10 Librarians' Questions for William Ryan

By Therese Purcell Nielsen, Abby Sesselberg & Bridget Warren -- Library Journal, 04/08/2010

As Fiction Editor Wilda Williams attests in her 2010 mystery preview—see "The New Noir," publishing in LJ 4/15/10—we're about to witness a Soviet mystery boom. William Ryan's The Holy Thief (Minotaur Books, September) promises to contribute to the fanfare with its tale of a world-weary detective tracking down a young woman's murderer in Stalinst Moscow.

To introduce you to Ryan, we recruited Therese Purcell Nielsen, Abby Sesselberg, and Bridget Warren to grill the debut novelist, librarian-style. In an LJ/BookSmack! exclusive offer, Minotaur is offering librarians through May 5, 2010, free access to an e-galley of The Holy Thief. Click here to partake in this exciting experiment. See also our Russian readalikes.—Heather McCormack

Your book recounts the daily difficulties of Soviet life in the 1930s: communal housing, the rarity of cars, finding a particular brand of cigarettes, etc. However, you’ve also got bars, parties, and flask-carrying good and bad guys. What research did you do on the era? How much vodka did you drink in the name of research? (B.)

I didn’t drink much vodka, but I certainly did a lot of other, less alcoholic research. To start with I read an unhealthy number of memoirs—at one point my wife complained I was spending more time in 1930s Russia than I was in London and, to be honest, she may have had a point. I also scoured the Internet and libraries for photographs from the period and have a whole shelf of Moscow guidebooks and maps, from the 19th century to the present day, which were essential in tracking the changing Moscow cityscape. Most helpful of all probably were more recent academic studies of the period; Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism is a great example of that.

One thing I had to bear in mind was to be a little careful with material from the Soviet period itself, as the USSR was perhaps the first state to attempt to control completely its representation, both internally and externally, so you can’t always take things at face value. At the same time, the propaganda was so consistent and omnipresent that, to an extent, Soviet citizens began to see themselves in the same way.

The main character, Captain Alexei Korolev, seems to have two bibles. As a closet Christian, he has his Holy Bible, and as he lovingly puts together his presentation on Case File Management, his case files and work. Which do you think motivates him more: his sense of faith, which he must deny, or his search for justice, which he may not be able to obtain? (A.)

I think the easiest way to answer this is to say it’s the same bible, to a large extent. I think Korolev is an ordinary man, in extraordinary times, trying to do the right thing, at least when he can. And, even though he sometimes denies it to himself, his sense of justice comes, at least partially, from his very personal relationship with his God. At the same time, I’m not sure Korolev has ever considered his Christianity rationally—it is, as it is with a lot of people, instinctive, almost superstitious. And in Korolev’s case, this is complicated by his commitment to the social and political change that the Bolshevik Revolution promised, but didn’t always deliver, even despite the Soviets’ almost complete destruction of the Orthodox Church. The fact that the Church emerged in the post-Soviet period stronger than ever is, I think, evidence that there were probably a great many people like Korolev.

Onetime living, breathing people—including General Popov, Isaac Babel, and the Starostins—are all integral to the story line. Is it harder to control these real-life characters? Are there certain things you can or cannot do easily with historical figures in the context of historical fiction? (T.)

In some ways, real-life people are easier, as you begin with a firm idea of their personality and how they might fit in with the story. Fictional characters often take a while to put together and, in the process, don’t always come out the way you intended. On the other hand, you know you’ve got a good character when they push back a little when you’re writing, or even take the novel in a different direction then you originally intended, simply because they refuse to do what you thought they would. It may sound a little strange, but when a character starts doing this, writing becomes much easier, even if the plot does tend to bend a bit as a result.

That isn’t to say real-life characters aren’t without their problems. The poet who appears in Babel’s apartment was originally Osip Mandelstam, like Babel a victim of the Terror. Nadezhda Mandelstam, his wife, wrote two memoirs of her life with him, called Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned (in Russian, nadezhda means hope), so I had plenty of material to work with. But there was something about representing Mandelstam fictionally that I felt uncomfortable with, perhaps because of the tragedy of such a sensitive and supremely talented poet being fated to live in Soviet Russia. As it happens, by October 1936, Mandelstam was in internal exile in Voronezh, and a trip to Moscow would have been impossible, so I decided to create a fictional poet instead.

Speaking of Babel, why did you include him? (It seems you’ve read more than your share of his work.) (B.)

I only wish there were more to read, but unfortunately a lot of what he was believed to have written the least ten years of his life was never published, then disappeared into the NKVD’s archives in 1939, when he was arrested, never to reemerge. Anyway, I became fascinated with Babel when I read his Red Cavalry stories about 15 years ago, and at one stage I wanted to adapt them for film, a project that I never got very far with. Then, while I was researching the Red Cavalry project, I discovered that Babel had spent several months in Paris in 1936 for a writer’s conference and that many of his friends and family (he had a wife who lived in Paris) had tried to persuade him not to return to Moscow. I thought that decision would make a very interesting drama and did more research, but eventually put that idea aside as well.

As it turned out, of course, the research into those projects formed the foundations of the research for The Holy Thief, and while Babel didn’t feature in the original outline, somewhere during the writing he slipped in and so, in a way, it all circled back to the beginning.

Describe your day-to-day writing routine, if you have one. Music or quiet? Pen and paper or PC? Office or coffee shop? Morning or evening? (T.)

Every now and then I read about people who blithely toss off 3000 words before lunchtime, and I’m deeply envious. I’m much more erratic and easily distracted. For this reason, I very seldom write in the morning, because inevitably I find something else to do, although usually I’ve managed to find some sort of focus by the afternoon. I’ve never really written other than on a computer, and that’s probably because I’m constantly rewriting the sentence I’ve just finished. So a hand-written page would be indecipherable after only a few minutes.

I’m most productive when I get out of the house. I’m a member of the London Library, a subscription library in St James’ Square that was founded in 1841 and has a wonderful collection of books, plus a pleasingly eccentric cataloguing system that is as old as the library itself. I have a bolt-hole in the stacks, beside an ancient cast-iron radiator with a view over the square, and this is where most of The Holy Thief was written.

I was struck by your cinematic descriptions. What prompted you to write about the balloon village? (B.)

I mentioned before that I look at photographs when I’m researching. They’re a primary, if occasionally unreliable, source when trying to establish what people wore, what buildings looked like at the time, and the host of other tiny details that are essential for creating a fictional reality. Also, from time to time, the photographs suggest directions the novel might take, so, for example, the chapters set at the football stadium were inspired by a 1936 photograph of fans going to a Moscow football game.

When I came across a picture of Red Army soldiers marching an inflatable communal farm across Red Square, as part of a 1930s parade, I decided I had to squeeze it in somewhere. Then, of course, when you have a lot of balloons wandering around a novel, you can’t help wondering what would happen if they got loose, and so, inevitably, they got loose.

You’re a refugee from the practice of law. Why do you think so many recovering lawyers/barristers seek refuge in the literary world? (T.)

Ha—that idea of "recovering lawyers" made me laugh. I can’t speak for anyone else, but certainly there are drafting skills you pick up as a lawyer, and you definitely learn the importance of describing things accurately and precisely. Lawyers spend a lot of their time writing various documents, so perhaps it’s not too surprising that some of them end up writing something a little different.

Are you a big reader of the mystery genre, and if so, have you perceived differences (aside from geography) in mysteries set in different countries? Do British mysteries, for instance, have a different feel and character than American and Swedish works? (A.)

I read quite a lot of thrillers and detective novels, often historically based, particularly when I’m writing. Martin Cruz Smith, Boris Akunin, Olen Steinhauer, David Liss, and Philip Kerr are all writers I really admire for how they control historical settings. I haven’t read much Swedish detective writing, although I’m currently working my way through Henning Mankell’s novels, which are certainly distinctive, and very, very good.

I think you’re right to suggest there are differences between how writers from different countries approach crime novels, although there are always exceptions that undermine any generalisations. One thing I’ve noticed about European writers is that a lot of our principal characters are flawed, in one way or another, and the division between good and evil is often quite blurred. Although, having said that, exactly the same thing could be said about many American crime writers as well.

In researching the novel, did you have the opportunity to travel to Moscow? If so, did you glimpse many traces of the old Soviet empire? Was it what you expected? Was there a strong presence of religion and spirituality the revolution tried to snuff out? (A.)

I’ve been to Moscow a few times, and there are plenty of remnants of the Soviet period still standing. Indeed, the skyline is dominated by the "Seven Sisters," seven small skyscrapers built by Stalin after World War II. The city was continually rebuilt from the 1920s onward, and one of the challenges in researching the book was to work out exactly what the city looked like at the time the novel is set. I have a Moscow guidebook from 1936, which helped, but the Soviets never published detailed maps of the city, and one of the few accurate maps published during the Soviet period was produced for American diplomats in the early 1970s by the CIA. As a result, not only was it difficult to establish what streets looked like in 1936, it was also tricky to find out what they were called. Many streets were renamed in the 1990s, although some still retain their Soviet names—in fact, the most popular street name in Russia remains Sovietskaya—and even during the Soviet period, names were changed when Soviet leaders were purged, or fell out of favour, or came into favour.

As regards the presence of religion, hundreds of churches and cathedrals were demolished during the reconstruction of Moscow. At least some of these have been rebuilt faithfully, for example, Kazan Cathedral in Red Square was destroyed in 1936, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1993, and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was dynamited in 1931, reopened in 2000. And the places of worship that avoided destruction by the Soviets were closed to religious use and assigned new roles, sometimes quite strange ones. I recently returned from a trip to Odessa in the Ukraine, where one church I visited was a planetarium under the Soviets, and another a cinema. Indeed, the Grand Synagogue was an indoor basketball court up until the 1990s.

You anticipate continuing Korolev’s adventures in detection in two future books. Do you know where Korolev is going, or is the story still evolving? (T.)

In the next novel, Korolev is sent to Odessa to investigate a politically sensitive murder, so hence the research trip. Much of the novel takes place on a film set, although the story is inevitably overshadowed by the Ukrainian famines of the period and the growing momentum of the Terror.

I don’t have a firm idea for the third book, but at some stage I’d like to send him abroad—perhaps to New York. I’d love to team him up with a Bogartesque New York gumshoe and see what kind of trouble they could make for themselves.