Robert E. Bailey is the author of the PI Art Hardin series. When Bob writes about PIs, he knows of whence he speaks: he did the job for twenty years, before the profession turned into little more than computer record searches. A
Vietnam-era draftee, he retired from the military as a reservist and a
field-grade officer. Bob's also an award-winning combat pistol shot. Guess I'm glad I only have good things to say about his books! Which, by the way, were all recently released in ebook format. You'll find the links below. You'll also find my review of PRIVATE HEAT
here.
It's been my pleasure to correspond casually, off and on, over the last few years with Bob. I also had the great pleasure of meeting him in 2007 at the annual Ann Arbor Book Festival. Not only was he charming and funny, like his books, but he took the time to tour the festival with me, answering candidly every question I asked.
In August, 2011, Bob was diagnosed with
glioblastoma, a form of malignant
brain cancer. He underwent surgery in late August and is on his third round of chemotherapy. He has some mild
aphasia but continues to work on a new novel. And if you know what aphasia is, you know what a struggle that must be for anyone, but especially for a writer. Still, you might never guess it from his responses to some questions I recently put to him.
Q: Your
first book (PRIVATE HEAT) reads like a seasoned writer at the top of his game. Great
pacing, characterization, and story arc. Is it true you had to be
shot in order to get you to write this book? And did you consciously
emulate any other writer? If not, what crime writers (if any) would
you claim as your influences and/or favorites?
Bob: I
was injured working on an undercover job in so stupid a manner that I
am embarrassed to tell you! I had to move my van, and running down
the sidewalk, I broke my knee and ankle stumbling over a wheelchair
ramp. I wish there was a better story! (I survived the better
stories.) I was in a wheelchair before I could get back on my feet,
and that took about a year. Hence, the first novel.
Thank you for
the wonderful compliments. For the first novel, I was writing an
homage to all the old writers that I enjoyed, specifically, Mickey
Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. I think Robert
Parker deserves his own mention. My story was meant to thank them
for all their great stories. Interestingly enough, PRIVATE HEAT was
rejected twenty-three times by publishing houses, who said they had
read it all before and we didn’t need another one.
Q: I've
just finished rereading PRIVATE HEAT.
There's a lot of humor and a good bit of action, yet there are many
details that seem very authentic. Is it all fiction or did you draw
on some real-life events? I'm thinking especially of the hatchet
attack on PI Art Hardin by the woman he's been hired to protect.
Anybody ever take a hatchet to you?
Bob: No
one ever took a hatchet to me. I can remember certain folks armed
with baseball bats, various lengths of pipe, and wooden beams,
boards, and sign poles. Usually I didn’t allow angry people to get
that close to me. Some mob types did shoot up my vehicle while I was
in it.
Q: Say what?
Bob: I was pulling into a drive and a fellow put one 9mm in my windshield, one
into my radiator, and one in my oil filter. Lucky for me a first
bullet ricocheted off the window as I was driving upwards from the
street. The next two bullets were good but stayed in the engine. Instead of stopping, I nailed the gas and the shooter departed in a
pickup truck. I chased him but I couldn't figure out why my car kept
going slower and slower. While this happened thirty-five years ago, many of the men involved are
still in the Detroit "business." We have made a peace of sorts.
Q: You
have had an interesting, not to say exciting, career in government and private security.
Would you care to fill in the details, and tell me which job was your
favorite and why?
Bob: I
liked undercover work, being close and working as one of the bad
guys. (Maybe I liked that too much!) I usually got arrested with
the criminals that I pretended to be. In court, they were usually
surprised to find that I was a detective. I did surveillance in the
Army and as a private detective. I worked as the director of
security operations at Great Lakes Sugar and Warehousing. While I
was there I also worked with World Investigations and Security
Engineers, filling in on a part-time basis. When they tore down the
Sugar Shack, I took a full time position for WISE as the supervisor
of their western Michigan office in Grand Rapids. After I left WISE,
I opened my own agency, and did film surveillance around the state
for the government as a contractor as well as working for hire by
private businesses. I really liked everything I did.
Q: Karen
Smith, the young woman Art Hardin is hired to protect in PRIVATE HEAT, is a great character. She's a wonderfully funny mix: kind of street
smart, kind of dumb, kind of cynical, kind of naive. A lot of heart to her. I was delighted when she reappeared in DEAD BANG (the third Art Hardin book). Where'd she come
from?
Bob: Karen’s
character reminded me of young ladies that I met in college and
business. She is parts of many people that I knew. They could be
very, very smart, but sometimes use their hearts instead of their
heads.My
next novel is close to being finished. It’s called
Déjà Noir.
It’s not about Art Hardin. It does involve a PI, together with
cops and crooks. Each chapter is told in first person, from the
point of view of a different character. Misty’s chapter will warm
the hearts of Karen’s fans. This time you get to talk with the
character personally.
Q:
Okay,
other heroes carry Colts, Kimbers, Barettas, Smith & Wessons. Art
Hardin is the only character I know about who carries a Detonics. I had never heard of the brand (even though Sonny Crockett carried one in a leg holster on MIAMI VICE). Why choose that
firearm for him?
Bob: The
Detonics Combat Master is small, and easier to conceal. And it’s
still a .45. It’s a wonderful weapon for a pistolero, but not so
good for the inexperienced shooter. I had one of the first Detonics
they made. I always said it took two men and a small boy to lock and
load.
Q: The last Art Hardin book, DEAD BANG, was published in December, 2006, so you've
been out of the publishing world for several years now. Whatcha been
up to? Your books are set in Michigan but I know that you moved south
some time ago.
Bob: DEAD BANG ended up hidden in a drawer at the publisher, and my writing
profession was stuck in there with it. They wouldn’t print DEAD BANG and would not take any more Art Hardin stories. The fact that I
used Middle Eastern terrorists after 9-11 upset some people, who were
afraid to print what I said in that book. My agent suggested that I
write something else, but my wife, Linda, had died. I launched myself into
rebuilding my house outside Grand Rapids — and sold Art’s house.
In
2006, my publisher was sold to
Rowman & Littlefield, and DEAD BANG
was taken out of the drawer. It was a little harder for me to get
started writing again. I moved to Richmond [Virginia], and back among my writing
friends, and started writing, but slowly. I worked for an armored car
company, which took a lot of time. I married my second wife, Linda,
too, in a bookstore! Linda and I have written a screenplay about an
armored car robbery. Would love to see that one on the screen!
[Besides working on the new novel,
Déjà Noir] I
do have a new Art Hardin short story out,
The Small Matter of Ten Large. It is available on Nook and Kindle, for 99 cents. I also
found the first Art Hardin story that I ever wrote, which I wrote
sitting on a surveillance in 1979! I would love to see that in
print.
If
I get a chance I will go back to the fourth Art Hardin novel, which I
had started and been unable to finish when my wife died. It’s
called
A Tisket, A Casket.
Q:
I know that recently your health has been in jeopardy. Is that
something you care to talk about?
Bob: While
I was working on
Déjà Noir, my words began to disappear. Within ten
days, they were gone. Linda took me to her doctor — I didn’t have
one — and her doctor sent me to the emergency room. I had a
malignant tumor right in the speech and language area of my brain. I
had a five-and-a-half-hour
craniotomy on August 17, 2011. To many
peoples’ surprise, I woke up and could walk and talk.
Q: I, and I know your other fans, too, wish you all the best. I am amazed and heartened by your spirit. How has your writing been
affected by all of that? And is it hard to recapture Art's voice after so much time has passed
since we last saw him in print?
Bob: Writing was a little
harder. I had to learn to read and write words that everyone else
understood. For instance, you need to use a “cup” to order
coffee. I spent half an hour writing “cup” over and over, trying
to fix that word back in my brain. Some of the harder words took
longer. Most interesting is that all of those words are in my head,
but just don’t want to come out. Sometimes the wrong word comes
out, like, these days, “fish” for any type of meat. And I don’t
even like fish! Right after radiation I couldn’t read or write at
all, and had trouble speaking for about two months. My spelling is
still not what it once was. A page and a half takes me about four
hours to write now. That’s a page and a half of work, but ten
pages of rewriting! The
book I’m working on is not about Art, but I think it would be
easier to recover Art’s voice than to do the characters I am now
writing.
Q: Your wife is also a writer. Do you give each other
advice and criticism? And do either of you take it?
Bob: Linda
and I are the first persons to read each other's work. This is not
always a happy discussion. Sometimes I may disagree tonight, and the
next morning change my mind. Linda says that she is always happy
about my critique. Sometimes this is not the truth; sometimes we
bang heads. (I can only bang on one side now.) There is no point of
discussion if we didn’t have sincere disagreement. Only that moves
the work forward.
Q: The industry has changed significantly since your last book. Will you shop
Déjà Noir to a publisher or will you take it straight to ebook yourself?
Bob: Linda and I have discussed what was best to do. I don't know that I
will have two years to march the novel to publisher — and it's a year to
get it printed. It seems that the best plan would be to go direct to
ebook. We are thinking about it — first thing I have to do is get it done.
Thank you, Bob. If humor is a sign of grace, you have it in abundance. For those interested in reading more about Bob and his work, his blog is
The Trials of an Aphasic Writer. For those who want to read his Art Hardin series, PRIVATE HEAT, DYING EMBERS, DEAD BANG, and
The Small Matter of Ten Large are all available in Kindle format at
amazon and in Nook format at
Barnes & Noble.
