When he learned his novel “The River” was a Best Novel finalist for the prestigious Edgar Allan Poe mystery award, Denver author Peter Heller was stunned. “I don’t think of myself as a mystery writer,” he says.
He was thrilled, too, of course. “It’s a prestigious nod from a whole segment of readers who are very passionate about their books, and they are absolutely wonderful.”
The Edgars, as they’re known, are the Oscars of the mystery field, given annually for several categories of fiction and nonfiction works. In addition to Heller’s book, the other nominees in the Best Novel category are “Fake Like Me,” “The Stranger Diaries,” “Smoke and Ashes” and “Good Girl, Bad Girl.”
The 74th annual Edgar Awards were scheduled to be presented at a banquet in New York. Due to the novel coronavirus, however, they will be announced on Twitter at 9 a.m. on Thursday, April 30. That turn of events is a disappointment to writers like Heller, who had planned on “putting on a tuxedo and going to New York and sitting at a table with my editor and agent. It would have been a total blast.”
“The River,” Heller’s fourth novel, is the story of two men on a canoe trip on the Maskwa River in northern Canada. It involves murder, mystery and survival. Heller says he did not know the book’s story when he wrote the first line: “They had been smelling smoke for two days.”
“When you start with the first line, you let the story ride. Then, (after writing for a time), you bump into what’s on your heart,” he says.
That’s not to say Heller didn’t have ideas for his story of wilderness survival. A longtime outdoor and adventure writer with four nonfiction books to his credit, Heller, 61, is an expert in canoeing. When he’s on the river, he loves not knowing what’s around the next bend. “Maybe it’s a mountain lion or a flight of birds,” he says. In fact, Heller and his future wife once took their own canoe trip down the Maskwa, so Heller knew every inch of the river when he wrote the book.
In addition, when he was 17, Heller attended a dinner party where a man told him the story of going on a canoe trip with his wife, who disappeared. “I knew he was lying,” says Heller. That germ of an idea was stored away in the back of his mind.
Still, it took several pages of writing before the story of “The River” emerged. Heller likes not knowing his storyline when he begins, he says, “because I want to have as much fun as the reader. I want to be as shocked and thrilled and heartbroken at the reader.”
Some of those emotions may be in play on Thursday as Heller waits for the Edgar Awards to be announced. The author, who is halfway through his next book — which he declined to talk about — won’t be going to New York, of course. Instead, Heller says, “I’ll get up, get a cup of coffee and look at the results.”
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