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THE LOVE OF AN ISLAND,
THE DESIRE TO WRITE
A DETECTIVE NOVEL
Tree Callister is not much of a private detective. But by contrast, Ron Base is one heck of a writer.
The former newspaper and magazine journalist and movie critic, Base recently published his novel, "The Sanibel Sunset Detective," not only to great reviews here on the islands, but in his home country, Canada.
"It just came out, so it's a little hard to gauge," said Base. "But so far I'm hearing that people are really pleased with it. People are quite fascinated about this area, the cohabitation of man and nature that goes on here. In fact, I find myself enthralled with the island like no other place in Florida. Sanibel really is a breath of fresh air."
In "The Sanibel Sunset Detective," a 12-year-old client has just showed up at Tree Callister's door. The boy has $7 with which to hire a detective to find his mother.
Everyone on Sanibel, where Tree lives, thinks the former newspaper reporter is out of his mind. His only defender is his wife Freddie, and even she has doubts about her husband‘s new profession.
"Then a headless body shows up, along with a threatening thug, the beautiful wife of a convicted media tycoon, a couple of suspicious detectives, and a former girlfriend, now an FBI agent, who suspects Tree knows more than he is admitting," a synopsis of the novel explains. "Suddenly, all sorts of people are trying to manipulate Tree Callister. Everyone thinks he’s in way over his head. But maybe, just maybe, he’s going to surprise everyone — even himself."
Base, whose brother, Ric, is well known to islanders as the President of the Sanibel & Captiva Islands Chamber of Commerce, admits that the book is "semi-autobiographical," since Tree Callister is a former journalist.
"He kinda reacts the same way that I would," said Base, who will return to Sanibel later this moth to do addition promotion for the book. "He is sort of coming to terms with himself, fumbling around in a new environment — a newspaper man trying to become a detective. And everybody thinks that he's crazy to do something like that."
During his career as a journalist, Base was a freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine as well as the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, New York Newsday, and Toronto Star. He published his first novel, "Matinee Idol," in 1985. He followed that book with the non-fiction, "If The Other Guy Isn't Jack Nicholson, I've Got The Part," before settling in as a screenwriter of several "straight to cable and video thrillers," he chuckled. Among his works are the 80's cult classic "Heavenly Bodies" and "First Degree," which starred Rob Lowe.
However, Base has also worked with such legendary filmmakers as John Boorman ("Deliverance") and Roland Joffe ("The Killing Fields").
His second novel, "The Strange," was far more successful than his first because, as the writer recalls, "I got out and helped market it myself."
"It did really well," he added. "So I got encouraged to do even more."
Part of the idea to write "The Sanibel Sunset Detective," which Base noted is the first in a series of Tree Callister adventures, came from his brother.
"Ric said to me that since I come down to Sanibel so often, why not set my next novel here," Base explained. "I grew up reading Mickey Spillane thrillers — I've always been fascinated by private detectives. So I asked myself, 'What if there was a former newspaper guy who lives on Sanibel, kind of an outsider, who becomes a private detective?'"
The result is "The Sanibel Sunset Detective," which the author described as "full of fast-paced action, humor, unexpected plot twists, and memorable characters." The book is currently available at the Sanibel Island Bookshop and Bailey's General Store.
--Jeff Lysiak, The Island Reporter
THE PRIVATE DETECTIVE
INSIDE ME
In the late 1970s, working as a journalist for a New York syndicate I went down to Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina to interview the legendary mystery writer, Mickey Spillane. Beginning in 1947, Spillane wrote a series of hard-boiled paperback novels starring a tough-as-nails private detective named Mike Hammer. Titles such as Vengeance Is Mine and I, The Jury and My Gun Is Quick sold in excess of 180 million copies and created a publishing phenomenon that spawned movies and TV series.
Spillane’s novels were pulp fiction pushed to the limits of the day, filled not only with a ruthless vigilante-style violence but also with sex that, while never explicit, was certainly suggestive enough to keep a kid like myself eagerly turning pages by flashlight, late at night, under the covers. This was, after all, forbidden literature. My parents did not want me reading such filth. I, of course, consumed it avidly.
By the time I interviewed him, Spillane’s glory days were past. He was in his early sixties, content to drink beer and hang out with the three of his four children who were living with him in a big, rambling oceanside house. He still wrote but children’s fantasy adventures, not mysteries. He would talk about the old glory days, but reluctantly. He never was the city slicker, even though he was born in Brooklyn, more a country boy who disliked big cities and the glitz and the glamour of fame.
I thought a lot about Mickey Spillane when I started writing my own private detective novel, The Sanibel Sunset Detective. In a curious way, my encounter with him served as a source of inspiration. I knew I couldn’t write a character like Mike Hammer, Shell Scott or Mike Shayne, the shamuses of my adolescence, guys who could handle women and guns with equal alacrity.
But suppose you weren’t like those guys, suppose you didn’t know anything about guns and not too much more about women. Suppose you were someone more like, well, me -- and that someone decided to become a private detective on an island like Sanibel? What would happen to him? What kind of trouble would he get himself into?
Thus was more or less born my main character, an ex-newspaperman named Tree Callister who used to come to Sanibel and Captiva as a child but hadn’t been back since, not until his new wife, Freddie, was offered a job on the island.
What would happen, I wondered, if this character who can’t do much of anything found himself involved in the sort of mystery any self-respecting private eye out of my youth might have encountered--but with a few differences.
Tree would be totally unsuited to the dangerous world he finds himself in, but as much to his surprise as anyone else’s, he discovers that not only can he operate in this world , but he actually begins to enjoy himself, liking the idea of danger and duplicity, attracted to a landscape on which no one is quite what they seem.
I decided to play with some of the traditions set out in the private detective novels. Instead of a femme fatale showing up at his office (although she does make an appearance later), Tree’s first client would be a twelve-year-old boy named Marcello. He has the princely sum of seven dollars with which to hire Tree to find his mother.
Soon enough Tree stumbles upon a headless corpse and finds himself involved with the aforementioned femme fatale who is married to an imprisoned media tycoon. There is also a nasty hood who threatens Tree’s life, a couple of cops who wouldn’t mind pinning a murder or two on him, and a former girl friend, now an FBI agent, who shows up to make Tree’s life even more complicated.
I also wanted to write about a happy marriage. I didn’t want yet another single detective, living alone, drinking heavily, embittered by the world. I wanted a couple, more like Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett‘s The Thin Man, the only other instance in recorded detective fiction that I can think of where the detective and his wife are allowed to unconditionally love one another. I wanted a similar kind of relationship for Tree, albeit without the alcohol that so casually fuelled Nick and Nora’s marriage.
As for setting the story on Sanibel Island and environs, I have my brother Ric to thank for that. He is the president of the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce so it’s his job to extol the virtues of this bit of paradise, a job he does exceedingly well.
My wife Kathy and I fell in love with the place almost as soon as the plane landed at Fort Myers Airport. I am something of an interloper here, I know, but a happy and totally admiring interloper, much like Tree Callister himself.
I plan to return often. So does Tree. The Sanibel Sunset Detective is the first in a series of Tree Callister adventures. The private detective inside me has found an alter ego in Tree, and a home on Sanibel and Captiva Island.
--From The Sanibel Island Reporter
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The Kid Who Became A Movie Critic
Ron Base, a former Toronto Star movie critic and author of Magic Man and The Strange, has completed his first book in a series of detective novels based on an Island in Florida.At The Sanibel Sunset Detective’s book launch party held at the
author’s Milton home on February 13, Base said he always wanted to ackle a story about private detective work.
The idea was generated from an area Base and his wife Kathy had fallen madly in love with: the Sanibel and Captiva Islands.
Base’s brother Ric, president of the Sanibel and Captiva Islands Chamber of Commerce, said “‘Why don’t you come up with a series of detective novels set down here because we’ve got all sort of tourists
coming through and they’re always looking for something to read.’”
Having always been fascinated by the genre, “I thought there was an
opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do,” Base said.
The Sanibel Sunset Detective begins in the office of Tree Callister, a
former newspaperman in Chicago turned private detective, as he meets
his first client, a 12-year-old boy named Marcello, who needs an
investigator to find his missing mother. Rather than contact the
police, Marcello successfully convinces Tree to take on the case.
With seven dollars.
When Base was developing the characters and the plot for Sanibel
Sunset, he first thought of Tree as a tough, gun-wielding guy in a
trench coat surrounded by half-naked babes.
“But wait a minute, hold on, that’s not really me,” he said.
Instead, he determined that Tree would share a lot of his own attributes.
“He’s a former newspaperman and he’s been thrown out of work and he
and his wife now live on Sanibel Island and he decides to become a
private detective. What kind of detective would he be?” he said.
“Well, he’d be sort of like me. He’d be very ineffective as a private
detective. But maybe he’d stumble through and somehow come out okay in
the end.”
Prior to writing novels, Base grew up reading movie reviews by Toronto
Star writer Clyde Gilmour, clipping and scrap-booking the articles
while thinking “wouldn’t it be incredible to be able to do what Clyde
GIlmour does: just go to the movies all the time and write about it,”
Base said.
“Lo and behold, years later, I not only became the movie critic at the
Toronto Star, but I replaced Clyde Gilmour, the guy that I’d grown up
reading all the time,” he continued.
It was “Too much of a good thing,” he recalled, describing that his
days consisted entirely of interviewing people and watching movies.
“The most unusual part of that job was that you get to see a movie
before anybody else does,” he said.
“You got to write about things that excited you that nobody else knew
about,” Base said, noting opportunities to watch and review E.T. by
Steven Spielberg and the first film written by Joel and Ethan Coen,
Blood Simple.
He has written 10 books since switching the focus of his discipline.
Base currently publishes with West-End Books.
--Stuart Service, The Halton Compass
In many ways, Ron Base’s life has been one big adventure; he has written for major magazines, worked with noted movie directors and lived in foreign countries. So when it came time for him to put pen to paper — or rather fingers to keyboard — to start his latest novel, it was no surprise he chose to write an adventure full of mystery and fantasy.
His recently-released book, The Strange, certainly has plenty of both, serving them up in generous portions to engage imaginations and delight readers.
That is, if he’s been successful in his mission, Base said. So far online critics have praised The Strange, Base’s fifth novel, calling it a “page-turner” for all ages, and the local author can only hope the positive response continues.
“I think that’s the strength of the book,” he said, explaining it’s the kind of book that keeps readers riveted until the very end.
It’s one Base hopes teens and adults alike will enjoy.
“I want them (my books) to be intelligent and well-written, but there’s still a kid in me that likes adventure. I’m a sucker for it.”
And there’s no art form that unleashes one’s imagination the way books do, he said.
The Strange is set against the backdrop of magical, turn-of-the-century Paris in 1889 and follows the adventures of a troubled, 14-year-old orphan who’s out to stop an international confidence woman — and possible witch — from selling the Eiffel Tower.
“It’s a cat and mouse game as she tries to pull off the con,” Base explained.
The title of the book refers to the power teen character Ned Arnhelm believes he possesses — an ability to levitate objects and peer into the “Other World,” a strange place indeed.
It’s been a years-long process writing the book, with some parts penned in Montreal and some here in Milton where Base and his wife, Kathy, moved two years ago.
“Milton is a town that for me seems to be conducive to sitting quietly and (writing),” he said.
The simple — but never easy — act of persevering is one necessary for any author, Base said, including a seasoned writer like himself. Initial drafts of The Strange weren’t received well and required plenty of re-writing over a span of years.
“It’s been a long, arduous journey writing the book,” he said.
However, for someone who wrote to deadline for 25 years, it’s nice having the luxury of taking his time. And holding the finished book in his hands makes it worth all the “angst, horror and rejection you’ve gone through,” he said.
Base has been a writer in one form or another since his late teens. He started out as a reporter with his small-town Ontario newspaper and worked his way up, moving on to bigger papers including almost a decade as the Toronto Star’s movie critic.
He’s written for magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to the Washington Post and has also produced non-fiction works and screenplays, working with directors including Roland Joffe ( The Killing Fields) and John Boorman ( Deliverance).
Not one to stay in one place for too long, Base has lived in Los Angeles, Montreal, Paris and Rome.
His frequent trips to Paris aided in his research for The Strange and provided the necessary inspiration.
It’s difficult for novelists to get their books into stores if their names aren’t John Grisham or Dan Brown, Base said. So the Internet has become hugely helpful in providing opportunities smaller authors wouldn’t otherwise have.
“In theory, you can take more of your destiny in your own hands as far as your books are concerned,” he said, adding his publisher, West-End Books, emphasizes the on-line component.
But that doesn’t mean Base avoids personal interaction with his readers — far from it. He recently held a launch party at his Milton home, opening his door to more than 100 people, and held one in Toronto drawing 150. He also hopes to hold similar launches in Montreal and the U. S.
“I’m tremendously proud of what’s been accomplished,” Base said, adding he’s had a wonderful team of supporters.
Stephanie Hounsell, The Canadian Champion
