Mick Hardin has left the army after spending 20 years in the criminal investigation team. He wants to go to Europe for a while, but first he returns to his small town in Kentucky to visit his sister, Linda, who has recently been the county sheriff.
As usually happens when a detective in a novel retires or goes on vacation, his surroundings begin to fill with corpses and Mick is forced to return to investigate. The law of the hills (Sajalín Editores/translation by Javier Lucini) is the third installment of the adventures of Hardin, the investigator created by novelist Chris Offutt, who has passed through BCNegra.
Offutt, who is delighted with this first trip to Spain, stops for a moment to talk with La Vanguardia about literature, fictional murders, his longed-for Kentucky and the entertaining The Law of the Hills.
When did you start writing?
I wrote my first story when I was seven years old. It wasn’t very good. Or maybe yes, for a child of that age. He had it all: good guys, bad guys, a car chase and a happy ending.
I would have already read something to start writing so young…
A lot. I didn’t like being at home, so from a very young age I went to the forest to read the stories of King Arthur, medieval knights, and Robin Hood. Then I discovered Sherlock Holmes and I copied, I wrote homemade stories. At university he gave me poetry. It was to win over girls, but it wasn’t very good. I started writing seriously at age 30 and published my first novel at age 34.
Kentucky is one of the protagonists of The Law of the Hills. How is the life there?
The hills of Kentucky, where I was born, are the most isolated region in the United States. It is a valley that is difficult to access and can only be reached through a very narrow pass. There are no big cities. It is a conglomerate of small towns connected by dirt roads. A place where the way of life and culture cling to the oldest ways of thinking and feeling, where the sense of loyalty and honor are preserved.
Do you still live there?
No. My hometown, which had 400 inhabitants, disappeared. Everything was gone, even the name and zip code. I now live in Mississippi, in the deep south of the United States. It’s about a 12-hour drive from Kentucky, a two-day drive, but it’s not much considering the distances of the country. I live in the countryside.
Nature is also very present in his literature…
It is very important to me. Particularly as a child, because I spent all my time in the forest with my books and it was a luxury because of the great variety of animals, birds, trees and flowers. It was amazing even when it was snowing or raining.
Do you also have an interest in the supernatural?
You say this because there is a moment in the novel when Linda goes to see a woman who has a ghost at home. I don’t know if ghosts exist or not, but it is not wrong to believe in them, in UFOs, in reincarnation or in astrology. I think I believe in all that.
In most crime novels there are hardly credible crimes that occur in placid cities. But yours is very plausible, because in Mick County everyone without exception has guns…
The weapons in the hills are like tools. People have them but they don’t always need them. They use their rifles and pistols for hunting or self-defense. In Kentucky the population is very armed, but there are not many crimes, because everyone knows each other.
That could be a good reason to kill someone…
Yes, it could be a good reason, but there is also closeness and everyone knows that if you have a problem with your neighbor, you have a problem with your entire family. Nobody wants that, so we try to resolve things the right way and get along.
The debate about weapons is open in the United States. What do you think?
There is a movement to ban automatic weapons and AR-15 semi-automatic rifles used in the military and I think it is a good idea. These guns should not be available to 18 year olds. But it is difficult because the United States produces two things, weapons and movies, and there are political interests to keep that going.
Do you have weapons?
I have a rifle from my father, a shotgun from my grandfather and a chainsaw, which I keep in good condition for cutting down trees.
In addition to being a novelist, you are a television series scriptwriter and comic book author. What do you like best?
I prefer to write novels, because they are bigger canvases to paint on and give me more freedom to let my imagination run wild. I love writing and I will do it until I get bored or run out of ideas.
What are your literary references?
For me, literature is like a big river into which smaller rivers flow. I try to create my own influence and for that I read all the time, two books a day. I read classics, detective novels, spy novels and science fiction and I adore William McIlvanney, a Scottish author who wrote in the 70s. Although I prefer spy literature, I know the American canon of the crime genre and I also read everything I can from the European crime writers translated into English.
