After three novels, it’s pretty clear Matthew McBride doesn’t give a fuck about expectations. In 2012 his debut full-length work, Frank Sinatra in a Blender, stamped his place in the private investigator genre like a cigarette burn on a couch. It featured Nick Valentine, a detective more concerned about his next drink and his next line of Oxy than staying true to the law. Most PIs in noir fiction tend to behave indecently, true, but McBride’s sleuth takes the trope and cranks it up to eleven.
One might have expected an entire series of novels featuring this detective character, especially considered how well it was received by readers, but McBride went a slightly different direction with his next book two years later. While Frank Sinatra in a Blender felt more like a slapstick comedy, A Swollen Red Sun weighed a little more heavily on the soul, set in Gasconade County, Missouri—the meth capital of the world. It was here, with this book, that McBride proved how much he could make you care about people. Some of the slimiest motherfuckers on the planet are in this novel, and they all have heart. Few novels have encapsulated those down on their luck more than A Swollen Red Sun. It was the first book of McBride’s I read and I love it very much. It’s rare, discovering a writer so genuine.
After his second novel, it seemed pretty clear the direction McBride was taking with his writing. Something sorta similar to Daniel Woodrell’s body of work, right? Insert game show buzzer here, because we couldn’t have been more wrong. (Of course, more dedicated McBride fans might’ve already known this, if they’d been keeping track of his short fiction sales in anthologies like Hard Sentences: Crime Fiction Inspired by Alcatraz.) End of the Ocean takes us far away from the Missouri roots of his previous two novels and transports us all the way to fucking Bali of all places. Sage, our protagonist, has fled the USA in the wake of his wife’s adultery, desperate to get lost for as long as his savings will allow. What follows is an intense love story full of riveting settings and high-stakes crimes.
Nobody can do dirt bags like McBride. He’s practically the dirt bag king. And that, of course, is because he doesn’t view his characters as dirt bags.Nobody could have guessed this would be the book McBride wrote next. Although, in retrospect, it’s not completely different from his previous work. Again, like the rest of his bibliography, End of the Ocean reads like a meditation on survival. If it’s fair to claim a rural noir revival exists, then it’s difficult not to include Matthew McBride as one of its top players. The reason his work sticks out so strongly among hordes of similar crime novels is complicated. If one were to analyze the issue deeply, they might realize that while many crime writers recycle famous, older novels, McBride instead borrows bits and pieces and restructures them into something wholly original. It’s impossible to predict what one is getting into when reading McBride’s work.
It is also a mighty task not to fall in love with his characters, especially the dirt bags. Nobody can do dirt bags like McBride. He’s practically the dirt bag king. And that, of course, is because he doesn’t view his characters as dirt bags. They’re just people. People we all know. People like you, people like me. Just…people, man. Goddamn, imperfect, miserable, horny, depressed people. You dig?
After reading End of the Ocean, I was desperate to learn more about not just the novel but also the author, so I reached out to McBride via email and interrogated him for a couple of weeks.
Max Booth: In the buildup to this novel’s release, you tweeted the following: “END OF THE OCEAN comes out next week, almost 5 years to the day I started writing it. Research took me to 5 different countries. I met drug dealers. I lied to get in a prison. Very intense. So today I’m taking a break from the current book I’m writing to play fetch with my dog.”
I thought it would be fun to start here. Anybody who doesn’t know anything about you or your work, this tweet is kinda all they need to see to know what they’re getting into. Can you elaborate on how you “lied to get in a prison”, or is that more of a “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you” sort of thing?
Matthew McBride: It’s true, I did lie to get inside Kerobokan prison. I’d been living in Thailand for a while, after having already lived in Bali, and my plan was to just stay in Thailand and write until I ran out of money. But when I thought about the prison and the drug smugglers inside it (most notably the Bali 9), the place just … it sort of called to me. I went back to Bali. I wanted to interview people, but first I had to get inside. I went to Kerobokan and told them I was a church Deacon; I was there to bring fruit to the prisoners. Do some ministry. It worked. Later, I actually met a real minister. A former gangster who’d received a lifetime ban from Australia. It all worked so well I wrote it into the book.
MB: Did you come across any close calls with guards? Once you got in front of the prisoners, did you come clean and explain your real intentions, or how did it all unfold? In the novel, this scene is extremely intense, and hearing how much of it is actually true? Holy shit. Fascinating.
MM: At Kerobokan, I think they were pretty shocked that an American would even be there. I can’t imagine many Americans have ever been inside the prison. I tried not to draw much attention to myself. Once inside, I found a few members of the Bali 9 pretty quickly. One has since been executed. The other, I stayed in touch with for a while, but have not heard from in some time. The different inmates I spoke with knew I was writing a book.
After I left the prison, three policia stopped us (myself and the minister I had befriended) and relieved me of all my rupiah and Thai baht. They said I had to pay a fine for not wearing my helmet. Then they let me go. But the government controls everything there, even the internet. A few days later, when I turned on my computer, there was a message that said my connection was being controlled by someone else.
I thought it was time to leave after that.
the day I got my first royalty check from A Swollen Red Sun, I bought a one-way ticket to Bali, quit my job and never looked back.MB: I would have been terrified if that message popped up on my computer. When you set out to visit these places, how much of End of the Ocean already existed (either on the page or in your head)? Did you go there thinking, “I need to make this book more authentic” or was it more along the lines of, “I’m hoping to find a story out of this exotic setting?”
MM: I wanted to write a book that was completely different from my previous two, but after a few thousand words I realized if I wanted the book to be any good I’d actually have to go there. You can only do so much research from a desk. If I wanted to be true to the story, and to the characters, I must be truest to the setting. I had to move. So the day I got my first royalty check from A Swollen Red Sun, I bought a one-way ticket to Bali, quit my job and never looked back. The decision was life-changing. So many things I experienced in Indonesia found a way onto the page. I needed to experience life in Bali before I could write about it. The sights, the smells. The people. I wanted to know how strangers from a different culture would treat an American living among them, and they treated me very well.
MB: Well, I’m glad you did this, because the novel wouldn’t have felt the same otherwise. That kind of dedication, it pays off in a big way, for both the writer and reader. Have you always felt it necessary to dig deep into research? Going back to Frank Sinatra in a Blender, what was the process like for getting into the mindset of a private detective? Or take A Swollen Red Sun: meth is practically its own character in that book. Your books feel so real and personal, thanks to how well you’re able to develop these characters, it’s easy to understand how a reader might assume you’ve been up close and personal with some of this shit.
MM: I don’t put an abundance of personal information out there; I have no problem letting people wonder where I came from or who I am. Sometimes it’s best to let the curious guess. You don’t always have to write what you know, but if you actually know what you’re writing about no one can say you got something wrong (kidding, they still will). I just want to truly experience the world I’m writing about. I want to be involved. When I write about a subject or a character or a place, it needs to feel real to me. Then it feels like I’m telling the bonafide truth. In my writing, people have said I always write about drugs. I don’t write about drugs. I write about characters who use drugs. There’s a difference.
MB: I agree with you completely. It really is your skills as a writer who can mold these believable and memorable characters. I know, from other interviews, you worked on an assembly line for a while. I’ve always thought writers who have or have had blue collar jobs write the best fiction. It seems those with isolated office jobs or rich parents have a difficult time relating to other people. What has your experience been with working and also writing? What other jobs have you had besides the assembly line? Do you think writing with a separate day job is beneficial or detrimental?
MM: Working a blue collar job gives you the chance to watch people and learn from them, because the key to being a good writer is to be a great observer. To write about the human condition you must first understand it, and the best way to do that is to pay attention. I’ve always paid attention to the people I’ve worked with. For thirteen years I built Chrysler minivans and I fucking hated it. Really hated it. Now, I look back on those days with fond memories. But while I was actually living those moments, they were brutal. My plan was to write myself off the assembly line. Then fate intervened and they closed our plant. I could move and keep my seniority or take a buyout. I took the buyout. I wanted to write full time, and for years I have done it. But it hasn’t been easy. I would not recommend that any writer quit their day job. The lifestyle will break you. Like it has many times broken me. But from the beginning, I prepared myself for a life of financial hardship and I’ve been willing to live hard. At times, I didn’t even mind living hard, because I had writing to do and the work sustained me. I have had various jobs over the years, most of them shitty, but they all gave me what I needed. The time to write. So, looking back, I’ve done what I set out to do. Become a writer, get an agent, and publish books.
MB: You’ve published three novels now, and not a single one is similar to each other in tone or atmosphere. Why is it important to you to constantly be mixing things up, and is there a fear of possibly alienating your audience?
MM: For me, I just never wanted to write the same book twice. That is the short answer. The longer version of that might be that I wanted to write books that were different from each other to see if I could do it. Or maybe because it just feels right. Maybe I’d get bored writing a new version of the same story I have already told. It feels freeing to take risks—to care more about the story you’re telling than the audience’s reaction to it—though just because the writer is willing to take risks does not mean an audience will reward them for the effort.
MB: While all three novels are very different, I would also claim they do share certain similarities. You tend to write about people down on their luck trying to scheme their way to a better future, which happens to be my favorite kind of book. You just tend to examine this concept under a different lens each time. Would you agree with this assessment? Hell, maybe that’s just the definition of “noir”, come to think about it.
MM: If it is true noir, things go badly for the main character and only get worse. You know it won’t end well by the end of the first page. So I think people who are down on their luck have more interesting stories to tell. Nobody cares about a guy who works at a bank. They care about the guy who robs it.
MB: How do you plan on making the next novel different from the last three?
MM: I moved to California in 2015 because I wanted to write a novel about California. I wanted to live here and experience it in order to write about it. I wanted to meet interesting people and see what kind of fucked up situations I could find myself in. Great fuel for a writer. I’ve experienced a lot of crazy shit out here that’s made its way into the new book. But that’s all I want to say about it. Writers always talk about the new book they’re working on. The plot, the characters … the title. Nothing good can ever come from that.
