the most significant event of the 20th century and why?
M.D.
I suppose it would have to be my birth, without which there would be no 20th century.

Seriously, I think Anne Frank's diary might be the most significant event of the century because, without it, I'm not sure that the Holocaust -- the most horrifying event of the century -- would be more than a vague memory a hundred years from now.

IC
M.D., the Spotlight is yours. Our Spotlight visitors await your parting scintillating words. Have at it.
M.D.
Writing can be fun, but it's also hard work, lonely, and -- for me, anyway -- nerve-wracking. I never know where the creativity comes from or if it's going to continue to come, and that's stressful. Beware of authors spouting wisdom. The best thing an author can do for aspiring authors is remind them that books are written by ordinary people who have a certain talent and a willingness to work to develop that talent. Mystery writers, by and large, are the most generous people I know. They understand that, as Lawrence Block once put it, "nobody has to fail for me to succeed." Writing is one of the few professions where that's true, and we should always remember it.

Thanks, M.D. You are a brave soul -- foregoing chicken soup to do this interview.

Interview conducted by Louise Guardino, who has no pity for a sick man, during March 1999.

Books by M.D. Lake
Amends for Murder
Cold Comfort
Poisoned Ivy
A Gift for Murder
Murder by Mail
Once Upon a Crime
Grave Choices
Flirting with Death
Midsummer Malice
Death Calls the Tune


M.D. Lake Louise Guardino


Read an earlier Spotlight Profile.

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