Monday, August 12, 2013
Please Welcome Mystery Author Anthony Bidulka
with Anthony Bidulka
We are delighted to welcome mystery author Anthony Bidulka to Omnimystery News.
Anthony’s new book introduces disaster recovery agent and adventurer Adam Saint in When the Saints Go Marching In (Insomniac Press; April 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats).
As the author of the long-running Russell Quant mystery series, we asked Anthony why he chose to create a new series character; his guest post today is titled “Anthony Bidulka on Making a Change”.
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For the first dozen years of my career as a full-time writer I spent all of my time writing a mystery series featuring the first and only Irish/Ukrainian, ex-farm boy, ex-cop, gay, world-traveling, wine-swilling, wise-cracking, Canadian prairie PI being written about today. The Russell Quant mystery series was optioned for film/TV projects that never worked out and nominated for several awards and even won one. The other thing you need to know about me is that prior to becoming a writer I have at various times in my life been a farmer, shoe salesperson, mine worker, teacher, bartender and an accountant. So you might say that every so often I like to change things up.
Photo provided courtesy of
Hogarth Photography
It was time.
But how?
Horrible things happen in the world. Every day somewhere in the world there are disasters. Floods. Plane crashes. Explosions. Typhoons. Military insurgences. Disease outbreaks. Fires. Train derailments. What happens next? What happens to the people who find themselves in the middle of one of these terrible events? There are countless possible complicating factors. Geographical. Political. Environmental. Safety issues. Weather issues. Language and communication barriers. Transportation. Time restraints. Dealing with local and international officials. Dealing with death and dying away from home. Dealing with relatives and other interested parties. Red tape and danger are often synonymous with these kinds of situations. There is nothing easy or simple about disaster.
These were the ideas swirling through my head as I considered writing about someone other than my prairie PI. Above all, once again I wanted to break new ground, write about something new, introduce a character we hadn’t seen before in crime fiction.
Enter Adam Saint.
Adam Saint is a Disaster Recovery Agent. One of the best. He makes it his business to understand the political, cultural, economic climate of every locale, every country he is called into. He speaks several languages. He’s familiar with countless nationalities and their traditions, customs, societal norms, most of them contrary to his own. He knows the world and how it works. When disaster happens, he runs toward it, not away from it. He puts himself in danger in order to deliver others from it. On the worst day of your life, if you’re in trouble, he will get you through it.
Disaster recovery agents have to be tough as nails. They need to develop nerves of steel with emotional detachment to match. They expect to be in uncomfortable situations or danger every day. And for this they are very well compensated. So when Adam Saint is off-case, he indulges in the luxuries of life. Because he knows better than most how fleeting the good life can be.
Car. High rise apartment filled with designer furniture. Expensive clothing, watches, shoes. Exotic travel. Fine foods and wine. Saint has it all. Except one thing. Love. His marriage is failing. His son doesn’t know him. He hasn’t been home to visit his family since his mother’s death several years ago.
Adam Saint loves his job. He loves being the best. He even loves his luxurious lifestyle. He’s a tough, adventurous guy who enjoys a life of working hard and playing hard. The personal relationship side of things isn’t going so well, but he lets it slide. Easy to do when life is hectic. Until it slaps you upside the head in a way you never expected.
That’s where the first Adam Saint book, When The Saints Go Marching In, swerves wildly away from a typical suspense/thriller novel. I wanted to do something different than write a car chase/explosion/ gun battle on every page. I wanted to investigate how a man like Adam Saint deals with the worst personal news anyone can get in life … and still manage a few car chases, explosions and gun battles along the way.
This is the first book in the series. I’m spending this summer writing the second. I’d love you to join me on the adventures of Adam Saint, disaster recovery agent.
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Anthony Bidulka is best known for his long-running mystery series featuring Russell Quant, a multi-award nominee including for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award, ReLit Award, Lambda Literary Award and Saskatchewan Book Award. Flight of Aquavit was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for Best Men’s Mystery.
Anthony has toured extensively and spoken at conferences and literary events throughout Canada and the United States and is a great believer in community involvement. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada and loves to travel the world and throw a good party.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at AnthonyBidulka.com or find him on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
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When the Saints Go Marching In
Anthony Bidulka
An Adam Saint Novel
Your best friend is killed. Your wife is leaving you. Your son hates you.
Then comes the bad news.
A Sukhoi Superjet carrying a Very Important Person, plunges from the sky over subarctic Russia. A Canadian Disaster Recovery Agent inspecting the crash site is murdered. CDRA sends in their best to investigate.
Man-of-the-world adventurer Adam Saint lives a fast-paced, often dangerous, always exciting life. When a passenger train crashes in Detroit, terrorists blow up a public building in Belfast, a cyclone ravages Bangladesh, or Angola descends into civil war, if Canadians are there, so is the CDRA. And so is Adam Saint.
Saint’s Russian investigation is derailed when he receives devastating personal news. Suddenly, the penultimate man of action is thrown into emotional and physical turmoil that tests his moral fortitude. Finding himself thrust into a fight for his life, Saint undertakes a thrilling journey of danger and deceit from the bucolic prairies of Saskatchewan and high rise hijinks of corporate Toronto, through London’s outer boroughs, to steamy Southeast Asia and Sin City itself, Las Vegas. Failure is not an option. Until it is.