How long did it take you to get published?

I started out in journalism, so I had a sense of accomplishment right off, publishing my travel pieces in newspapers and magazines all over the place. Books are a different animal, but again I went with travel first and had some good early success with walking, hiking, and cycling guides. I wrote eight novels, though, before I got my first one, Time of the Wolf, published.

With the current “Viennese Mystery” series, things were easier. I had a bit of an author platform with several well-received books about Vienna and an agent who is most savvy. First query landed us the book deal.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

Tried and trusted here: you can look a lot further and do a lot worse than E.M Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. Another classic is Percy Lubbock’s The Craft of Fiction. These will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I just love the erudite discussions in both.

What’s a typical writing day?

I get to work about nine in the morning after I drop my son off at school. I try to devote the first hours of the writing day to the current fiction project–currently the fourth book in the Viennese Mystery series. Then some exercise–tennis, if I am lucky–and lunch, followed by more mundane freelance stuff in the afternoon that also helps to pay the bills.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?

Each of the books in the Viennese Mystery series features a famous historical figure of Vienna 1900. Requiem in Vienna focuses on musical Vienna: the composer Gustav Mahler is the target of an assassin and my protagonist, the lawyer and private inquiries man, Karl Werthen, is hired to protect him. The books are a blend of historical whodunit and literary thriller with more than a dash of historical/cultural/food lore thrown in.

Here’s what a Kirkus Reviews critic had to say of the current series installment: “Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber.”

How much research is involved in each of your books?

There are decades of research in the books. Explanation: I started researching Vienna 1900 long ago for my book, Hitler in Vienna. Since then I have continued to read heavily in the period, but for each book I still need to bone up on the historical folks I am featuring. Some writer once said that research was sort of like writing without the creative sweat. I enjoy the research; I probably commit about three months to each before I even begin the plotting. And thank whomever for the Internet–I can even get full editions of Viennese papers of the time online.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character?

Karl Werthen is a successful lawyer and sometimes inquiry agent, an assimilated Jew, and a distinct Viennophile. And I haven’t got a clue to where he comes from, other than a shared love for Vienna. He just appeared full-formed on the first page of The Empty Mirror, the initial in the series. A minor character, he elbowed his way to the forefront by the end of the first draft; the series concept actually had the real-life father of criminology, Hanns Gross, as the protagonist. A crusty old curmudgeon, Gross tugs Werthen away from his safe wills and trusts gig back into criminal law in that first one, to prove the artist Gustav Klimt innocent of murdering his model. But it just worked out so much better to use Werthen as my lead and Gross, the pompous pro, as the sometimes sidekick.

What’s your experience with being translated?

Somewhat odd. For example, my Hitler in Vienna was first published in Germany. I originally queried publishers there in German, and it was bought sight unseen (Hitler, at the time, was a hot topic). When they received my doorstopper of a manuscript in English and realized it needed to be translated, they were none too pleased. But they sucked it up and published anyway.

Then when trying to sell the English-language rights, I had a hell of a time convincing editors in England and the U.S. that no, they would not have to have the book translated. I already had the English original of the manuscript.

What books have influenced you?

As a young man I loved the lyricism of Steinbeck. Lee from East of Eden is still one of my favorite fictional characters. And of course there was Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Then during the almost twenty years I lived in Vienna, I became an avid reader of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British authors. Blame it on the British Council. A wonderful resource in its day with massive armchairs around a humming ceramic stove. Thomas Hardy became my literary hero; I open one of his novels and begin reading his scene-setting on some desolate heath in the south of England, and I get actual chills. The language just works for me. And Conrad. Don’t even get me started on Conrad–and the bugger wrote in a second language! A guilty pleasure also became the works of J.B. Priestley, especially his Good Companions.

Did these books influence my writing? Who knows, but they surely have made my life fuller. Le Carre, of course, pushed me in new ways with dialogue and plot, as did the early fiction works of Paul Theroux (Saint Jack, Picture Palace). I wish I could make my dialogue sparkle and crack they way those guys do. But this catalogue could go on for some time. Basta.

Thanks, Syd. Fascinating insights.

Thanks for the opportunity to chat, Matt.

How long did it take you to get published? Three and a half years.

Would you recommend any books on writing? Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey

What’s a typical writing day? Up early, coffee, feed the dog and hit the laptop for several hours. I take a break during the day then at four o’clock it’s more coffee and back at the laptop. I re-read and revise the morning’s work or often continue a scene working for as long as it takes.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great? Murder in the Latin Quarter takes place in September 1997 set against the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. A woman claiming to be Aimée’s half sister disappears and in trying to find her Aimée discovers the body of a visiting Haitian professor at one of the Grands Ecole’s surrounded by a ritual circle of salt. Her investigation leads to back door politics involving the World Bank, the IMF, human traffikers and personal insight into her own past. Murder in the Latin Quarter gave me a chance to explore and go deep into areas of the Left Bank I’d never known about before. The faded charm of the still intellectual center, the old Roman baths, the quarries under old Roman roads used and renamed today.

How much of what you do is: a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write? b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with? c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time? I’m not sure this is a strict answer but one of the reasons I love reading crime fiction stems from knowing that the framework, ie. an investigation, provides a map to follow in the story. The books I read use this framework in a different, fresh way and provide a resolution. Some form of justice is served. So that’s what I aim for in my books, something we get so little of in real life. Since each of my nine books have Murder in the title, it’s a bit of a given, that it’s a murder investigation. Aimée works in computer security and it’s a challenge for me to involve her with murder in each book and make it plausible. It helps that she’s a licensed PI, has a background in criminal investigations previously, so she’s got the skill set and background. She gave up criminal investigation after her father’s death in a bombing during surveillance. In each book, she’s on a journey – an inner one and solving the crime.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why? Well, one of my favorite beginning lines is: The camel died at noon. From The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett. I mean after that one sentence how can you put that book down.

What’s the best descriptive image in all literature? Something Dostoyevski said about ‘don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me moon glinting on a piece of broken glass.’

Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing? Alan Furst Marguerite Duras when she was alive

Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing? Phillip Kerr knocks me out.

How much research is involved in each of your books? Tons. More than you want to know. But that’s what I love about writing a book set in Paris. I need to know the weather, the politics, what’s on sale in the newspaper that day, the street fashion, the music, the clubs, the new Vespa model, computer technology, what’s in season at the market, everything for that time, that day in Paris in 1997. So it’s semi-historical in a way given that it happened more than ten years ago. But then there’s the older historical research I do in the archives of that quartier, this particular district of Paris; what happened here in the 1700′s, which King built this, the origin of a street name, who built this Metro station, when did this sewer line connect, when did the quarries get sealed over, accounts of life here during the German Occupation, interviews with police, private detectives, the local café owner. It’s endless because I’m always finding a piece of gold, – an overheard conversation, an old newspaper article, a ‘nugget’ at the last minute before I head to the airport that deepens the story, adds another layer or spins in a different plot direction or becomes the seed of the next book.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character? I knew I couldn’t write as a French woman — can’t even tie my scarf properly — but I’d met a female detective in Paris who ran her own agency. Through her I met several other female detectives of all ages who gave me unique insights. Let’s face it, a detective in the traditional mold is a loner, an outsider to society and that’s Aimée. In a way she’s half-American, half-French neither fish nor fowl but being half-French gives her a unique fashion sense. She has elements of my friend, a Parisenne who wear heels even to the Commissariat after her apartment was burgled, the woman you see on the street rushing into a cafe, a contemporary woman living in a vibrant city layered by history. Paris has twenty arrondissements — I’ve got eleven more to go.

What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour? I had a stalker. He attended several book signings in San Francisco where I live. He’d sit in the front row, close his eyes, then at the q+a ask detailed questions about Paris streets and before I could answer pull out his maps and answer the question himself. He’d follow me to the parking lot talking about Paris. Asking me where I stayed and foolishly I told him the street name one time. Lo and behold, he showed up in Paris at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in the Marais the night of my signing. He asked the bookstore owners how to reach me since he’d walked up and down the street and hadn’t ‘seen’ me and acted so weird they almost cancelled the signing. He showed up later in the bookstore with his 80 year old mother, a bag of chocolates and no questions for once! We never could figure that out.