Introducing Robert Ferrigno

So as we’ve said before, we’re going to be here and there, intermittently posting over the next month, as various changes of the personal and professional variety take hold. To get things started, Robert Ferrigno will man the reins for the rest of the week, filing his dispatches on the road as he tours in support of his new book THE WAKE-UP, which was published only yesterday and which is a very good book to read yourself and to give to all of your best friends.

As it happens, Ferrigno was interviewed earlier this week by the online arm of the National Review, where he talks about his visual method of writing, the genesis of THE WAKE-UP, and how there’s a strong moral sensibility that underlines his work, even if the protagonists aren’t exactly conventionally heroic:

I think the highest morality is by definition, personal, and outside any system. As a character in one of my previous books says, “if you need a rule book to tell you the difference between right and wrong, you’re f*** ed forever.” Consequently, none of my protagonists are cops, and there is little official police presence. This began instinctively and has since become quite deliberate, as a reflection of the moral imperative of my fictional universe. I don’t like characters who are required to do the right thing as part of their job descriptions — so no cops, no firefighters, no crusading attorneys. I prefer the individual who is confronted with a moral choice and, out of his own free will, does the right thing. The fact that the consequences of such action are that things are frequently made worse is part of the moral conundrum. (The Wake-Up revolves around an innocent good deed that has terrible consequences, and the “hero” of my last book, Scavenger Hunt, investigates an old crime, a supposedly solved case, and in so doing sets the real killer back killing to cover his tracks) My protagonists, even knowing the risks of moral involvement, always choose to take that risk. The good man is compelled to do good, no matter the consequences. It is the blowback, and how the good man deals with the blowback, that I am most interested in. The hero cleans up his own mess. I take my work very seriously — the dangers of an undergraduate degree in philosophy — but while Nietzsche said he philosophized with a hammer, I prefer a more deft approach, and a funnier one. I spend most of my time at the keyboard laughing at the things my characters say. If the writer isn’t having fun, the reader isn’t going to get a satisfying ride, and that’s my true intention.

It sort of harkens back to my earlier post today about crime fiction and social commentary; I don’t like to be hit over the head with issues, and I certainly don’t like to have moral questions telegraphed overmuch. Any questioning or commentary has to flow from character, story and situation, and at least in those of Ferrigno’s books I’ve read to date (his three most recent) the balance is maintained almost perfectly.

See you in the backblogs, and I’ll be back with the insanely massive weekend update Sunday morning.