Editor's note: This interview first appears in Mountain Times on Oct. 24, 2017: http://www.wataugademocrat.com/mountaintimes/closing-old-wounds-n-c-author-mark-de-castrique-talks/article_66613076-087d-5af7-ae34-aa9c9db3dbfe.html

Hede: Closing old wounds: N.C. author Mark de Castrique talks about new book, 'Hidden Scars'

Mark de Castrique is no stranger to the mountains of North Carolina, and after 17 novels — six set in the fictional mountain town of Gainesboro, N.C. — neither are his readers. From starred reviews in publications such as Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal, de Castrique’s Sam Blackman series of novels have proven popular and timeless: The mysteries build on history to reveal clever whodunits solved by the even more clever lead characters who include private eye Blackman, an Iraq war amputee, and romantic sidekick Nakaya Robertson, who often proves to be the brains of the operation.

De Castrique’s newest Blackman story, “Hidden Scars,” offers a dose of double intrigue for High Country readers — an enthralling mystery not only centered on a seemingly insolvable 80-year-old death, but one set in the climate of the now-defunct Black Mountain College, a liberal arts school in Asheville that once drew immense professorial talent from across the ocean and students from around the world.

That that climate was the late 1940s and included threats of communism and governmental overreach is fodder for de Castrique’s canon in this novel, and the author makes good use of his cinematic background in broadcast and film production to keep the action moving toward a conclusion that will surprise all but the most astute reader.

De Castrique recently spoke by phone with Mountain Times to answer a few questions about the new novel, and even included a few thoughts about some recent decisions made by the N.C. Legislature.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tom: Consider this slice of dialogue from “Hidden Scars”: “Where’d you find Mr. Macho,” Camille asked. “Yard sale. It was either him of an old blender. Sam mixes a better drink.”

Your Sam Blackman mysteries are reminiscent in tone and style — especially the wonderful deadpan sarcasm — to vintage crime fiction. What writers are you channeling when you craft your stories?

Mark: For the Blackman series, you kind of hit it, though I don’t have the literary skills and edge some of the more classic, vintage stuff has. I really like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the masters of the era. And, although they weren’t all in first person, they’ve got that real close to the detective procedural viewpoint, where you’re in a character’s mind as the case develops. I like that style. I don’t know that anyone would call my books hard-boiled, because, as in “Hidden Scars,” a lot of the violence takes place off-screen. I don’t have a lot of blood and gore in my books because I’m writing for wider audience. It’s not a cosy (mystery), but also not what James Patterson might be writing. It’s somewhere in between.

Tom: Black Mountain College still holds a fascination for us. Recently, a Blowing Rock museum hosted a lecture from an ASU graduate student who is part of a project researching the school. Why are we still enthralled by this experimental liberal arts school that was built in Asheville and open from 1933-1957? And, why your choice to make it the setting of “Hidden Scars?”

Mark: In the Sam Blackman series, the structure is that there is something that happened in the past that is inescapable in the present. I like Faulkner’s quote, which I use in the book, about how the “past is never dead, it’s not even past.” In “Hidden Scars,” that structure gave me a chance to explore things that happened in the mountains. I grew up in Hendersonville and have a real affinity for the mountains. I walked into Black Mountain College Museum in Asheville. My daughter had given me a big, thick book about the college for Christmas, and the more I read about it, the more intrigued I became. Why we’re intrigued with it is that this was such an unlikely thing to have happened in little Black Mountain. You’ve got this story of revolution and rebellion, these professors who were fired from their college in Florida starting this. Faculty coming from the Bauhaus in Germany, driven out by Hitler. Albert Einstein was on the board of advisers. It’s that whole kind of cauldron that was happening there that’s intriguing.

I don’t like to preach in my books, because I want them to be entertaining, but I like to share what I’m learning and I hope that readers come away learning something in spite of themselves, through the story. Black Mountain is a good example of the power of arts and creativity and imagination being at the core of education. Within the last year or two this is what’s happening in the state — funding cuts for arts. I’m not saying this in a negative sense, but the emphasis is being shifted onto people talking about an emphasis of course work that teaches you a trade for a job at at the expense of teaching creative and imaginative thought. Black Mountain College encapsulates for me something you could hold up as the value of having arts at the center of education, even scientific and architectural work.

Tom: What did you find most challenging about crafting a mystery where the crime took place eight decades ago?

Mark: The challenge was figuring out how to make it plausible. That something in the past would happen without pushing the story so that it’s not organically generating itself out of what’s happening. That’s how I came up with the idea of a movie being made on the site of the college, to get the story anchored back 80 years ago. … to carry the death from 1948 forward to 2017 when the story is set.

Tom: Setting the crime in 1948 allows you to resurrect some fascinating history. When did you first learn about the Venona Project, the 1940's effort to break cryptic messages sent by agencies such as the KGB. And, when did you decide that it would be make a good plot device for a novel?

Mark: Half way through writing the book. I didn’t work on an outline. I knew the general direction I wanted it to take, and the underlying motivation for the crime. I also knew that Black Mountain College had come under scrutiny by the FBI, which is ironic since they had been under scrutiny by the Nazis since 1933. I was reading things from the time and I came across that code project. It was fascinating and made sense that it could be linked to the story I was writing. That’s the advantage to not so heavily outlining.

Tom: Sam and his assistant, Nakayla Robertson, are an interracial couple. Your stories make it clear that much progress has been made, even in the South, on civil rights issues. But, you seem to indicate that there is more work to be done. What are your thoughts on that?

Mark: Contemporary events and politics show how that is still a thinly covered scar that can turn into an open wound pretty soon. Sam and Nakalya still run into messages of past racism. Things happening in the country today give one pause about where we are as a society. Loving vs. Virginia happened in 1967, overturning bans against interracial marriage in all states, so it wasn’t all that long ago that we had those kinds of law on the books.
Tom: As for politics on a state level, you come down pretty hard on decisions the N.C. legislature had made, negativley affecting the film industry. As a veteran of that film industry yourself, I’m wondering what you think the outlook for, say, a novel such as “Hidden Scars,” set in North Carolina, actually being filmed in North Carolina?
Mark: It’s interesting. I don’t want you to take it as if I’m taking credit, but the book came out on Oct. 3 and the next week the legislature changed those laws. They eliminated the sunset law and increased the incentive program. So, I’m optimistic because that — coincidentally my story at the end of the book has the legislature rewriting the laws — we are an attractive site if the money can work out. At one point we were the third largest filmmaking state. Specifically, whether or not “Hidden Scars” will be made into a movie — I don’t know if I have enough explosions.

Tom: That leads into my next question. Beyond North Carolina law, I’m wondering what have to say about the substance of current filmmaking — given the vapid novel, “Love Among the Ridges,” within your novel that you have being turned into a movie.

Mark: Part of it may be where we are in history, with stuff swirling around us. They say during the Depression, people wanted musicals and things taking them away. It’s like, I don’t want to read the headlines and then go in and see the headlines brought to life on the screen.

Between sound and computer generation, filmmaking becomes whatever they can do. It becomes one-upmanship … if we had this in one movie, we need this in another movie. The action thrillers have more action. The spectacle is important. The 3-D pulls you in with another visual experience. All that is fine as long as the story doesn’t suffer. The spectacle can overwhelm the character development, the human experience and you walk out without any cathartic experience. Having said that, there are also many new venues for filmmaking — Netflix, Amazon — who are coming to the game with quieter films, more character-driven films.

Tom: As far as writers generating those cathartic stories, you do pay homage to several authors, including Fitzgerald and Faulkner. But you also appear to pay homage to Star Trek with one of your character-actors. I’m guessing that was about more than a sci-fi TV show or movie.

Mark: I was thinking about some of my own experiences, nothing to do with Star Trek, in that you watch a series and you get involved with characters and then meet the people in real life. Often, when you hear them speak you are transported back into that childhood. It was Sam connecting with someone who had been his Saturday morning or afternoon movie matinee idol that would show up in the story. Mine was Captain Kangaroo, who I met, but not exactly who I’d call an action hero.

Tom: By the end of the novel, it’s clear that the title “Hidden Scars” refers to more than physical or psychological battle wounds. You seem to argue that we all carry hidden scars. Is that a fair assessment of the novel?

Mark: It is. It’s like if you were doing it as a fortune cookie sort of thing: You never know where somebody is coming from and what’s behind them. In that sense, I hope it speaks to tolerance and giving a second thought if you see someone and you’re not quite sure what their problem is. We’re never really sure what someone has been through. You also want readers to take from the story what they bring to the story. The reader has hidden scars, for sure. It’s looking at social commentary without being heavy handed. You like the story and there are entertaining characters, but you stop and think about what are some of the underlying issues in the story that the reader would take and muse upon and add a dimension. There is a quote not original with me that a good book is one you read again even knowing the ending.

HIDDEN SCARS by Mark de Castrique is another mystery in the Sam Blackman series. Set in or near Asheville, North Carolina, these contemporary puzzling stories involve Blackman, an amputee and former soldier, and his detective agency (and personal life) partner, Nakayla Robertson. Generally, the author chooses to focus on some aspect of local lore or history and HIDDEN SCARS is no exception as Sam and Nakayla try to solve a potential murder from roughly 70 years ago involving students at the now defunct Black Mountain College. I was enthralled to learn about this real school and the many famous people (e.g., Buckminster Fuller, Josef and Anni Albers, Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham) who studied and worked there. As always, de Castrique makes his readers think about ethics and morals, including some unexpected twists. I definitely recommend this series and am already looking forward to Sam and Nakayla's next adventure!

Be prepared to keep track of clues for two well conceived and developed mysteries in this one novel.

First, the 1948 death of a WWII veteran is questioned by his 80-year-old sister when she returns to Asheville to live in a retirement center in 2017. Then, the college the young veteran attended in 1948, is being "re-opened" to accommodate the filming of a novel that was set at the college. In the course of investigating the 1948 death, the two detectives, Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson (Blackman & Robertson Detective Agency), are confronted by the murder of a newly found source providing information in the original case. This source was a member of the film's production crew and his death is quickly followed by a subsequent murder that leaves the detectives even more puzzled.

Hidden Scars is a pleasure to read. The story is complex but clearly presented. The pursuit of clues and answers to each of the mysteries is easy to follow and seems logically unveiled. The book is anchored by the relationship between the two detectives and is effectively drawn by the author. In fact, the author's ability to create a scene drops the reader right into the action. While his creation of dialogue and informative narration seem effortless, he uses his skill to keep the pace afoot.

The title alludes to a theme that figuratively touches the young WWII veteran and what happened to him as well as literally applying to Sam Blackman, a veteran of Iraq who lost a leg. This theme works on a few levels as other characters' "hidden scars" are revealed through a finely layered mystery that is deeper than it seems.

If you haven't read a Sam Blackman mystery yet, I highly recommend that you remedy your oversight. Mark de Castrique writes one of the best private investigator series going, and I always look forward to each new installment. Sam Blackman is a former Army Chief Warrant Officer who lost his leg in Iraq. He and Nakayla Robertson are partners in both their professional and personal lives; they're an interracial couple loaded with intelligence and humor and have a wonderful support team that includes a lawyer and a police officer there in Asheville, North Carolina.

These Sam Blackman mysteries always have something to do with Asheville's little-known yet fascinating history-- this time concerning Black Mountain College. The mystery not only involves the college, it also ties in present-day political shenanigans in the state's film industry as well as lingering racial tensions. The mystery in Hidden Scars moves smoothly and steadily to its conclusion, and I've found time and again that it's very easy to be seduced by de Castrique's story and forget to come up for air. And that humor I mentioned earlier? The humans don't have all the good scenes; Blue the coonhound and a rhinestone collar-wearing raccoon also have their parts to play.

I really enjoy this author's writing style. When I open one of his books, I feel as though I've stepped into his characters' lives. With each book's past woven into the present, de Castrique doesn't have to remind me of one of my favorite lines in literature: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Don't like The Great Gatsby? Don't let that keep you from getting acquainted with this excellent series.

4 and 1 / 2 stars

Nakayla Robertson and Sam Blackman are private eyes in Asheville, NC. Sam talks to a woman named Violet Baker who at age eighty believes that her brother Paul has been murdered. The fact that it happened some seventy years ago seems to matter little to her. She wants Sam and his partner Nakayla to investigate.

They go to a movie set located on the now-defunct campus of the Black Mountain College Paul attended. The movie makers are creating a film based on a book that was written about the college during the time when Buckminster Fuller taught there and Albert Einstein was involved as a patron.

The coroner’s report stated that Paul fell off a cliff during a walk and called his death and accident. Violet doesn’t believe it. When they go to the local cop shop and courthouse to locate the police report and his death certificate the reports cannot be found. It seems they are missing. So all Sam and Nakayla have is the old coroner’s report and some near-useless mentions in the local newspapers that don’t even list Paul’s name.

Nakayla locates a couple of books from a library about the college that has photos. Violet identifies her brother in a couple of the pictures. Sam and Nakayla go to Harlan Beale, an old-timer who is the local town historian and who has been assisting them on the case to show him the pictures. One shows Paul with his arm around a young black girl who was a dancer at the college. Sam wonders if this is why Paul was killed. Hate-filled racism?

Sam receives a voice mail from Harlan to meet him the next day. He has something to tell them. The only problem is that the next morning Harlan is found dead in the museum. At the same time, there is a fire on the movie set at Black Mountain College. What is going on? When another murder is committed, the stakes increase.

The suspense in this story starts out slowly and rises as the pace picks up with a second (or third), murder. This is a very well written and plotted novel. There are no wasted words and the story is tight. I liked the relationship between Sam and Nakayla and the way they gently teased each other. I also liked the descriptions of the countryside in North Carolina. I have never traveled down South and enjoyed the chance to journey with this author. This is my first Mark de Castrique novel, but I immediately went to Amazon to look at his other books. I truly enjoyed this novel

I want to thank NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for forwarding to me a copy of this great book to read.