PW: Your new book, The Bite [see review, above], is your second Luther Ewing Thriller, after Red Rain (Viking, 2002), but the author blurb says, "Michael Crow is the pseudonym of a prizewinning, critically acclaimed literary novelist." What led you to the thriller genre? And why write under a pseudonym?
Michael Crow: I had written five literary novels—the kind that are taken seriously by critics—and it occurred to me it would be fun to unleash my evil twin and write something radically different. As for the pseudonym, I didn't want to get my identities confused, so I thought it would be best to publish the Luther Ewing novels under a different name and with a different publisher.... It's been fun to see the response, especially the speculation about my identity. One writer in Baltimore had amassed some evidence and thought I was William T. Vollmann. It was quite hilarious to me, but I felt sorry for Mr. Vollmann.
PW: Tell us about your protagonist Luther Ewing. He's ex-Special Forces and a former mercenary who's now an undercover cop in Baltimore County. Where did he come from?
MC: I don't entirely know where any of my characters come from, but I must have been thinking about the idea of warriors when there is no war. There are actually thousands of mercenaries all over the world, and I wondered what happens to a guy like Luther? How does he channel those impulses?
PW: It sounds as if your story grew out of the character, not vice versa.
MC: I never know in the beginning how a story is going to turn out. I approached Red Rain and The Bite in exactly the same way that I approach my literary work. It always begins with a phrase or an image of a character, and from that emerges a time and a place and a situation. I don't really plot at all. I begin to write. For example, Luther needed an opponent in The Bite who was utterly different from the bad guy in Red Rain. I didn't really knew who it would be until the character just popped up one day. It sounds pretentious, but the characters come alive for me, begin to speak to me, and they take control of me in a certain way.
PW:The Bite turns out to be a pretty grisly tale with lots of violence. Were you striving to be lurid?
MC: I did decide that if I'm going to write genre fiction, I'm going to push the envelope a bit in terms of the violence. I'm aware on a firsthand basis that violence of the type in the book does exist, that it's not particularly unusual or uncommon. To see the aftermath of these kind of events is stomach turning. Why be coy? Why soften it?
PW: What do you believe is the appeal of thrillers?
MC: Frankly, I have not read many genre writers, but the work is fascinating because it takes readers into a world that is incredibly real and outside their day-to-day experience. So much literary fiction these days is so ordinary, where nothing very much happens except internally. Most people already know the angst of a troubled marriage or the struggle of raising children. It's no wonder they're attracted to genre fiction.
PW: What kind of research did you do for the book? You seem quite knowledgeable about weapons and Special Forces—type tactics.
MC: I didn't do any research. The weapons experience is for the most part hands-on. Let's just say that I haven't always been a writer.
PW: What's next for your writing career?
MC: I started writing another literary novel about a month ago, but I don't know what will happen with Luther Ewing. But I hope I get to write about him again. I think there's a tale or two left in his character.
