Part of the interview:
Read the entire interview.Aside from seven Nick Hoffmann mysteries, you’ve authored fiction and non-fiction, and your “stories and essays are on university syllabi around the U.S. and in Canada; [your] fiction has been analyzed in books, scholarly journals and at scholarly conferences, including MLA.” Do you have a work that you consider your best? Or do you have an “I don’t love one child more than another” philosophy?
Because I write so many different kinds of things, I have lots of favorites. I think the new mystery,Hot Rocks, has the best plot. I think the story “The Tanteh” in my collection Secret Anniversaries of the Heart is my best story. I’ve done hundreds of reviews, and I know the one I did of an Alan Furst book, a very long one, for Boston Review, was my best. Then there’s the literary historical novel I recently finished that really still blows me away — I never expected to work in that genre, but when the idea hit me last April, it wouldn’t let me go. I’ve never written anything this complex, and it’s definitely the strongest novel I’ve done.
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--Marshal Zeringue