DZ: My relationship with Gary goes back almost ten years when I kept sending him story after story until I finally wore Gary down and he bought "Next Time" for Hardboiled #22 (at the time my second story sale). Gary, welcome and congratulations on your recent short story Edgar nomination for “Adventures of the Missing Detective”. Could you tell us about this one?

GL: No one was more surprised to receive a nomination for an Edgar Award for the best short story of 2005 than myself, it's a wonderful acknowledgement from my peers which I very much appreciate regardless if I win or not. Just being nominated is winning! My story is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in the book, Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years edited by Michael Kurland (St Martins Press). In "The Adventure of the Missing Detective" I wanted to do something different and original in a Holmes pastiche while still staying loyal to Doyle and his creation. It was a very hard story to write and to get right and a lot of research was involved. There is a 3 year space in the Holmes stories when the world (and Watson) thought Holmes dead, murdered by Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Well, my story shows what a world without Holmes would be like and it is scary. I don't want to give too much away. The thing about why I like Doyle so much is that Sherlock Holmes was THE cutting-edge crime writer of his era, and presaged much of what is going on today in modern crime fiction AND in hard-boiled fiction. Doyle's Birdy Edwards a Pinkerton (in The Valley of Fear) is actually the world's FIRST hard-boiled detective, before Hammett and Chandler and even Daly; and so, Doyle and Holmes just naturally fit in with my own love of hard crime fiction, noir, and being editor of HARDBOILED magazine and obviously loving this fiction.

DZ: I have a few stock questions we ask all of our interviewees at Hardluck. First, your definition of noir?

GL: Noir to me is an all-enshrouding darkness that is so thick and viscous it can choke you to death. It can be crime, usually, but other things as well, like just pure evil. Lovecraft had a understanding of it, the persistence of evil. I like these kind of dark stories, writing them and reading them.

What do you think of the current noir marketplace?

GL: I think the current marketplace is tough for it though,  a few people like yourself with Hardluck Stories, and some anthologies like those edited by Jeff Gelb, are fighting  the good fight to make a venue available to new writers. However, noir is popular and many so-called "bestseller" writers actually write noir or noir-ish material but it is just marketed as a bestseller, a larger marketing category. Writing the best story possible is the only thing that should be important, if it is noir, that's fine, if it's a cozy, that is what it is. No problem. I also write westerns, my novel, WEST TEXAS WAR will be out in the UK next month, it is not noir but there are hard and sweet moments in it. I like the variances. A writer has a story to tell and should tell it, the manner it is told should be the mode that makes it most effective.

DZ: From someone who publishes Paperback Parade, a which contains terrific essay on old hardboiled and noir paperbacks, I expect a detailed answer on this next stock question – your favorite noir books, authors and movies?  

GL: Favorite noir books, authors and movies are too many to mention. Of the older guys I like all the classics, but here are some maybe your readers haven't heard of much. Paul Meskil who wrote one book, and a hell of one, called Sin Pit (Lion Books) and I just reprinted it as a Gryphon Books Crime Classic. Paul's an old-time crime reporter and tells a hell of a noir tale of a cop and the femme fatale from Hell.  A guy named G.H. Otis wrote 2 fast, hard books for Lion I love, Bourbon Street (the better of the two) and Hot Cargo, also great fun. Al Frey, a guy probably no one heard of wrote 5 books and all are great! This guy could have been a big name. Modern guys? There are just so many; I love the work of Andrew Vachss and James Ellroy, Russell James, Ken Bruen, Allan Guthrie is an up and comer, Ed Gorman, Joe Lansdale, Donald Westlake, I also like a lot of the writers who write for me for HARDBOILED, Cindy Rosmus, Patrick Piccarrelli, Terry White, Mike Black, so many. For old movies, both versions of Scarface, White Heat with Cagney is great, The Roaring Twenties with Cagney and bad-guy Bogart who takes him down and betrays him, nice stuff, all the femme fatales; Liz Scott, James M. Cain in books and film, always hard-boiled and noir but not a private eye story in the bunch, I'm a big fan of The Usual Suspects, a brilliant film, a thinking person's film.

DZ: Along with publishing Hardboiled and Gryphon Books, you’ve written a couple of hardboiled books yourself that have been published by UK publisher, Do-Not Press, Hell-Bent on Homicide and Blood in Brooklyn. How did your duo, Fats & Griff (Fatty Stubbs and Lt. Bill Griffin come about?

GL: I wrote Hellbent on Homicide 20 years ago but it didn't appear as a book until 1995. Fats and Griff are two hard-boiled outsider cops in a town Griff calls Bay City, he's telling his stories as memoirs but can't let on too much of the truth of things back then. Their stories take place in 1962, a simple time in America, a time that seemed much sweeter, unless you've read too much Ellroy, so things were different then, but crime was still crime. Serial killers didn't exist yet, not under that name, but sex killers sure did! Griff is partnered up with Fats, no one else would take them as partners, a bit of a brute and a bit of a pig, and a bit of a hero, and a hell of a guy to know as they go after a guy cutting working girls. They do their job and don't give a damn about much that gets in the way. Hard-boiled, even brutal, seemingly uncaring, but they're crushed by the job and still keep fighting. I've written the one novel, and a bunch of short stories about them, and have another novel on the way called Body Parts, it tells the never-before background of Fats and has some surprises, they're after their worst and most cunning killer yet. Hellbent originally came out here in a now rare paperback edition from Scarlet Press in 1995, a few years later, Jim Driver of the Do Not Press in England published Hellbent and later my first Vic Powers novel, Blood in Brooklyn. Now, Vic Powers is a dysfunctional cop thrown off the NYPD who is unstable and gets in all kinds of trouble. There is also a collection of Vic stories, Dirty Dogs. Vic is a natural progression from Griff and Fats to contemporary times. I like writing about these guys and wished there were more markets. Jim's Do Not Press has cut back on a lot of books and writers, other venues for this more extreme hard crime seem few and far between so I don't know who will even be interested in Body Parts.

DZ: Am I imagining this, or is your writing heavily influenced by both Mickey Spillane and Andrew Vachss?

GL: My writing is influenced by Mickey Spillane and Andrew Vachss certainly, and they are friends and people whose work I have had the privilege to publish, but there are also many, many others who have influenced me, and not all of them are noir or even crime writers. I love Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, obviously Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, she was a real innovator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, even Bernard Cornwell who writes the fabulous Richard Sharpe historical series. George MacDonald Fraser author of the Flashman books, is another.

DZ: Anymore books in the works?

GL: I'm working on two non-fiction projects now, next month WEST TEXAS WAR will be out in the UK, a western novel, I'll probably write another western novel. I do a lot of fiction and non-fiction and focus on whatever project or venue is available. Right now my fiction writing has taken a bit of a back seat, but that could change drastically and dramatically at any time.

DZ: How did Gryphon Books come about?

GL: Gryphon Books is the imprint I created to publish the types of pulp, action, crime, adventure, noir, sense-of-wonder science fiction I love to read and collect myself. I also publish my two magazines, HARDBOILED and PAPERBACK PARADE under the Gryphon Books imprint. My plan all along was always to do what Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith, and other writers I admire did with their work. They were writers first but knew they needed to know the business of books also. That meant to become publishers of their own work, thereby owning the ways and means of production so you could get your work out, and get it out the way you intend it to be. To have control. Not to have it cut, or messed with. I had that done too much when I was first starting out. Now I know better. This must be important, even crucial, for any writer. So if I must, if I have to, I can bypass big publishers that won't touch my work. Maybe they don't like it, don't like me, maybe it's not politically correct, or it is too hard-boiled, not commercial enough, not the current "hot" thing, whatever. All that matters is that I believe in everything that I write. And then I do it.

DZ: History of Hardboiled Magazine? Some of the authors you’ve published?

GL: HARDBOILED was founded in the 1980s by crime writer Wayne Dundee, Big Wayne is a great guy and writer, he published so many wonderful stories, early work by Vachss, Gorman, Max Collins, Joe Lansdale, so many other big names now. I took over in the early 1990s and have kept the mag going as a venue for newer writers and I'm so proud of each issue and the writers whose stories appear there. The latest issue, #33 which is now at the printer is the best yet. Probably every writer who is anyone has appeared at some time in HARDBOILED. Pick a name, they've been there, many of the greats and old pros have had stories there, classic reprints or new work; Howard Browne, Bruno Fischer, Mike Avallone, Richard Prather, Mickey Spillane, Lawrence Block, Harlan Ellison, Vin Packer, too many to mention them all.

DZ: You’ve had a recent collaboration with Mickey Spillane? Spillane is one of my favorites. I absolutely love Kiss Me Deadly and I, The Jury. Your thoughts on his writing.

GL: Actually, I was given the opportunity through Max Collins when Lynn Myers contacted me about publishing a new collection of early Mickey Spillane stories called, Primal Spillane. I jumped at the chance, Mick is one of my heroes, and it was great fun, Mick is a charm, a really nice guy and I was able to have my friend, vintage cover artist Robert Maguire offer a cover for the book. It's one of Bob's wonderful early noir paperback paintings. Sadly, Bob Maguire just passed away last Saturday. He was the perfect person to do the cover for this collection. I really like The Mick's books, his first seven are classics, true great examples of hard-boiled fiction.  I, The Jury, is great but also the very politically incorrect -- and the book that got him in trouble and hated by the critics, One Lonely Night. It's one of his best also. A lot of critics don't like Spillane's "style", but Spillane's a natural storyteller and he's his own style. A lot of people that criticize Mickey only wish they had 10% of his sales!

DZ: Future plans for Gryphon Books? Advance word on the next Hardboiled?

GL: Future plans for Gryphon Books, well I'm excited that next month I will be publishing four classic Harry Whittington crime and noir thrillers, great books, lost classics: One Got Away, Married To Murder, Satan's Widow, and Vengeful Sinner. They will be available as trade paperbacks for $16 each with glorious pulp crime cover art. I'm really excited about these being back in print again after so many years. They're terrific crime novels! It's an exciting time, it's fun to write what I want, wonderful to publish so many fine books.

DZ: Gary, as always it’s been fun talking with you. Best of luck with the Edgars and with all of your other projects.

GL: Dave, enjoyed it also.

Copyright(c) 2005 by Dave Zeltserman