As I said two weeks ago, I edited Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, which Down and Out Books recently published. I asked some of the contribu5tors to answer a few questions related to the book. And here you go...
Give me five words about your story.
R.T. Lawton: Clandestine labs poison the environment.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Dead Bodies in Lake Mead
Janice Law: pollution, family, development, loss & revenge
Michael Bracken: Water is life. And death.
Mark Stevens: Exploiters of nature; delusional avenger.
Susan Breen: Over-tourism, volcanos, mother/daughter issues, Costa Rica and selfies
David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Wind energy on Native reservations.
Josh Pachter: “bad neighbor,” revenge, poison, semi-autobiographical
Karen Harrington: Illegal dumping. A fight for life.
Sarah M. Chen: Influencers, beaches, responsibility, privilege, overtourism
Barb Goffman: Comedy, neighbors, kitty-cat, marijuana, gardening
Gary Phillips: Influenced by the 1970s era, the Bronze Age of Comics. Specifically, the mystically charged Swamp Thing created by Len Wein (writer), and Bernie Wrightson (artist).
Crimes Against Nature uses mystery fiction to look at social (and scientific issues). What is your favorite (or first-encountered) mystery novel or story that deals with social issues?
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: First? Wow. Probably P.D. James, but which one, I have no idea.
Jon McGoran: Hard to remember what my first was, but when I was young, I went through an intense Carl Hiaasen phase, voraciously reading everything he wrote. I loved how he addressed environmental issues, while at the same time crafting these great crime stories, and never coming across as a scold, instead having great fun doing it.
S.J. Rozan: John Gregory Dunne, True Confessions.
Susan Breen: Walter Moseley’s novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was the first time I understood racism in a visceral way. I wasn’t watching it from afar, but was there, with Easy Rawlins.
Robert Lopresti: Some of Rex Stout's novels discussed social issues (A Right to Die, The Doorbell Rang, etc.) but when I first read them I was too young to absorb that. In college I loved James McClure's The Steam Pig, which was about policing in South Africa under apartheid.
Janice Law: I can only mention some recent books, all of which dealt with child abuse in official custody of one sort or another: Fiona McPhillips's When We Were Silent, Rene Denfeld's Sleeping Giants and James McBride's, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Even though she likely doesn’t think of it as a mystery novel, The Round House by Louise Erdrich is an amazing book that deals with criminal justice issues on Native lands. It’s a great read that also educates and illuminates. I highly recommend it, although she has so many other tremendous novels, so it’s hard to pick a favorite.
Gary Phillips: One of the first novels I recall dealing with a social issue, an environmental one at that and its implications was Ross Macdonald’s Sleeping Beauty. His fictional take on the real-life Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 as the backdrop to a Lew Archer, private eye tale.
Mark Stevens: The Wild Inside by Christine Carbo is one of my favorites.
Name an author who has had the biggest impact on your short stories.
Barb Goffman: Art Taylor. I learn something that helps my craft every time I read one of his stories.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Stephen King
Jon McGoran: I’ve always straddled mystery and scifi, but I think Elmore Leonard is the author whose style has most impacted me as a writer.
Susan Breen: My love of Agatha Christie inspired me to write mysteries, but Sue Grafton had a huge effect on how I think about the women who are usually my protagonists. She taught me that they could be bold, flawed and funny.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden: I’ll always return to the stories of Flannery O’Connor, although my own work bears no resemblance to her amazing tales. For dialogue, I was heavily influenced by Raymond Carver, although I once had a well-known writer scream at me when I mentioned that I admired Carver’s stories. I still believe that Carver’s dialogue is some of the best out there—consistently expressive and surprising.
Gary Phillips: No one writer had the biggest impact but certainly short stories by Poe and Rod Serling – those Twilight Zone teleplays turned into short stories. And it’s only fair to note Walter Gibson, the pulp writer who essentially created the Shadow, turned those into prose.
Robert Lopresti: Can't stop at one: Stanley Ellin, John Collier, Jack Ritchie, Avram Davidson.
Janice Law: This is difficult, because unlike most writers, I began with novels and only began writing and publishing short fiction after I had launched the Anna Peters series and a couple of history books. So, influences were the mystery writers I enjoyed: Dorothy L. Sayers, because she had Harriet Vane who was so much better than the usual female characters of the time; Eric Ambler, who was the god of suspense in my estimation, and Raymond Chandler for his irresistible style and mastery of atmosphere.
Karen Harrington: John Floyd, Stephen King, Barb Goffman and Ray Bradbury.
Mark Stevens: Patricia Highsmith
Which environmental issue is having the most direct effect on you now?
Karen Harrington: I don't know if it's a direct effect, but when I did research on illegal dumping of car oil and other car liquids, I discovered that it is alarmingly prolific. That's disturbing. There are companies that are weighing the cost of getting caught versus the damage to the environment and taking the gamble. This is from large companies to the small auto parts stores we see across the country. (And interestingly, in my research I found the attached photo describing the 1963 Popular Science method of disposing of used engine oil. What?! This practice was commonly accepted and thought to have no impact on the soil. Really shows that science is rarely settled and must continually learn and reevaluate what we think we know.)
Gary Phillips: Given I live in a seemingly now continuous wildfire state, no particular season for them as in the past, global warming is pretty dang real to me.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden: The wildfires in Colorado seem to be getting worse every year, which is really distressing. I’m now living in New York for the first time since 2013, and I still have strong memories of Hurricane Sandy and the misery caused by that storm.
Mark Stevens: Everything climate change -- dwindling water supplies, threat of forest fires, impact on agriculture.
S.J. Rozan: Global warming, which encompasses all others
Susan Breen: Climate change is the environmental issue having the most direct effect on me because it is influencing where and how I live.
August 2023
Robert Lopresti: Most summers now we have days when the air is so full of wildfire smoke that it is considered dangerous to be outside.
Jon McGoran: I think climate change is having the greatest impact on most of us, both the direct effects of it that we’re already feeling, the (inadequate) measures we’re taking to combat it, and the fear and anxiety of what is to come, but I also wonder if nanoplastics and microplastics will end up being even more damaging to us.
Janice Law: I very much hope to be gone myself before the warbler migration fails. Living in the Northeast, we have escaped some of the most immediate effects of climate change but it is becoming clear that every civilization, including ours, is dependent on the natural world and on favorable climate conditions. We have been slow to learn this as well as careless about our pollution and exploitation of the natural world.
Sarah M. Chen: I live close to the beach so am aware of the alarming rise in sickened and abandoned marine mammals, like whales and sea lion pups. This is due to a number of things like rising ocean temperatures which increases toxin levels and pups being forced to dive deeper and further for food.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: The warming of the planet, since I live in Las Vegas.
Themed mystery anthologies seem to be growing in popularity. Any thoughts on that trend?
Gary Phillips: Having edited or co-edited a number of themed anthologies, South Central Noir, The Cocaine Chronicles to name two, I think if you can hook the potential reader on the subject matter, they like diving in and out of a given short story. They’re not getting exhausted if you’ve tried to turn the idea into a novel, maybe having to pad the story.
Sarah M. Chen: They're fun and I'm all for it!
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I think the more mystery stories the better.
Susan Breen: Anthologies force writers to get out of their regular routines. It’s a challenge to try something new and my suspicion is that because of that, the stories will have a jolt of energy to them.
Mark Stevens: I think once the whole idea of building short story collections on rock bands took off, well, there's no shortage of material. Waiting for the first collection based on songs by The Velvet Underground.
Karen Harrington: I think readers and writers enjoy seeing how different minds approach the same topic. I know I do.
S.J. Rozan: Themed anthologies make total sense -- they allow readers to watch a wide variety of writers exploring topics they're interested in.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Yes, I love the trend, and I’ll note that I’m editing one of these myself: Native Noir, due out sometime in 2025 from Akashic Books. In that volume, some of the greatest Indigenous authors currently writing agreed to try their hand at a noir story, broadly defined. I hope to see more of the music-based anthologies, and I’m still salty that I didn’t know about the two Steely Dan books. Their songs are perfect, of course, for crime tales, and I’m hoping someone will put together another one (and please contact me if you do!)
Robert Lopresti: I love the fact that you can give twenty authors the same assignment and get twenty wildly different, but all fascinating responses.
Janice Law: I think it is a sensible attempt to create a new home for short fiction, which has been evicted from the newspapers and magazines that used to pay well for short stories.
None of the authors in this book chose to write historical stories. Are there any environmental issues/events in history you think are particularly intriguing?
Gary Phillips: Interesting question. I suppose if I were to give it some thought, how the growth of the Industrial Revolution polluting the skies in England, damaging peoples’ lungs irreparably, comes to mind.
Robert Lopresti: The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted it caught fire 14 times. Publicity from the 1969 blaze lit a fuse (sorry) that started the modern environmental movement.
Sarah M. Chen: I watched a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster and found it horrifying and fascinating. I knew very little about it despite being a kid when it happened.
Susan Breen: I’m a great fan of Charles Dickens and have always been fascinated and appalled by what living conditions were like in London during Victorian times, even for the wealthy. Joseph Bazalgette’s construction of the sewer system has got to be one of the greatest environmental triumphs ever. Now that I think about it, I can come up with various murderous scenarios. Maybe I should have…
Barb Goffman: All of these historical events could be put to good use in a crime story...
Oil spills - Exxon-Valdez, BP, etc.
Toxic chemical dumping - Love Canal
Water contamination - Woburn, MA, and Flint, MI
Nuclear plant meltdown - Three Mile Island, though given recent news, Three Mile Island could also factor into a contemporary story.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I've been fascinated for a long time by the Little Ice Age, as well as the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, causing more than 90,000 people to die, and inspiring one of the coldest (and darkest) summers on record in 1816, which led to lots of literary mayhem (like Frankenstein, Dracula, and some Lord Byron poetry).
S.J. Rozan: 1. The Great Flood of 1927 along the Mississippi. 2. Boston's 1919 Molasses Flood
Mark Stevens: Like, a zillion. My mind goes to all the ways mankind has plumbed nature or depended on nature for resources. Early days of mining. Or drilling for oil. I'm fascinated by the idea that gigantic supertankers are ferrying oil around the globe. When was the first? Who dreamed that up? Seventy-seven million barrels of oil are moving around the globe every day. At what cost? At what risk?
Janice Law: We have a couple of big ones just in our own national history: the near extermination of the buffalo, the loss of the passenger pigeons, and what is proving to be the very foolish attempt to create "fur deserts" in the west. The loss of the beaver had impacted water storage in these dry areas just as the huge reduction in buffalo has had an impact on soil conservation etc on the prairies.
The trouble with these events, and with many environmental issues, is that they don't necessarily fit well with the demands of short mystery fiction, which are surprising like the old classical unities: one time, one place, one action, and that additional requirement that also goes back to the ancient Greeks: a beginning in the middle of the action.
