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Nick Stone
Nick Stone is the author of Mr Clarinet, a blazing, unconventional crime thriller set in Miami and Haiti. Peter Wild spoke to Nick about Haiti, history, writing crime and boxing. Amongst other things.
[Photo: Iain Philpott]
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Peter Wild (PW): You were raised in part in Haiti - I was wondering about what you remember of the country of your childhood ..
Nick Stone (NS): I have very fond memories of the Haiti I grew up in (between 1967 and 1970, and then again between 1973-74), although those were memories captured by a briefly innocent mind.
First of all it was very safe. You could walk everywhere without fear of getting attacked or robbed or worse. And you could walk right up to almost anyone’s house and knock on their front doors. At night I’d hear the sound of vodou drums in the mountains. This was a custom handed down from the days when the island was a slave colony, and one group of slaves would communicate with another via drums, like a very funky Morse Code. The drums were also invaluable during the uprisings of the 1790s, when the rebel groups would communicate with each other via drum messages – or talking drums as they are more commonly known. Port-au-Prince, the capital, was a very vibrant place at night, full of bars and clubs – not that I went to any of them, but I do remember the sight and sound of the nightlife there when I got taken to drive-in movies. There was also a Haitian intelligentsia, exceptionally well-read and highly cultured people who could talk to you about everything from vodou medicine to rocket science.
On the downside, I remember being struck by the filth and poverty that was all around me, the roads being like lunar landscapes, the tap water being different shades brown, temperamental electricity and, everywhere you turned, you saw murals, statues and portraits of Papa Doc Duvalier, a myopic, snow-haired man whose likeness stared not at you but into you. There was also a local police post at the end of the road where my family lived. The cells faced the road and the prisoners used to stick their hands out through the bars. It was very dark inside, but you could just about make out pairs of very frightened eyes looking out at you.
That said, a recent Gallup poll of Haitians in Miami, 95% said they wanted Duvalier’s son – Jean-Claude – aka Baby Doc - back. And many Haitians I met when I was in the Dominican Republic last year said the same thing.
PW: Chantelle, the woman who guides Max Mingus, the narrator of Mr Clarinet, around Haiti, touches upon how the country has changed from when she was a child to how it is 'now'. Did you see that change when you went back to Haiti?
NS: Yes. It was an utter shock. I was expecting the place to be a shambles, but I was totally unprepared for what I found. The place looked like it had been turned upside down, kicked around and trampled into the dirt. It was barely working. 90% unemployment, rabid crime rates, packs of feral kids wherever you turned, mountains of rubbish in the roads, some of it smouldering. Everyone who could afford to lived behind high, barbed-wire topped walls. Everyone had guns, attack dogs and a drinking problem. Heavyweight paranoia trampled lightweight common sense. Everyone talked to the poor with complete suspicion, one finger on the trigger. No one walked anywhere and barely anyone went out at night, or if they did it was in a convoy of ten vehicles with two guns in every car, which were invariably bulletproof. There was also a sprawling lawless slum outside Port-Au-Prince called Cite Soleil (Sun City), a satellite capital if you like, where the ground is literally made of shit (human and animal), the homes of cardboard and corrugated iron, and the people a mixture of criminals repatriated from US jails and those too weak or diseased to crawl off somewhere else to die. Very early on, the reinstated President Aristide realised that the slum’s healthier population would make great enforcers, so he had a couple of roads and even a park built right in the middle of this vista of cardboard and shit, then he gave everyone who wanted one a gun, crack and strict orders to kill anyone who wasn’t loyal to him.
Instead of vodou drums at night I heard gun fire.
You were warned not to go to or hang around in Port-Au-Prince after dark. I drove around the city at night with a Marine contingent a couple of times and it was completely deserted and eerily quiet. And very very dark. All of the nightlife had fled, along with those who could afford it, into the mountains.
The intelligentsia had long split too. What remained was Haiti’s future, its next ruling elite - jaded, Americanised twentysomethings, all of them with Master degrees in Moronics from Miami University, all of them doing the same thing (import-export), none with more than two brain cells to rub together.
That said, it wasn’t all bad. There was fun to be had – and quite a lot of it – but you had to know where to look. Every few weeks a new nightclub would open up, do brisk business and then lose all its custom to a new rival club. The old club would then close down for a few months and reopen under a new name but the same management. The punters would then return, forcing the rival to close … and reopen later on. A lot of husband and wife swapping went on too.
PW: Was it important to you that Mr Clarinet articulated the change in Haiti over the last 30 years?
NS: Hugely important. People know very little about Haiti. It barely features in the news, and you have no idea quite how desperate the situation is there. The place is an ongoing environmental and humanitarian catastrophe crossed with a warzone. And it’s right on America’s doorstep and right in the middle of the comparatively prosperous Caribbean.
PW: Your father the celebrated historian Norman Stone enjoyed the book. How important was that to you?
NS: Very important. I was so worried about what he’d think that I didn’t actually let him see the book until it was in its final, finished, bound, jacketed, barcoded, no-way-back state. Had I shown him anything earlier and he’d hated it, I probably would have gone back to an office job.
PW: I read that the idea for Mr Clarinet started to coalesce on your adult return to Haiti. What was it specifically that lit the spark behind the novel (if it was any one thing in particular)?
NS: It wasn’t strictly one thing. I went out to Haiti for Christmas in 1995 where I was reacquainted with the gun my grandfather had used to shoot an Alsatian which had attacked me when I was three. It was my first memory. The gun was a Model 10 Smith & Wesson six shot revolver, standard issue to US police from the fifties through to the early eighties. I noticed that there were some notches on the handle and guessed that dogs hadn’t been the only things my grandfather had used the gun on. This led me to thinking about how someone would live after they’d killed another human being in legitimate or justifiable circumstances, or maybe after getting away with murder.
Prior to going to Haiti I’d read the story of a young boy from a wealthy Haitian family who’d been kidnapped while waiting for his mother outside a supermarket. She’d gone in to get a couple of things and left him in her car. The kidnappers broke into the car and drove away. At first the family thought the car was the target, but, when the ransom demands came in, it was quite obvious that the boy had been the target all along. At the time this sort of thing was unheard of in Haiti, the poor daring to attack the wealthy, but there are now more kidnappings in Haiti than Baghdad or Columbia combined. Anyone who isn’t dirt poor is fair game.
The two elements then began to draw together. I started writing a book called Mr Clarinet in December 1998, but, other than Max and Solomon’s names, bears no resemblance to the book you have now.
PW: You mention in your bio that your ancestors had some involvement with Papa Doc Chevalier ... Care to tell us a little bit more?
NS: Sure. My great uncle Fritz was Papa Doc Duvalier’s first finance minister. He also helped him during his one and only Presidential campaign in the southern part of Haiti. As finance minister, one of his jobs was to set up a series of bank accounts for the Duvalier family in Switzerland. Papa Doc later imprisoned him for embezzlement, which was something of a joke considering the amount of foreign aid Doc was already siphoning off and sending to Zurich.
My great aunt Therese was Papa Doc’s PA. He was, of course – and possibly literally – the boss from hell. She was terrified of him, but couldn’t leave because he’d have had her and her family killed. During the last few years of his reign she took to going to work with a Bible, a bottle of holy water and a small .22 calibre automatic in her handbag. The first two were to ward off evil spirits, the latter for herself, in case they overwhelmed he. She told he that Papa Doc had a room in the Presidential Palace (a striking all white building in Port-Au-Prince) blacked out and painted red from floor to ceiling. He’d sit at the head of a long conference table with all of his main henchmen sitting either side. She’d gone in there once to tell him something and had seen the head of one of Doc’s enemies sitting right in the middle of the table. Nobody said a word, just looked at her and kept on staring. She quickly left.
Therese’s husband Frank was head of customs during both Papa and Baby Doc’s time. He was questioned by both the CIA and FBI about his knowledge of the highly successful cocaine smuggling operation Baby Doc’s father in law was running in and out of Miami. He’d bought Air Haiti, the country’s only airline – used only for freight – and turned it into Air Cocaine, by filling every plane with Cali Cartel nose candy and sending them to Miami. He also had some Eastern Airlines staff on his payroll too, and was using their planes to smuggle drugs into Miami too. My uncle knew nothing about this and only found out about it over a two week long interrogation. I asked him if he’d been tortured and he told me that he had: “They woke me up every day by playing Reo Speedwagon”.
I should also mention that I met President Aristide in 1982. He was a Catholic priest then, helping the poor of La Saline slum. I went to one of his services. He gave the best sermon I’ve ever heard in a church, and one of the most moving speeches I’ve ever heard too. I met him afterwards and talked to him about England and boxing (I was then an amateur boxer). I even invited him to stay with my family if he ever came over. When I found out he was running for President, I was very hopeful that he’d be a force for the good, but he turned out to be Papa Doc without the jokes.
PW: We've spoken about Haiti - but obviously Mr Clarinet isn't a travelogue. It's a rip roaring crime/detective caper with a gung-ho lead in the shape of Max Mingus. How did you manage the delicate balance between writing seriously about a country like Haiti whilst at the same time fashioning a hugely compelling page turner?
NS: Thanks for the “hugely compelling page turner” bit! I’m a great believer in short chapters, but I also wanted to bring Haiti to life as much as possible, so I wrote the country as I would a character – appearance, quirks, habits, smells and back story.
PW: Given that you're working in the crime genre I was wondering - who do you regard as your contemporaries?
NS: My favourite living crime writers are James Ellroy, Richard Price, Carl Hiaasen, Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, John Grisham and our very own Mark Billingham. I’d love to consider any one of them my contemporaries, but I’m not remotely in their league. I hope to be. One day.
PW: One of the interesting things about Mr Clarinet (that is very much in the vein of the writers you admire) is that you seem to 'frustrate' the more typical crime expectations (the answers are never easy, the suggestion of love interest is not fulfilled etc). From the outset was it important to you to keep your readers on their toes?
NS: Yes, absolutely. I think the reason crime fiction isn’t taken that seriously as a genre, is that a lot of it is manufactured, not written: identikit plots peopled by production line characters, everything delivered in bland, disinterested, word-counting prose. I really wanted to get away from that.
PW: This book comes emblazoned with the words: 'The first Max Mingus thriller' ... And the book concludes with the kind of warning that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Doc Savage. So. I was wondering. Are you hard at work on the next Max Mingus book - and, given that you like Ellroy etc - do you see the Max Mingus books as, say, a trilogy (revolving around Haiti) or an ongoing series?
NS: Doc Savage, eh? Hadn’t thought of that.
“The first Max Mingus thriller” was my editor’s idea, but yes, I’m hard at work on the next Mingus book – King of Swords – a prequel set in Miami between 1980-81, when it was a rundown seaside resort and, thanks to a sudden and massive influx of drugs and criminals, Murder Capital USA. The book is about Max Mingus’s hunt for Solomon Boukman, then head of a voodooesque gang called The SNBC. It’s a cat and mouse story, although the species switch, hunted hunting the hunted. As readers of Mr Clarinet will already know the outcome, I’ve decided to spice up proceedings somewhat by telling the tale as a parallel narrative, so it’s not so much Whodunnit as a Whodunwhattowhoandhowandwhy. There are twists a-plenty. Big and nasty ones.
I intend to write a sequel to Mr Clarinet, set in present day Miami, and also possibly in Haiti and definitely in another location. Then I hope to write something else – still crime, but with more of a noirish bent.
PW: Before your no doubt soon to be illustrious and award-winning writing career …
NS: From your mouth to God’s ears.
PW: ... you were something of a boxer. How did that come about?
NS: I started boxing because I got bullied at school. There was racism involved too, but I’m not sure how much of it was genuine and how much of it was picking on my most obvious “difference” from the pack. What set it off was that during the course of a ninety minute long maths lesson the kid who was sat at the desk behind me spent his time jabbing in the back with an inch long WH Smith’s compass. He didn’t plunge the point all the way in, but enough to break skin, draw blood and hurt like a bee sting – a lot of bee stings. I noticed, after a while, that there was method to his cuntishness: he was following a very deliberate pattern, like he was jabbing an image from memory.
When I got home, I took my jacket off and showed my mother my shirt back. He’d stabbed “NF” the National Front logo – in my back. It had come out very well in my blood.
My mother told me I had a choice – either she could stand up for me or I could stand up for myself. Or, either she could take me and my bloody shirt to the headmaster the next day, or else I could follow in my grandfather’s (her father) footsteps and take up boxing. He’d been a bareknuckle boxer in Europe before the Second World War. He’d lived in France where he’d gone to university, but he’d made money to pay for his upkeep by fighting. He was a tough old boy. Apparently he used to practice hardening his fists by punching walls.
I chose boxing. I fought as an amateur at welterweight and light-middleweight between 1981 and 1985. Then I took it up again between 1989 and 1995, but not at competitive level.
I punched Compass Man as soon as I knew how to throw a hurting punch. I also punched his best mate out too, out of principal. No one ever called me “nigger” at school again.
PW: Do you think the fighting in any way influenced the creation of Max Mingus?
NS: Yes it did. Boxers have an innate sense of discipline and honour, their own value system. Max is very much like that. He’s also a person whose life has been shaped – and ruined – by violence and brutality. I’m writing a lot more about his boxing and his relationship with his erstwhile trainer and police mentor, Eldon Burns, in King of Swords.
PW: Given the way in which the industry works these days (with film rights often sold before a book even appears on the bookshelves of your nearest bookshop), I was wondering if there was any word as to a possible Mr Clarinet movie?
NS: Nothing as yet...
PW: Who do you see filling the shoes of mighty Max?
NS: Bruce Willis in In Country/Twelve Monkeys/Pulp Fiction/Last Boy Scout mode.
PW: Your novel is very American in tone. I was wondering why you decided to 'locate' the book in the way you have?
NS: You write about what - and where - you know. I know Haiti and Miami very well. And it sure beats writing about most of the other places I've lived in - Cambridge, Bethnal Green, West Croydon (aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!!).
PW: And, last but not least, what would you say to people to entice them to read Mr Clarinet?
NS: I'd say, if you like dark thrillers then Mr Clarinet is for you ...
Mr Clarinet by Nick Stone is published by Penguin / Michael Joseph at £12.99.
Peter Wild
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