"...YOU'LL SOMETIMES FIND YOURSELF CROSSING THOSE "BOUNDARIES" AND IT'S PERFECTLY OKAY...":THE HONORABLE ASSASSIN'S STEVE HAMILTON

Steve Hamilton's The Honorable Assassin is the third book to feature Nick Mason, an ex con who made a deal for early release, to learn that being a killer for a criminal kingpin. In the last book, Exit Strategy, he got

out of that deal to land as a killer for a shadowy organization. When a hit on the terrorist backer The Crocodile gets botched, he has to hunt him down on his own to save his family. After him is Sauvage, an Interpol agent with his own agenda for The Crocodile. Steve was kind enough to talk about the book and maintaining the series.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: Your Alex McKnight books are more grounded PI mysteries. Does the change in subgenre when you go to Nick Mason which gets a little more heightened with each book?

STEVE HAMILTON: As an ex-cop who always does the right thing (even though it means he’s probably going to get his ass kicked again), Alex McKnight is easy to root for.  Even Michael, the young safecracker in The Lock Artist, is easy to root for because he never chooses a life in crime.  Nick Mason, on the other hand, is a straight-up criminal.  It’s the life he chose growing up on the South Side of Chicago.  These books definitely have a harder edge and a higher level of action and pure suspense – but Mason has an essential humanity, along with a strict code of ethics, so I’m gratified whenever I hear readers say they’re still rooting for him. 

S.M.: Sauvage is a wonderful antagonist/possible ally for Nick. How did you construct him?

S.H.: I wanted someone who was essentially a mirror image of Mason.  Their individual motives for hunting down this international terrorist known as the Crocodile both go back to family – in Mason case, to protect his ex-wife and daughter on the other side of the world, and in Sauvage’s case, to avenge the death of his own wife and son.  And because Sauvage works for Interpol, he does not have all of the powers of a local law enforcement officer, so in a way Mason and Sauvage are both working with handicaps.

S.M.. How did you choose Jakarta for the setting?

S.H.: I wanted the most far-flung place possible to send Nick Mason, the Southsider from Chicago.  It’s the place where he would feel the most lost and disoriented.  (And yet there’s one moment when he goes from Indonesia to Singapore and he feels a strange sense of familiarity – because it’s sort of like going from the South Side of Chicago to the North Side.  It was an unexpected moment where he didn’t feel so far from home.)

S.M.: The first word that came to my mind when describing this book was "cinematic". Were you influenced by any movies or filmmakers as you were novelists?

S.H.: It’s the first book I’ve done that felt “international,” so naturally I couldn’t help thinking about James Bond a little bit.  I even had Nick make that connection in his own mind at one point – with the key difference being that Bond was a willing spy and not forced to do these things like Nick. 

S.M.: It seems with each Nick Mason book, you slide into a different subgenre, Is that plan with the series?

S.H.: It’s never a conscious plan, no.  I did the same thing with the Alex McKnight series, especially when a book like Blood Is the Sky turned out feeling like an outdoor adventure story.  Or even the standalone The Lock Artist, which was written as a crime story but was really a coming-of-age story.  (It was even recognized as a crossover to the Young Adult market.)  If you follow the story where it wants to go, you’ll sometimes find yourself crossing those “boundaries” and that’s perfectly okay!    

S.M.: If you couldn't write, what other art form would you want to develop?

S,H,: Wow, I’ve got very little talent at drawing or any other visual art.  Same with music.  I think I’d be a lost soul if I couldn’t write!