Michael Wiley: Justice in the Sunshine State

INGRID THOFT

Serving on a panel at a conference is always a crap shoot.  Sometimes, the panel gods work in your favor, and you end up sitting next to a true gem, and other times, you'll be just fine if your future interactions are a wave across a crowded hotel lobby.

Luckily, my experience with today's guest falls into the first category.  Michael Wiley and I were on an Sunday 8:30 a.m. panel together at the Long Beach Bouchercon (correct me if I'm wrong, Michael!) and seeing him has been a Bouchercon highlight ever since.  This year, Michael was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel for his latest, MONUMENT ROAD.  Alas, he didn't win, but this book should definitely be on your TBR list. 

Set in present day Florida, MONUMENT ROAD introduces readers to Franky Dast, an investigator like no other.  Released from prison after being wrongly convicted of a heinous crime, Franky goes to work for the Innocence Project-like organization that won his freedom.  Here's the scoop from Michael.

INGRID THOFT: Franky is an intriguing character because he is so complex; he inspired such mixed emotions!  I felt sympathetic and outraged that he’d been wrongly imprisoned, but then, I’d cringe at his poor choices!  How did Franky Dast come to be?

MICHAEL WILEY: When I was a kid, I was much more disturbed on the few times when my parents or teachers accused me of doing something I didn’t do than the times when they punished me for doing something I did. The failure of adults to see what I imagined must be obvious innocence shocked and shook me. As an adult myself, I’m as interested in moral ambiguity and think I understand it as well as the next crime writer—but false accusations still horrify me. For a long time, I wanted to write a book about a character whose life has been ripped apart by such an accusation and who is struggling to put that life back together, but I couldn’t find the right story.

With all the recent news about false convictions and exonerations, I found the story. Men and women who’ve fought for years or decades against incredible odds—from behind bars, against a criminal justice system designed to keep them there—to convince others of their innocence are some of the most complex real-life heroes I know of. Men and women who run innocence projects and justice initiatives—Bryan Stevenson, Barry Scheck, others—are equally complex sidekicks and often heroes themselves. I model Franky Dast on a number of real exonerated death row inmates. When he gets out of prison, he joins a justice initiative as an investigator.

What looks like a poor choice to you or me may look like a reasonable or at least acceptable one to him. He has lost everything except his life—which he almost lost—and he’s starting from the very bottom, unable to go lower. So he takes risks, sometimes very dangerous ones. The ability to take them is all he has, his only freedom.

By the way, to my thinking, the biggest risk he takes in Monument Road is one most of us take. Through the course of the book, he allows himself to fall in love.


IPT: That's a very good point, and I also love the idea of taking risks being his only freedom.  I was definitely looking at Franky through my lens of experience ("make good choices!") when, of course, his experience has taught him there are no good choices.  You've got me thinking long after I finished the book, Michael!

When reading it, I often felt like I needed to cool off from the Florida heat and humidity because of the terrific sense of place you established.  Did you set out to make the setting a character of sorts?  And/or was the setting critical to the story in your estimation?

MW: I love powerful settings and think they’re just as critical to a story as characters are. In Toni Morrison’s SONG OF SOLOMON, Guitar Bains says, “I do believe my whole life’s geography.” I’ve lived in the Midwest (Chicago), the Northeast (New York), and the Deep South (Jacksonville), and I’ve found Guitar’s words to be true to my life. I’ve also found that other writers’ fictional settings thoroughly color my reading experiences and even color my experiences of real places when I visit them. When I started setting books around the Florida-Georgia border, I worked hard to catch the colors—and the sounds, smells, and humidity—of this place. If the setting makes readers want to turn on the AC, I’m a happy man.

IPT: In addition to writing, you teach literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.  Can you name a book or two that you love to teach and why?

MW: The one I’ve just mentioned is among them. To me, SONG OF SOLOMON is nearly the perfect novel. The characters are immensely complex, conflicted, and lovable (even Guitar Bains, who is a psychotic killer). The settings—north, south, in between—are rich and evocative. The plot is gripping. The language is narrative and lyrical. The book is also great crime fiction. All these characteristics—including the part about crime fiction—are also present in many of the other books I love to teach, ranging from HAMLET to Marlon James’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS to James Ellroy’s THE BLACK DAHLIA.

IPT: What has surprised you most about being a published author?

MW: In 2006, when I sold my first book (THE LAST STRIPTEASE, to St. Martin’s Press), I was surprised by the warmth and friendliness of the writing community. That fall, I went to my first crime-writing convention—Bouchercon, in Madison, WI—and writers I’d known only as a fan and admirer took me under their noir-ish wings. The crime-writing community does a better job of passing it around and passing it forward than any other group I’ve met.

IPT: Is there a wannabe book lurking in the back of your brain, something you would write if you didn’t have to consider agents, editors, and fans?  A romance?  Non-fiction?  Cookbook?

MW: I love how successfully crime fiction cross-pollinates with other writing genres: dystopian, fantasy, historical, horror, literary, romance, true crime, western, etc. I know of a basket-load of mysteries that include recipes. So I don’t feel very constrained. In BLACK HAMMOCK, I rewrote one of the oldest crime stories—about Electra and Orestes reclaiming their house from the man who killed their father—setting it on a twenty-first century barrier island off the coast of Florida. Not many people read that one, though, so maybe I should have considered agents, editors, and fans more closely.

I'm off to download a copy of SONG OF SOLOMON, which I'm embarrassed to say I've never read!  Michael will be here today to answer your questions, and he's giving away a copy of MONUMENT ROAD to one lucky reader!  

MONUMENT ROAD
Having spent eight years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, Franky Dast now works as an investigator for the Justice Now Initiative, seeking to help others in the same situation. But when he learns that Bill Higby, the detective whose testimony helped convict him, is facing his own murder charge, Franky is torn. Should he help the man he hates more than any other, the man who remains convinced of Franky’s guilt to this day?

As Franky delves further, he comes to realize that in order to prove Higby’s innocence, he must also prove his own. Unless he finds out what happened that fateful night eight years before, the night 15-year-old Duane Bronson and his 13-year-old brother were murdered, Franky will always be under suspicion, and the real killer will remain free. What really happened that dark, wet night on Monument Road? And is Franky prepared for the shocking truth?


Along with the Franky Dast mysteries, Michael writes the Daniel Turner Thriller series (Blue Avenue, Second Skin, Black Hammock) and the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski Private Detective series (A Bad Night’s Sleep, The Bad Kitty Lounge, Last Striptease). He is a frequent book reviewer and an occasional writer of journalism, critical books, and essays.
Michael grew up in Chicago and lived and worked in the neighborhoods and on the streets where he sets his Kozmarski mysteries. He teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville—the setting of Monument Road and the Daniel Turner stories.