I and the rest of the staff at BSC would like to thank the gracious and talented John Galligan, author of the series of mystery novels called the Fly Fishing Mysteries, for agreeing to be interviewed.
The novels feature the Swisher Sweet smoking, vodka and Tang embidding, RV traveling, trout fishing aficionado Ned Oglivie, aka the Dog. No matter where he travels, he can’t seem to help getting involved in solving crimes/murders while only wanting to take it easy, trout fish, and enjoy the great outdoors.
And now, on to the Questions!
Professor Crazy: I’ve noticed from your earliest Fly Fishing Mystery featuring Ned “the Dog” Oglivie, The Nail Knot, on to your latest, The Clinch Knot, that you have an environmental message mixed in with finely crafted mysteries.
In The Clinch Knot, one of the villains, Dane Tucker, has constructed a very long fence around his property that blocks the traditional migratory route of pronghorn antelopes. And, in The Nail Knot, fellow fly fisherman Jake Jacobs, an agitator who is trying to save Black Earth Creek, is disfigured and murdered.
Did you plan from the first novel on to focus on the importance of preserving our environmental resources as well as writing excellent mysteries?
John Galligan: Yes. My idea has been to focus the setting and plot of each book around some kind of environmental conflict. Fly fishing for trout is perfect for this because the areas where trout live tend to be some of the last unspoiled places among us, and as such, trout streams represent a nexus of what is essentially a culture war between old and new, private and public visions of how land and other natural resouces should be used. In The Nail Knot, a vestigial dam threatens water quality but remains in place decades beyond its usefulness because of the real estate interests of a few influential citizens. In The Blood Knot, one of the central questions I try ask is “who owns the view?” And The Clinch Knot, as you mention, highlights the issue of riparian rights–public ownership of navigable bodies of water–as they collide with the kind of massive wealth that can surround public water with private land, essentially stealing bodies of water from the public trust. All this said, there is a lot more going on the books!
Professor Crazy: Ned Oglivie, aka the Dog, isn’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill detective or ex-cop – being neither – he’s more like an ordinary Joe who gets caught up in crimes and murders, though he’d rather spend his time kicking back, relaxing, and enjoying Swisher Sweets, vodka and Tang, the company of friends, and trout fishing.
Were you perhaps tired of reading about traditional sleuths, and wanted to make yours different; or, did you maybe just want to write about a character who was interested in the same things you liked?
John Galligan: All of the above, plus the fact that I’m both uninterested in and incapable of doing police proceedure. The Dog doesn’t give a damn about that. In fact, he never wants to get involved in the first place, which makes him a reluctant sleuth, thus giving me a lot of latitude in storytelling. One final motivation: I must do research (ie, fishing) at the locations in the books. Tough duty.
Professor Crazy: Are the mountains in the background of the cover illustration for The Clinch Knot the Crazy Mountains you mention in the book? Do you know how they got their name? I have a personal stake in knowing this – maybe they were named after an ancestor of mine….
John Galligan: Well…first, no, those are not the Crazy Mountains. Actually that picture is from Glacier National Park. The Crazy Mountains are just north of Livingston and got their name from a pioneer woman who lost her entire family in those mountains (starvation, Indians, etc.) and lived alone thereafter, acting crazy. Grief can do that. You might ask the Dog.
Professor Crazy: D’Ontario Sneed is one of the many memorable characters in The Clinch Knot. A trout fishing buddy of the Dog’s, involved in an inter-racial romance with Jesses Ringer (who in reality is only using him to try to make a pronghorn-chasing lawyer, Henderson gray, jealous enough to take her back and help her free her dad from prison), he gets locked up in an Oldsmobile with duct-taped windows and a lit hibachi between his legs. Someone wants to make it seem as if he killed Jesse, and then attempted to commit suicide in a fit of remorse.
How did you get the clever idea of the way someone could have set up Sneed like that and escape from the trunk of the car, making it look like an attempted suicide?
John Galligan: I’ve lived in Japan, where the most common method of suicide by far is the one mentioned above. An earlier draft of the book involved a Japanese fly fisherman and his purported suicide, hence the method, and I liked the idea of the closed box, kind of a Houdini trick that, if pulled off properly, would be just about impossible to detect. It seems to have worked in the story.
Professor Crazy: I didn’t mention the character Hilarious Sorgensen in the review I wrote of your latest book. He’s a very strange character, an ex-rodeo clown who has a business outfitting trout fishermen and supplying them with guides, as well as having a lucrative side business in dealing stolen drugs.
Where’d you come up with that first name?
John Galligan: The name Sorgensen I got from one of my favorite Montana authors, Ivan Doig. In his autobiography, This House of Sky, Doig tells of the sheep-herding Sorgensen family, all of whom were absolutely bat-shit drunken crazy perverts even by sheep-herding standards. I conceived Hilarious as the scholar and the gentlemen of that genetic line–he is only a drug addict, dealer, and potentially a killer. Pretty upstanding for a Sorgensen. I don’t know where Hilarious came from, but you can call him Larry for short.
Professor Crazy: Sneed’s mom Aretha is one of my favorite characters in The Clinch Knot, as I wrote in my review, and I think she really adds a lot to the plot. Both in the brief romantic fling she has with the Dog, and in their adventures boating up the Roam River pursued by Dane tucker and his skinhead henchmen, she enlivens the action quite a bit.
Do you have any plans about reprising her character in future Fly Fishing Mystery novels?
John Galligan: No. The Dog is on a one-way trip.
Professor Crazy: Dane Tucker, a grade-B action movie star, is one of the main villains of The Clinch Knot. He is a prejudiced, morally bankrupt guy who also doesn’t give a crap about the native animals of Montana, where the novel is set. This is evidenced by the fence around his property that blocks the traditional migratory route of the pronghorns.
Did you model his character on anyone in particular; or, is he maybe a conglomeration of several different despicable people? Has anyone you’ve heard of actually tried to block the migratory route of the pronghorns?
John Galligan: First, absolutely yes there is a problem with fences in the west and the way they interfere with the natural movements of animals. The pronghorn situation from the book is real. Their migration patterns have been established for millenia, they cannot jump, and their populations are dwindling because of habitat issues like fencing. Dane Tucker–I don’t know anyone that despicable, but the phenomenon of ultra-wealthy outsiders tying up vast tracts of land and preventing access is very real. The poster boy for this is Ted Turner, who has fenced off most the Ruby River in southwestern Montana, making sure that a vast and spectacular public resource is reserved for the use of a special few. It’s outrageous, and I wanted to help expose that.
Professor Crazy: Out of curiosity, I was wondering exactly how many types of knots are used in trout fishing? And, as a follow-up question, when you run out of using the different names of knots used in fly fishing, do you plan on continuing your series using titles that are non-knot related?
John Galligan: In fly fishing there are just a few essential knots: clinch, blood, nail, and surgeon’s. There is also the “wind knot,” which is accidental–coming about through bad casting–and will probably be the title of the fourth and last book in the series.
Professor Crazy: The philandering lawyer Henderson Gray dreams of chasing down and catching pronghorn antelopes, and he trains for this by participating in marathons. He wants to be written up for this accomplishment in the National Geographic magazine.
Did you get the idea of having him want to do this by reading or hearing about someone else who wanted to do the same thing?
John Galligan: Yes. It was supposedly done by certain Native Americans at some point long ago (and supposedly still done by members of a tribe in Mexico), and I once read about (or perhaps heard on the radio about) a guy who tried to do it in modern times and failed miserably. Not even close. I also read about it in National Geographic. I believe it could be done by someone with tremendous stamina and knowledge of the land and the animal. Henderson Gray lacks the latter and is corruptly motivated. He also faces the problem of proving it.
Professor Crazy: I wondered if you had plans to write any more novels set in Japan, like your novel that’s not in the Fly Fishing Mysteries series, Red Sky, Red Dragonfly?
John Galligan: Probably not, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I have a deep connection to Japan and still a lot of things to process from my experiences there.
Professor Crazy: You’re in the home stretch – just one question to go! Well, it’s a multi-part one, so technically it’s more than one question, but I’m not one to pick nits (except for that time back in 1998, when…but that’s a different story).
Do you have a title yet for the next book in Fly Fishing Mysteries series? How long did it take to write The Clinch Knot? When can your fans expect another book featuring the Dog to come out?
John Galligan: I think it’s The Wind Knot. The Clinch Knot was a struggle at first and took me almost three years (but keep in mind I have a young family and a full-time teaching job). I’m working on a stand-alone book now, so I don’t expect you’ll be hearing from the Dog for another couple years. I’ve begun research and planning, though, for an adventure set in Michigan’s UP, and I can’t wait to get to it.
Professor Crazy: Thanks so much from myself and the entire staff of BSC for agreeing to this interview. Also, thanks for writing an original mystery series that combines a love for action, adventure, and the Great Outdoors with a likable Everyman sort of character like the Dog. It’s a rare kind of combination, and I would guess one that’s difficult to pull off successfully, but you sure have accomplished it with your Fly Fishing Mysteries series.
Good luck and much success in the New Year ahead of us!
