The hero of Brian M. Wiprud's Feelers has an unusual occupation—sorting through the houses of dead people.
Are there really “feelers”?
Yeah, they're listed in the phone book under “Home Contents Removal”—I gave them the name “feelers.” Sometimes they just clear out junk, or sometimes they find antiques, but what they're really looking for is the cash that old people tend to hide—especially people who went through the Depression. I met some feelers at antique fairs in Pennsylvania. They had great anecdotes, like one house they'd cleared out without finding anything. Then, at the dump, a mattress burst, and suddenly there was money everywhere, everyone snatching money out of the air.
So you heard this and thought “What a great place to start a story”?
What I thought was, instead of a little money, what if my protagonist, Morty Martinez, found a lot of money? What would he do to hang on to it, especially when a real menace appears?
That menace being Danny, a stone cold killer who thinks the money is his?
It was fun to build up to the collision between Danny and Morty, how they keep missing each other just slightly so that the reader is sure that something awful will happen when they meet—then doing something unexpected when they do finally meet.
Besides writing about this unusual profession, you've done three books about what you describe as “Nick and Nora Charles with taxidermy.” Does this come out of personal experience?
Yes, I used to collect taxidermy, but not so much any more. All the spaces are full. Then there's maintenance. I collect mainly fish now because they're easier to take care of with a squirt of Lemon Pledge. With stuffed antelopes, for example, you sometimes get moths and you wind up having to put flea collars on them.
What about your own daytime job as a “manhole inspector,” tracing tunnels in underground Manhattan? Do you ever think that'd be a good basis for a book?
One of my earlier novels, Crooked, did use some of that background, but I deal with that subject all day and would rather write about something different.
What's next?
I'm doing several novels about Brooklyn, where I live. It's a fascinating place, the fourth largest city in the country. My own neighborhood is split between the people who've lived there all their lives and the gentry/hipsters who are moving in. The novel I just finished is called Buyback, about an insurance investigator who turns to art theft. Then the picture he's just stolen is stolen from him, while he's working for the insurance company to recover the picture he stole in the first place.
