Jeremiah "Jerry" Healy

Question: Why crime mystery?

Jeremiah Healy: I was a sheriff's officer (county-level law enforcement) during summer while attending college, and a military police lieutenant and eventually a captain. I also practiced law as a trial attorney for five years and taught law as a law professor for 18 years. Accordingly, crime fiction seemed a natural genre for me.

Q: Do you know German crime fiction? If so, what do German crime mysteries mean to you?

Jeremiah Healy: I really don't know any German crime fiction, in that my second language is Spanish, and German crime authors are not published in translation into English.

Q: Do you think, German crime fiction can compete with international crime fiction?

Jeremiah Healy: – – –

Q: Which author is overrated?

Jeremiah Healy: Patricia Cornwell – Some of her work is brilliant, but much of it is less than mediocre.

Q: Which author is underrated?

Jeremiah Healy: Jay Brandon – Wonderful legal thrillers that just never sold at the level they deserved.

Q: Is crime fiction literature to you?

Jeremiah Healy: I think it IS literature, if satisfying plots, intriguing characters, and controversial social issues are involved.

Q: How did you get into crime fiction?

Jeremiah Healy: My background, above, and the fact that I was reading and enjoying private-investigator fiction (Robert B. Parker, Marcia Muller, etc.) when I had the opportunity to write (= the summer after I received tenure at the law school, and therefore could devote three months to writing the first draft of a crime novel).

Q: What is your favourite murder weapon?

Jeremiah Healy: Statistically, probably firearms, specifically American-manufactured revolvers, though it is also true that I am more familiar with these than I am with knife or other weapon. In a novel entitled "Foursome", the murders are committed by cross-bow; and in "Yesterday's News", the hero saves himself with a SCUBA spear-gun.

Q: Murder – it necessary in a crime story?

Jeremiah Healy: I think a novel-length work that does NOT include a homicide simply lacks the depth necessary for me to feel that my journey as a reader was justified. Homicide is the ultimate crime: The killing of another member of the same species for some kind of gain - greed, envy, rage, revenge, etc.

Q: Why do you write?

Jeremiah Healy: Because, when I write, I lose track of the passage of time, so I am not watching the sands of my own mortal life on earth running through the hourglass.

Q: Are your crime stories set in the present?

Jeremiah Healy: Yes; I am not much of a historian.

Q: Where would you choose the setting?

Jeremiah Healy: I have set my novels geographically in many places (Boston, Maine, Florida, Pennsylvania, Washingotn D.C.), with chapter "visits" to even more (such as Spain).

Q: What do food and drink mean to you?

Jeremiah Healy: Fuel and relaxation.

Q: Sex in crime fiction: how do you view it/use it? If you do use it, why? If not, why not?

Jeremiah Healy: I have very little sex in my heroes' lives, especially the private investigator, John Cuddy, who survives the Vietnam War only to return home to the USA and lose his young wife, Beth, to cancer, because he then stays faithful to her memory, including having conversations with her at her grave. I have done several novels in which "sex" is involved in the crime, however: "So Like Sleep", "Swan Dive", and, most recently, "A Stain Upon The Robe", which deals with the Boston Catholic priest/sex scandal and has been optioned by Hollywood for feature film.

Q: Is there such a thing as "women's" crime fiction?

Jeremiah Healy: I think that female readers enjoy reading about honorable, exciting, and courageous female protagonists, and I think most of these crime novels are written best by female authors. In America, we began having women serve as uniformed and plainclothes officers back when I was in law enforcement in the late sixties to early seventies, and so it is quite credible to have such women as fictional characters be police, military or civilian, private investigators, etc. In fact the highest ranking commander in the Boston Police Department (we use a "commissioner" system, not a "chief" system) is a former female law studend of mine, serving as Boston's first female commissioner of police.

Q: For whom do you write?

Jeremiah Healy: I write for myself, which may be why I don't sell as well as I wish. I think when an author tries to write to an assumed audience, he or she loses that audience, because the novel will sound vague, like a political candidate trying to appeal to all voters.

Q: Plot development – your first thoughts? Do you make any notes and where do you get your ideas from?

Jeremiah Healy: I always know the end of the novel first, then I work backwards to the beginning, structuring the plot as I go. Then I write a 30-page outline from Chapter 1 to Chapter 30, and that outline keeps me on course. I also paperclip to the outline pages notes I make or clippings I cut from newspapers on incidents, locales, characters, etc.

Q: Where do you write?

Jeremiah Healy: In an office in my condo in Boston and in an office in my summer house in Maine.

Q: Does the PC get in the way of your writing?

Jeremiah Healy: No, just the opposite. Because I learned in high school how to "touch-type", the words of the first draft seem to move from my brain through my eyes to the computer screen, allowing I think for a much more natural "flow", especially of dialogue. A delusion, perhaps, but a helpful one.

Q: Your favourite book as a child?

Jeremiah Healy: "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, I think because I identified with the young hero, and the book is a fascinating manual on small unit military tactics.

Q: Your favourite book today?

Jeremiah Healy: Three choices: Lawrence Block's "A Walk Among The Tombstones", Elmore Leonard's "La Brava", and Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River".

Q: Your favourite male/female crime writer?

Jeremiah Healy: For sheer quality over a long careere, Elmore Leonard. For not letting her incredible and earned success go to her head, Sue Grafton.

Q: Your favourite movie?

Jeremiah Healy: "Body Heat", written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starring Katherine Turner and William Hurt.

Q: Your favourite drink?

Jeremiah Healy: California Zinfandel from the Alexander and Dry Creek Vallesy. RED Zinfandel, of course.

Q: Do you cook?

Jeremiah Healy: Barbecue. Badly.

Q: Do you go out to eat, if so where?

Jeremiah Healy: I try to eat in restaurants that serve food my wife would not prepare at home and I would not barbecue myself.

Q: What is your favourite item of clothing?

Jeremiah Healy: A swimming suit.

Q: Soccer – is this a topic for you?

Jeremiah Healy: Sorry, but no. I played it in high school, and enjoyed participating. However, as a spectator, I find watching the grass grow on the field to be more exciting. Ice hockey is my favorite spectator sport.

Q: Women/men – is the relationship between the sexes important to you?

Jeremiah Healy: Yes, but a relationship between the sexes does not itself have to be sexual. I think it is most interesting to cast a character AGAINST stereotype. For example, in my books set in predominantly Irish-Catholic Boston, I have the commander of the police homicide unit be a black male, and one of his sergeants a white female, just because it is atypical and gives me the opportunity to have "relationships" that are both professional, important to the story, and interesting as well.

Q: What is your favourite city in your country?

Jeremiah Healy: Boston, Massachusetts, followed by San Francisco, California and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Q: Your favourite country?

Jeremiah Healy: Other than the United States of America, Spain, because I've studied its culture and speak, haltingly, its language.

Q: What do you love?

Jeremiah Healy: My wife, and humor in a vey smart person.

Q: What do you detest?

Jeremiah Healy: Racisma, sexism, and religious prejudice.

Q: What was your best subject at school?

Jeremiah Healy: Spanish Literature, though I was a Political Science major in college.

What was your worst subject – and why?

Jeremiah Healy: Wood Shop, at age 13, when it took me six months to make my mother a bread board, and the last month was drilling the hole in the handle, and tying the little leather thong through it. The teacher told me he could fail me, but because Shop was a "required" course, that would only mean that he had to suffer with me again the following year.

Q: Your dream job?

Jeremiah Healy: Being a full-time mystery writer, as I am now. But could we talk about a raise in salary?

Q: Do you have any idea why you answered this list of questions?

Jeremiah Healy: Because the man who sent them to me is a great friend of mine.

Jeremiah "Jerry" Healy
Jeremiah Healy lehrte, nach seinen Abschlüssen am Rutgers College und der Harvard Law School, 18 Jahre lang Jura als Professor an der New England School of Law. Inzwischen kann sich Jeremiah Healy voll und ganz seiner Karriere als Kriminalschriftsteller widmen. Jeremiah Healy ist verheiratet und lebt in Boston, Massachusetts (während des Sommers) und in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (während des Winters).

Neben Kriminalromanen und zahlreichen Kurzkrimis, entwickelte Jeremiah Healy ab 1984 seine Serienfigur des Privatdetektivs John Fancis Cuddy in bisher 13 Kriminalromanen. Seit 2001 schreibt er unter dem Pseudonym Terry Devane auch Gerichtsthriller um die Protagonistin Maired O'Clare. Intime Einblicke in die Praxis und die Arbeit der Polizei und des (Gerichts-)Anwalts konnte Jeremiah Healy als Officer des Sheriffs, als Militärpolizist und als "Trial Attorny" sammeln. Also nicht die schlechteste Grundlage für einen Kriminalschriftsteller.

Ein Teil seiner Krimialromane und Kurzkrimis wurden ins Deutsche, Französische, Italienische, Japanische und ins Spanische übersetzt.

Daneben war Jeremiah Healy für zwei Jahre Präsident der "Private Eye Writers of America" und wurde 2002 zum Präsidenten der AIEP/IACW (Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policiacos / International Association of Crime Writers) gewählt. 1996 war Healy "Toastmaster" des Bouchercon und ist "American Guest of Honour" des Bouchercon 2004 in Toronto / Kanada.

Einige seiner Kriminalromane und Kurzkrimis wurden für den "Shamus Award" (1984, 1986, 1988 , 1992, 1993, 1996, 1998) und für den "Flamingo Award" (1999) nominiert.

Homepage: www.jeremiahhealy.com

Interviews:
www.mysteryone.com
www.january.com

Die Kriminalromane:

1992, Guten Abend, gute Nacht. Rotbuch 62

Jeremiah Healy
Die PI John Francis Cuddy-Serie:
1984, Blunt Darts. Walker & Co,
1985, Blunt Darts. Warner
1986, The Staked Goat. Harper & Row
1987, So Like Sleep. Harper & Row
1987, The Staked Goat. Pocket Books
1988, So Like Sleep. Pocket Books
1988, Swan Dive. Harper & Row
1989, Swan Dive. Pocket Books
1989, Yesterday's News. Harper & Row
1990, Yesterday's News. Pocket Books
1991, Blunt Darts. Pocket Books
1991, Right to Die. Pocket Books
1991, So Like Sleep. Pocket Books
1991, Swan Dive. Pocket Books
1991, The Staked Goat. Pocket Books
1992, Right to Die. Pocket Books
1992, Shallow Graves. Pocket Books
1993, Foursome. Pocket Books
1993, Shallow Graves. Pocket Books
1994, Act of God. Pocket Books
1994, Foursome. Pocket Books
1995, Act of God. Pocket Books
1995, Rescue. Pocket Books
1996, Invasion of Privacy. Pocket Books
1996, Rescue. Pocket Books
1997, Invasion of Privacy. Pocket Books
1998, The Only Good Lawyer. Pocket Books
1999, Spiral. Pocket Books
1999, The Only Good Lawyer. Pocket Books
2000, Spiral. Pocket Books

– – –

1998, The Stalking of Sheilah Quinn. St. Martin's Press
2001, Turnabout. Five Star Press
2003, Turnabout. Five Star Press

– – –

Terry Devan
Die Gerichtsthriller-Serie um Mairead O'Claire
2001, Uncommon Justice. Putnam
2002, Juror Number Eleven. Putnam
2002, Uncommon Justice. Berkley
2003, A Stain Upon the Robe. Putnam
2003, Juror Number Eleven. Berkley

Die Kurzkrimi-Anthologien

Jeremiah Healy
1998, The Concise Cuddy. Crippen & Landru
2003, Cuddy Plus One. Crippen & Landru
2003, Off-Season and other Stories. Five Star Press
Stand: 30.7.2003

© Gisela Lehmer-Kerkloh & Thomas Przybilka

Alle Titel und natürlich jedes andere lieferbare Buch können und sollten Sie bei Missing Link in Bonn bestellen, einer Buchhandlung, die sich auf Sekundärliteratur zum Krimi, auf Kriminalliteratur und auch auf die Beschaffung ausländischer Literatur spezialisiert hat.
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Die Befragenden:

Gisela Lehmer-Kerkloh rezensiert Kriminalliteratur. Sie ist Mitglied bei den Sisters in Crime, bei der GVM (Genootschap van Vlaamse Misdaadauteurs), sowie Amiga im Syndikat.
Bei den Alligatorpapieren veröffentlicht sie regelmäßig ihren "Krimi-Kurier" Letzte Buchveröffentlichung:
Siggi Baumeister oder: Eine Verfolgung quer durch die Eifel. Die Eifelkrimis des Jacques Berndorf.
84 S., 2001; EUR 10,50
NordPark Verlag

Thomas Przybilka verdient seinen Lebensunterhalt als Buchhändler. Er ist langjähriges Mitglied der "Autorengruppe Deutschsprachige Kriminalliteratur Das Syndikat". 1989 baute er das international bekannte "Bonner Krimi Archiv (Sekundärliteratur)" [BOKAS] auf. Bei den Alligatorpapieren veröffentlicht er regelmäßig seine "Krimi-Tipps zur Sekundärliteratur zum Krimi." Zahlreiche Publikationen zur Kriminalliteratur in Fachanthologien und -magazinen im In- und Ausland. Kriminalgeschichten in Deutschland, Bulgarien und Spanien. Letzte Buchveröffentlichung:
Siggi Baumeister oder: Eine Verfolgung quer durch die Eifel. Die Eifelkrimis des Jacques Berndorf.
84 S., 2001; EUR 10,50
NordPark Verlag