Author R&R with Sam Wiebe

 

Growing up in Vancouver, Canadian author Sam Wiebe read his parents' dog-eared copies of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. But it wasn't until the end of grad school that he decided to try his hand at writing in the genre, hammering away at it until he came up with his first novel, Last of the Independents. That novel wound up winning the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and an Arthur Ellis Award, and was also a Shamus award finalist. It also prompted a second novel and a stint as the Vancouver Public Library's writer-in-residence.

His latest novel continues the adventures of ex-cop Dave Wakeland, who is a talented private investigator with next to zero business sense and navigates by a moral compass stubbornly jammed at true north. Invisible Dead finds him with a fancy new office and a corporate-minded partner, but he's still drawn to difficult cases such as a terminally ill woman who hires him to discover the whereabouts of her adopted child who disappeared as an adult more than a decade earlier. It all seems run of the mill until the case takes him into Vancouver's terrifying criminal underworld—all to find someone the rest of the world seems happy enough to forget.

Sam stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about planning and writing his new book:

 

Invisible Dead takes place in Vancouver, in the world of survival sex work. Private detective Dave Wakeland investigates the disappearance of Chelsea Loam, a troubled woman with a history of addiction. The novel takes Wakeland from prisons to the streets to government offices, encountering professional criminals, captains of industry, and other dangerous people.

 

I’ve lived in and around Vancouver my entire life. I know aspects of the city pretty well. Others were entirely foreign to me, which necessitated reading books and reports—and then interviewing people to find out what didn’t get written down.

 

(Photo credit Mel Yap)

 

The novel is influenced by events in the city’s history, specifically its neglect of missing women, many of whom are indigenous. I wrote the first draft of the novel during the Oppal Commission hearings, a judicial probe into the city’s failures in regards to properly reporting missing women, and its lack of efficiency in catching and prosecuting the people responsible. Besides watching the hearings, I’d pay attention to the protests and the criticism of the process.

 

While the hearings were going on, I’d talk to friends who are involved in the affected communities, as well as journalists and documentarians. What struck me from those conversations was how much wasn’t in the hearings—the voices of victims and family members were often marginalized, while the official narrative was shaped by, well, officials.

 

The fact is, the city has never been forced to deal with its treatment of missing women. To do so would mean coming to grips with its history of colonialism, racism, poverty, and addiction. Add to that the gentrification which has rapidly made Downtown Vancouver uninhabitable to all but the very wealthy, and you have a perfect storm of neglect.

 

I wanted the novel to speak to that systemic violence. I didn’t want to write a serial killer story, or rely on the cliches usually employed to describe those in the sex trade . Most of all, I didn’t want to write a protagonist who was somehow above or removed from the problem. Wakeland, like everyone else, has to struggle with his own complicity.

 

(Photo credit Mel Yap)

 

Reading trial and interview transcripts, visiting prisons, and interviewing police officers, lawyers, and journalists, were all part of the research process. I visited the site of some of the atrocities, now turned into a quiet suburban housing development.

 

Still, it was talking with people involved in the community which gave the novel focus. Discussions about serial killers are usually framed around finding the (male) killer, often trivializing the (female) victims. I wanted to start the narrative with Wakeland visiting a killer in prison, a scene familiar to crime fiction readers.  From there, the story heads in a different direction. 

 

Above all, I wanted the story to be Chelsea’s, driven and informed by her, so that Wakeland’s investigation becomes her chance to speak, if only through her silence.

 

 Invisible Dead was released this week and is available via all major bookstores. You can learn more about Sam and his books via his website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.