For his new novel, The Seminarian, Hart Hanson started with a character rather than an incident.
The former executive producer of the TV series Bones wanted to create a different kind of L.A. private investigator, which is easier said than done, considering the tradition dates back to Phillip Marlowe in the 40s all the way to Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and a couple dozen others in between – but Hanson understood that what draws readers into a crime novel is the exploration of its hero’s emotional life as much as the crime.
“What’s his job?” Hanson asks. “What’s his backstory?”
“I had a couple ideas,” he says. “Oppositional disorder and a guy who’s a lapsed Catholic. A guy who gave up on Catholicism.”
Meet Xavier Priestly – or Priest, as he’s known to an eclectic collection of Venice Beach irregulars, law enforcement types, pimps and rivals he comes across in The Seminarian, which Hanson will talk about in an early-morning Wordfest event Friday at the Memorial Park Library (full disclosure: I’m interviewing him).
The coffee talk literary nosh will be the back end of a back-to-backer for Hanson, a happy grandpa who grew up in Vancouver Island, studied at the University of Toronto and UBC, had stints at CBC (story editing and writing for The Beachcombers), North of 60, the award-winning Traders, in addition to writing various episodes of shows such as Outer Limits, The Road to Avonlea, Stargate, Judging Amy, Joan of Arcadia, The Finder (which he created), and many others.
Before he gets to talking about The Seminarian, on Thursday night Hanson will be the one doing the interviewing when he sits down with Kathy Reichs, to talk about her latest Bones novel – and maybe share a few stories about turning a bunch of them into a beloved, long-running television series.
While pop culture is full of stories of friction-filled artistic collaborations, Hanson says he and Reichs are pretty chill.
“Kathy and I cross paths quite often,” he says. “We became super-friendly. It was a super pleasant working environment on Bones. I would say ‘joyous’, but it’s somewhere below joyous, and above pleasant – what’s the word?
“After all, we were all grinding away making the show most days, so it’s kind of hard to say ‘joyous’,” he adds.
Strong women
One thing that jumps out about The Seminarian is that Priest is surrounded by a supporting – and sometimes not-so-supportive – cast of strong women.
There’s his sidekick Dusty Queen, a stuntwoman who moonlights as the muscle for a variety of sex workers and Priest, whose missing person investigation takes a turn when a mystery woman in a blue wig tries to kill him.
Priest’s lawyer is a Black woman named Baz, and there’s a pimp called Paris, in addition to the blue-wigged hit woman, who is also a reputable sculptor.
“Most of the people who have sway over Priest’s life are women,” he says. “Dusty, Baz, Giselle, Paris.
“In my own life, my bosses were women who were very strong,” he adds, “so I’ve always had women around (telling me what to do.)
“My toughest boss ever now runs Disney.”
A lot of The Seminarian is told through dialogues between Priest and Dusty, which gives the novel a lot of bounce. Reading it is like eavesdropping on two funny people sitting in the seat behind you on the bus.
For every fan of the dialogue-filled novels of Carl Hiaasen or Janet Evanovich or the movies of Diabolo Cody (Juno), you can add the Venice Beach of Priest and Dusty — and in fact, a lot of the characters in The Seminarian spring from the people Hanson sees hanging out on one of the world’s weirdest beaches.
“Maybe part of the inspiration (behind the character of Dusty) was the stuntwoman who kept showing up on Venice Beach practicing her swordfighting and other stunts,” he says.
“You have to know the tropes of your genre and with detectives,” Hanson says. “There’s either the solitary detective or someone with a sidekick and since I come from TV, I’m just more comfortable with a sidekick.
“When’s it’s the solitary detective, you can read their thoughts, and when it’s a sidekick, you can explore the story through dialogue,” he says. “I’m more comfortable writing dialogue.”
Soul-searching
And if there’s plenty of whodunnit to unravel in The Seminarian, there’s also a whole lot of soul-searching being undertaken by Priest, whose solitary life gets thrown into emotional chaos one day when Dusty returns from a road trip with a completely unanticipated bit of news that throws Priest into a whole other suspense story.
In a way, The Seminarian feels more like life than a crime thriller, the way reality keeps butting in and diverting Priest’s sleuth focus to more personal issues.
Was that always the plan, Hanson is asked, or does he start out with a plan – like most of us – and then when the plan goes off the rails, spends a lot time trying to catch up?
“I always outline a book,” Hanson says. “It gets complicated. I start out optimistically thinking I’ve got the whole story, but then in one scene, Dusty brings back a boy and I realize I gotta decide, is this Priest’s kid or isn’t it his kid?
“It changed the whole original reason for Blue Wig trying to kill Priest,” he says. “I can’t even remember who originally hired Blue Wig.”
Rebooting Bones?
There’s a lot of shows getting reboots these days. What about Bones?
“A lot of the writers who worked on Bones went on to run their own shows and became super-successful,” he says.
“Lots of people ask when are we gonna do a reunion or a movie? I don’t know. I suppose it could happen, but you know, ” he adds, “people have lives.”
Hart Hanson in conversation with Kathy Reichs, Thursday Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m. and Friday morning, 9 a.m. with Stephen Hunt. For more information, go here.