Award-winning author Ken Kuhlken's latest California Century novel, The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles, reunites readers with Tom Hickey--the private investigator that the San Francisco Chronicle called "one of detective fiction's most original and intriguing creations."
The novel takes place during the first decade of the 20th century. Young Tom Hickey is taken by his unstable mother to a multiracial Pentecostal church. There, Frank Gaines becomes his protector. Some years later, when Frank is found hung only yards from Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple, and the Los Angeles police and the media attempt to bury the news of the lynching, Tom commences his first criminal investigation.
A gripping mystery with memorable characters, The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles portrays an era and a setting that, perhaps more than any, created the prototype of the modern world.
I chatted with Ken Kuhlken about his latest work and what inspires him.
The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles is the sixth California Century mystery following 2008's The Vagabond Virgins, but the first of the series chronologically. What motivated you to go back to the beginning of the series and write about Tom Hickey's first criminal investigation?
The first book in the series, The Loud Adios, began with setting. I wanted to explore the San Diego and Tijuana border region during World War II. During that book I got deeply involved with Tom Hickey, and before it was finished I knew the story wasn't over, that I needed to know and tell more about Tom. Since then, I've been going back and forth in time, learning more about him.
In the book, you mix fictional and well-known historical characters--provocative personalities such as publisher William Randolph Hearst, his mistress actress Marion Davies, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, bootlegger Jack Dragna, and political boss and fixer Kent Parrot. What was your approach to weaving your fictional story with historical facts?
The story grew as I got acquainted with the characters. First Sister Aimee. My paternal grandmother, Harriet, harbored a deep grudge against Sister Aimee. Harriet was a mean woman. So I always imagined I might side with Sister Aimee.
Now, since Tom Hickey had a mother much like Harriet, I began to imagine him investigating Sister Aimee. I wanted to write about the '20s. So, with not much more than that idea in mind, I went exploring.
When I read about Sister Aimee's disappearance and resurrection, and the fraud charges the DA brought against her, I decided to set the story during the Grand Jury hearing. Then I came across stories about the KKK in Los Angeles and Orange County during that era, after that gang had gotten new life from the film Birth of A Nation, and the idea for the conflict that gets Tom investigating came to me.
And when I learned that in 1926 the two most powerful men in Los Angeles were the rival owners of the Times (Harry Chandler), and the Examiner (William Randolph Hearst), I had to learn more about them. And so on.
While we're on the subject of characters, Raymond Carver once said that you write about characters most authors wouldn't touch. Which characters in The Biggest Liar In Los Angeles would Carver say that about and why?
Milly, Tom Hickey's mother, might be one. She's mighty complicated. Or Sister Aimee, who would be easy to portray as good or bad but trying to make her real and fully human was a chore.
What compelled you to write about 20th-century California's transformation from a latter day promised land into the prototype of the world's future?
My mom's family arrived in California in 1905 and my dad's sometime before that. I've lived other places but always come back to San Diego. And so much changed in the 20th century. We humans became capable of making ourselves extinct, addicted to technology, far more skeptical, secular and probably self-involved. And California propagated much of that, through movies and other media. So the history of 20th century California tells a whole lot about the world.
In The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles, Tom Hickey works to expose a city government that is in cahoots with media giants more dedicated to power and profit than to truth. What other historical-turned-modern themes are explored in the book?
The 1926 decision about where to put the new Los Angeles train depot was, in my view, one of the most crucial happenings in history. Here's a brief version. The spring election featured a sort of referendum about where to construct the new train station. The Union Pacific railroad wanted to build it on the existing site, because they owned rights of way from there that would've allowed them to send out rail lines all over Southern California. If the existing site had been approved for the new station, L.A. might've become a model for cities where folks could get around without cars. But Harry Chandler had another idea. He wanted the new station to be on a site near the old plaza, most likely because some conglomerate he belonged to owned property around there.
And his rival, Hearst, didn't object very firmly, perhaps because Hearst and the Union Pacific were dedicated foes. So Chandler's Times lobbied all out for the plaza site. Harry got his way, and L.A. became the model for a world dependent upon cars.
On your blog, Writing and the Spirit, you note that most readers don't want to learn new ways of thinking and don't buy books that will challenge their beliefs. What issues do you tackle in your work that may cause readers to consider a different perspective?
Take Sister Aimee. She has millions of followers, through her crusades and radio broadcasts. She's the most newsworthy figure in the country. Then she disappears and appears a couple months later claiming she's been kidnapped. Her followers trust her implicitly. Skeptics contend she ran off with a man. The question, to me, is how does the truth about her disappearance relate to the value of the message she preaches and her honesty in preaching it? Everybody I've spoken to about her either believes she was a saint or a swindler. I don't think real answers are that easy.
John Irving was your first teacher at the University of Iowa. He claimed that writers' stories should be their passion and avocation. As a writing professor yourself, you say that the craft of writing can be readily learned. Passion, imagination, and the openness to inspiration, not so readily. How have you kept yourself open to inspiration and where have you found it?
Aside from the blog, I have a new book called Writing and the Spirit that answers your question as best I can. Some titles of the reflections in it are Get Real, Love Your Work, Get Free, Pursue Beauty, Banish Ambition, Get Humble, Find Out Who You Are, Get Courageous, and Listen. I try to do those things.
Ken Kuhlken's novel Midheaven, was a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first novel. The Tom Hickey California Century novels include The Loud Adios (Private Eye Writers of America Best First Mystery Novel, 1989), The Venus Deal, The Angel Gang, The Do-Re-Mi (finalist for the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel), The Vagabond Virgins, and The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles. His stories have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Visit Ken Kuhlken online at www.kenkuhlken.net.
Tracy March is a recovering pharmaceutical sales executive and award-winning writer. Her novels draw from her experiences and encounters in the medical field and her love/hate relationship with politics. They feature characters who face ethical dilemmas in unethical times, and powerful elitists willing to kill to keep their secrets. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband who works for NASA.
