Kirk Russell

Kirk Russell is the author of four novels about California Department of Fish and Game warden John Marquez. A Killing in China Basin, his new novel, introduces San Francisco homicide inspector Ben Raveneau.

From Russell's Q & A with Lenny Picker for Publishers Weekly:

Q: You succeeded in breaking new ground with your Marquez books. How do you think the Raveneau series will distinguish itself?

A: I don't know that it will. The big city detective has been written a thousand times and sometimes very, very well. I wanted to try to make a homicide inspector who fits the times and who might be real, and if he was, you'd want to know him. And I want to write San Francisco. I lived around it most of my life. There's this first book, and a second next winter, and between the two that's enough, I think, to tell if Raveneau will catch on. I'm still getting a feel for the character.

Q: What about San Francisco as a setting appeals to you?

A: The city's presence, how it sits nearly surrounded by water at the end of a peninsula, bridges reaching toward it, and the feel that it is a place you go to, not from. There's the light and the way it changes and a natural moodiness and brilliance. As a city, it's international in a way that you can't sell with a motivated Chamber of Commerce. It's a tolerant city, still carrying the gold rush fever, a place people arrive at to start over or start a new company, or in the case of crime fiction become someone else. And a homicide inspector in San Francisco can...[read on]

Visit Kirk Russell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue