AWW: What was the spark of inspiration for Mire?
Matt: I came across some really interesting information that the American mafia were involved in the Riverina in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Predominantly just growing marijuana. Then, I just stumbled across an idea. What if somebody discovered a bunch of cash and took it and had to pay the consequences? That tied in nicely to what I had read quite extensively before.
I wanted to write about someone genuinely very flawed so you could follow him through the horrible choices that he makes but also, at the end, putting that aside and trying to move forward.
At the time in my life when I wrote the bulk of this, my brother had passed away, and I needed to do something that was a lot lighter than what I’d written. So, I found that particularly with this character being put in situations that he had no idea how to navigate. I had some fun with this compared to other books.
It’s a fun crime read. There’s a lot going on. A lot of interesting characters. Can you tell me more about the process of bringing the mob culture to life? It feels very detailed and anchored in reality.
I’ve spent a lot of time in New York. I know the place quite well. Through that period, where we’re set, the ‘80s in Sydney, and then crossing over into New York in the early ‘90s, it was a very, very active time for the mafia, particularly in New York. It was violent. There were murders. It was probably at one of its highest peaks in terms of activity. I did a lot of reading about that and the five families. The dirty cops there.
I watched a lot of documentaries that went heavily into a precinct in New York where there were very high-level cops who were on the take and they went to jail for it. I think when Giuliani came in, he made it a mandate to clean up the mob, and he did. He sent a lot of people to jail, a lot of crooked cops. There’s a litany of information on that because it is so fascinating. It was a very, very active time and police involvement in the mafia is nothing new. From councilors to judges, to cops to contractors, they had their hands in everything.
I don’t know if it’s anywhere near like it was, these days, but that was a very rich time where there was a lot of information you could research, and ground it in reality, because that’s what it was like.
Did you run into challenges setting something in the recent past in terms of knowing when technology became available?
Yeah. Setting it back in time is sometimes a little easier. You’re not tripped up by – this could be solved in five minutes because of DNA testing or security footage. You didn’t have those things then. It would be very hard to write a crime novel set in a big city with the amount of surveillance that is around now.
You’re under surveillance the whole time. You’re going to get caught. That worked to my advantage in a little way. And also, just the clandestine nature of everything, and people keeping quiet.
I spent time in New York in 1997, and I’ve spent a lot afterwards. New York, to a great degree, hasn’t changed a lot as far as the look and the sounds. It is the way it is. It’s just such a big urban sprawl in a very small island, and it’s been that way for a very long time.
Dan Milligan is in many ways a not-particularly-sympathetic character. You mentioned he’s not a hero. How do you walk the line of making him believable as a ratbag trader, while also keeping the reader invested in his story?
I think the anchor that hopefully people hang onto is his relationship with his father. A lot of his motivation to aspire to what he ends up becoming is to get approval. I think for a lot of young men, particularly back in that era when things were a little bit different, people will understand that I hope.
Dan Milligan, he was bullied as a kid. He didn’t have a particularly strong group of friends. He was never the silverback in the group. It wasn’t an easy road for him. He chose things, like all he ever wanted was to have the approval of the big guys in the financial markets where he worked. That was never going to happen so he built this persona where some of his subordinates would climb aboard but you get the feeling that they’re all laughing behind his back. As it unravels, he becomes very honest with Mike. He says, “I’m a liar.” As it unravels, he realises the way he’s been is hugely flawed and he’s aware of it.
It’s a fantastical story, and I’m aware of that. But people get caught up in this shit all the time. Although it may seem unbelievable, there are a million stories of people like Dan Milligan.
I enjoyed the relationship between Dan and his hard, military father, Harry Milligan. There is a scene where Harry wants to reach out to Dan, and he doesn’t …
Men of that ilk, from that era, they would have regrets about that. My father was in the army. He was a solider, and he was a very physical man and a hard man, but he told us he loved us all the time. He was different to Dan’s father, but I saw others that were very closed off and as they get older, and their children get older, those moments where they can pick them up and hug them, that’s all gone. And like I said, for men like that in that era there might be some regret for that, and Dan’s father is certainly a man like that.
I found Harry Milligan deeply sympathetic. Did your father’s military history help you flesh out that character?
Yeah, from men I saw and witnessed growing up. I lived on bases until I was 14 or 15 years of age. We travelled every two years. We picked up and left and away we went, so I saw a lot of men like that. There were definitely men and parts of my father who shaped Harry Milligan. I like Harry and I felt sympathy for him as well. He was an enjoyable character to write.
When you’re embarking upon a writing project, do you start with character, or do you start with plot?
Plot. What is the story? And then characters. Very quickly finding out, okay, who’s driving the story? Who’s the narrative lining up next to? Then building out a family. A workspace. I just know where I’m going to go.
With this one, Dan comes across a trove of money. It doesn’t belong to him. It’s organised crime money. He’s going to ask to go back and work it off and his whole life is going to change. He’s going to be put in situations that he would never have imagined, and that he’s not capable of dealing with, but goes through with it.
So, plot-wise, the engine that was driving everything was fairly simple. What I then really like doing is writing about people and relationships and really pulling the covers off. Exposing people for the things that they think but may never say.
There was a thing that happened to me at a writers festival once where a lady got up and said, “I really didn’t like your book.” I said, “Did you finish it?” She said she finished it and I said, “Well you mustn’t have disliked it that much. Can I suggest you didn’t like the way it made you feel?” And she said, “Exactly. Some of the people in there reminded me of people I know.”
“I think that [to give] people comfort that they’re not alone … you’ve got to pull back the covers a little bit and expose flaws or behaviours, or instances where people are less than at their best. Character-wise, they’re always very flawed people. Good people, but flawed people, like all of us.
It’s very intricately plotted. Are you someone who plans out their stories first, or do you follow the characters?
It’s plotted but then I’ll often go back and re-read a lot and I’ll think: it needs something here, and I’ll work in something else. Tightening everything, threading it all together, is the last couple of read-throughs that I’ll do before handing it over.
If I’m not physically writing it, I’m thinking about it all the time. Something I’ve been good at is starting off with something that’s fairly tight, and then bringing in that element that makes certain when I need to turn, that there’s enough there so it’s plausible. Saying that, there’s going to be people who read this and say, “This would never happen.” All I can say to them is this has happened. This has happened thousands of times to people who get in these situations.”
Are you working on your next project?
Yes, I’ve nearly finished the next one. Over 10 years ago, I was going to write this book, and I took it to my publisher and they said, “This is great.” We had three young kids at the time. I spoke to my wife and she said, “I don’t think this is such a great idea for you to be writing this at this moment.” At the same time, I had a film project come across my desk that sort of explored what I wanted to explore.
I was away doing a job in Antarctica all of February and the beginning of March and I had a lot of downtime on the ship, so I started to write. It’s about a father who loses one of his children, a young boy, he’s been abducted. It’s this man and the police investigating the case and how that tears them apart and ultimately, for the father, the decisions that he makes and the dissolution of his life. So, it’s not happy campers territory, but I’ve thought about this over the years. Having children, I think as a father, as a protector, and as a man, [the story] was something that I needed to exorcise for myself.
Read the book review here.
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