Steve Hamilton’s first novel, A Cold Day In Paradise, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author and became a USA Today Bestseller.  He’s either won or been nominated for every other major award in the mystery business since then, both in America and in the UK, and his books are now translated into twelve languages.

is ninth novel, The Lock Artist, hits the shelves in January, 2010. 

Okay, first question.  Let’s get it out of the way right now.  Why isn’t this an Alex McKnight book?

Well, here’s the thing.  I did take a break from the McKnight series with Night Work in 2008, so going back to the series would have been the sane and rational thing to do.  But somehow, I just had this feeling that I had to do something else.  After eight books, each one doing a little bit better…  As if now I’m standing at a roulette table and I have this pile of chips…  I don’t know, I just felt like I had to put them all back on the table.  For once in my life, do something completely and utterly insane.       

That sounds a little scary.  Did you ever have doubts that the book would come together? 

I did, yes.  It took me a lot longer than I thought it would, and the book itself ended up being bigger than anything I’d ever done before, with a split timeline that I never would have attempted before this.  I eventually starting saying to myself, this book is either going to be a real breakthrough for you, or else it’s going to kill you. 

Well, you’re still here.  So tell us about the book.  We know it’s called The Lock Artist and that the main character is a young man named Michael.  And there’s something a little different about him…

Yeah, just a little different.  He doesn’t speak.

Your longest book yet, and the main character doesn’t say anything.  You really are crazy, aren’t you?

Maybe.  But that’s just the way it came out.  I started with this idea of a young kid, like seventeen, eighteen years old.  Something horrible had happened to him when he was eight years old, bad enough that he gets called the Miracle Boy in the papers.  Now it’s ten years later and he finds out he has this talent with locks.  He’s a natural at opening combination locks, or at using lock picks to open key locks.  It’s kind of an unforgivable talent, though, as you might imagine.  And when the wrong people find out about it, well…  Let’s just say they have their own ideas about how useful that talent can be.

So did you spend a lot of times with locks yourself, as research for this book?

I did, yes.  Locks have always fascinated me.  They’re the ultimate puzzle.  But for this book I got to really learn a lot more about them, and the highlight was working with Dave McOmie, who might be the best safecracker in the world right now.

A safecracker?  So is he-

Behind bars?  No.  He’s totally above board, and on the right side of the law.  One of the first things I learned from him is that it’s very, very hard to be a great criminal safecracker.  Because if you think about it, a criminal doesn’t get to practice very much.  At least, not on a variety of different safes.  But because it’s his legitimate job, Dave gets to travel all over the world, opening up different safes every day.  He’s actually incredibly busy.

That sounds great.  But apparently, Michael does find himself on the wrong side of the law?

He does, yes.  But not because he wants to.  You see, with all of this lock stuff in the book, I hope people don’t think it’s all about heists and capers and guys in black masks trying to steal the big diamond.  Michael wants nothing to do with this world, but there’s this girl named Amelia.  She’s an artist, and as it happens, that’s the one talent Michael has, aside from the lockpicking and the safecracking.  He can draw.  And that becomes the only good way to communicate with her.  In fact, they actually end up drawing comic book pages for each other.  Like they’re living in this alternate world where Michael can actually talk to her.  It’s an unlikely romance, but for Michael it means everything.  It’s the only person he’s ever really connected with since that thing happened to him so long ago.  But because of these things that Michael gets drawn into, through Amelia’s father…  Well, eventually he has to make a choice about staying with her or leaving.  And leaving is really the only way to save her.  So he ends up living on the run for a few months, and he eventually hooks up with this really crazy group of criminals out in Los Angeles.

This book really moves around a lot, eh?

Yeah, it all starts in Michigan, where Michael grows up.  From there, he ends up in New York, California…  All over the place.  All the while, he’s just trying to get by, and to find some way to get out of this world he’s trapped in, and to maybe even get back to Amelia somehow.  When the chance finally comes, even though it’s a huge gamble, he has to take it.

Well, it sounds like you took a big gamble yourself, just writing this book when it would have been a lot easier heading back to the series.  Is the book being well-received so far?

It is, yes.  It makes me feel good, like maybe it was worth going through everything I had to go through to get here.

And as for the next book?  Are you finally going back?

Absolutely.  I’m into it now, and it’s great to be back in the Upper Peninsula – in Paradise – to see what Alex McKnight will be up to next. 

By the time that books comes out, it will have been long time between books in the series.  Do you think people will be waiting to read it?

Well, I hope so.  I hear from readers literally every day, and I know how lucky I am.  I just hope they’ll give this new book a chance, and then that they’ll be there when Alex finally comes back!