Craig McDonald – video interview – part 1

I don’t think I’ve been more intimidated by an interview subject as I was by Craig McDonald. Here was a man who had interviewed nearly every crime writer of consequence in the past decade: Ellroy.  Crumley.  Woodrell.  Sallis.  Bruen.  Leonard. And the questions he asked weren’t just your simple, “Where do you get your ideas?” pap that most interviewers go for. 

McDonald went deep.  McDonald’s interviews were the reason why I wanted to try my hand at writing and conducting author interviews.

He’s a hero.

On top of that, mutual friends had described McDonald to me as one of the most intelligent men currently writing crime fiction. Plus, his series of novels featuring Hector Lassiter—Head Games, Toros and Torsos, and Print the Legend—has become the only series, other than Bruen’s Jack Taylor and Reed Farrel Coleman’s Moe Prager books, that I actually gave a shit about.

So I spent weeks drafting and redrafting questions, making sure I got it right.  Of course, I didn’t really need to do any of this; upon meeting McDonald, I felt at ease with the novelist and simply let the questions flow. 

But you can be the judge of that.  In part one of my interview with McDonald, which I conducted at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ, on February 27^th—we cover his career as a journalist, interviewer, and the roots of Hector Lassiter.

Craig McDonald part 1 from Damon Cap on Vimeo.