By Adrian Chamberlain
Times Colonist staff
Pender Island writer William Deverell insists he’s a prisoner. And perhaps that's so.
Then again, it may be all just a figment of the novelist's well-exercised imagination.
Formerly one of Vancouver's top criminal lawyers, Deverell is today among this country's leading purveyors of crime thrillers. His latest, The Laughing Falcon, has already scored plaudits from Canada's dean of mystery book critics, Margaret Cannon.
"Great fun with well-drawn characters," enthuses Cannon in the Globe and Mail. Vancouver Sun critic Sara Dowse seems prepared to virtually deify Deverell, insisting that The Laughing Falcon - a boldly zigzagging yarn of ex-CIA operatives and romance novelists in Costa Rica - is every bit as good as Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection, which this year scooped Britain's prestigious Orange Prize.
Yet Deverell - a shaggy-maned, bespectacled 63-year-old - still grouses during an interview at his funky abode on North Pender, located on 10 acres of tree-clad paradise. "I am a prisoner of the crime genre now," declares the author of 10 crime novels and one non-fiction crime book, Fatal Cruise.
"I have never really achieved" Deverell's sonorous voice trails off. "Never achieved my sworn promise to my father to write a so-called literary book. But hell, I enjoy entertaining people. I don't apologize for that."
William Herbert Deverell (Bill to his friends) may occasionally feel his dad's ghost frowning down upon him. Even though he died more than 20 years ago, his father - a brilliant Shakespeare-spouting dipsomaniac rumoured to be the illegitimate child of a Canadian newspaper magnate - loomed large in our conversation.
Yet by any standard, Deverell is a boffo success in the Canadian literary scene. His very first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal First Novel Award in 1979, sold more than 200,000 copies and was translated into half a dozen languages. For his novel Trial of Passion, he won both the Dashiel Hammett Prize - the crime-writer's Oscar - and Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. He also created the popular CBC TV series, Street Legal, although Deverell says it evolved into something too clean and yuppified.
The man who once made a measly $35 a week as a Saskatoon Star Phoenix scribe has, as a crime writer, earned well with book, film and TV revenues. Overall, Deverell says he's pretty content.
And yet...
His idol is John Updike, the decidedly literary prince of American fiction. So why doesn't Deverell pen his own high-brow novel?
"I may well," he says, airily, peering at a reporter over his glasses. "I have lots of books yet to write. We'll see."
Poet-novelist Susan Musgrave first met Deverell back in the late '70s before he'd come out as a writer. Deverell and Musgrave's husband at the time, Victoria lawyer Jeff Green, were both representing dope-runners in a sensational drug bust off the coast of northern Vancouver Island. RCMP had discovered a ship carrying 60,000 lbs. of marijuana reputed to be worth $7 million had run ground en route to Alaska. Deverell later used the case as the springboard for his second novel, High Crimes. Musgrave eventually left Green for his client, a rock guitarist turned trafficker named Paul Oscar Nelson.
She was impressed by Deverell's un-lawyer-like facade: "He was unshaven and sporting a Cowichan toque. He seemed like a real human being, not someone who'd slice you to ribbons in court." Musgrave recalls that around this time she, Green and Deverell enjoyed a boozy social evening that lasted all night. When the trio finally staggered back to Deverell's home on Pender, sheepish and hung-over, his wife Tekla (a Jungian psychologist turned organic produce farmer) let them have it.
From the doorstep she announced: "Assholes aren't allowed in." Says Musgrave: "It turned out she just meant Bill."
His friends say that, at one time, Deverell partied with the best of them. Yet these days the writer seems to serve the god of fiction-writing with almost monastic devotion.
Each day, he strolls under a canopy of lacy rainforest to a tiny log cabin five minutes from his house. There, beginning at 10 a.m. - give or take a computer chess or bridge game - he writes at a "reasonably white heat" until dinner time. If Deverell is late for supper, having become entangled in the byzantine maze of his fictional world, Tekla gives him a stern reprimand. (The writer married Tekla Melnyk when he was 21. An engaging, attractive woman, she occasionally chipped in during the interview, finding old news articles and photos. Deverell depends on her editing skills, affectionately insisting that Tekla is his "fiercest critic.")
The size of a spacious bathroom, Deverell's hut seems the ultimate West Coast writer's garret. There's a vintage pistachio-green Garry stove in one corner. Childhood artifacts from his son Daniel (a New York-based computer graphics designer and university lecturer) and daughter Tamara (a Toronto film designer) are carefully placed on a shelf: a toy bear, a rabbit, an elephant figure created when Tamara was five. A blue tin of Amphora pipe tobacco sits by his computer. One wall is decorated with a painting done on a dried fungus ("from a fan with amorous intentions," explains Deverell) and a new addition: his old law school diploma. The latter looks rather mildewed. "I just found it under the house as I was going through the archives. It's pretty musty looking," says the writer, grinning. On a notepad beside his keyboard, the novelist plots his outlines and ideas in longhand.
He is anything but ostentatious - his friend, the poet Patrick Lane, says he is in some ways "quite a shy fellow." So in 1979 Deverell was a touch taken aback when flamboyant publisher Jack McClelland hatched a outrageous publicity stunt after his first novel, Needles, snagged the Seal Prize. McClelland presented the fledgling novelist his winnings as a mini-mountain of 10 dollar bills. The stack, flanked by two bank guards, was as tall - six foot two - as Deverell. The publisher followed it up by mailing hundreds hypodermic syringes along with review copies of Needles, which chronicles the Vancouver heroin trade. Contacted by a reporter, Deverell, until then unaware of the prank, retained his composure, even quipping: "The needle is part of the hype."
Needles is about a psycho-killer who seeks revenge against his prosecutor. In creating the yarn, Deverell - who'd previously written only a few pieces of short fiction - followed the hoary creative writing dictum: "Write what you know." The plot was inspired by a murder trial he'd actually prosecuted. The accused had attempted to replicate the deeds of a thrill-killer in the Lawrence Sanders novel, The First Deadly Sin. As he was led away to prison, the real-life murderer had muttered ominously to Deverell: "Someday I'm going to get you."
First-time novelists typically struggle for years find a publisher, let alone write a best-seller. Needles was a smashing success right out of the gate. Nonetheless, its gestation was difficult. At age 39, having convinced the partners at his Gastown law firm to allow him a year-long writing sabbatical, he retreated to Pender (then a summer home) and found himself stymied by a vise-like writer's block. It lasted six agonizing months. Deverell felt pressured to write the great Canadian novel, and thought about such revered Can-lit heroes as Margaret Atwood (who later became a friend) and Mordecai Richler, not to mention his idol, Updike. As the days slipped by, he stared mutely at his Underwood typewriter, waiting for inspiration.
"The words took months to come. Then I realized I was doing this for my father." In the midst of this struggle, his father died. Deverell was naturally saddened, yet ironically, the death came with a silver lining. Somehow, the aspiring writer felt his psychic shackles - the almost unconscious pressure from his father to write a "literary" novel - had evaporated.
"I thought, I am going to write the complete and utter thriller, make no bones about it." And he did, even though he wasn't - and still is not - particularly a fan of the genre. Desperate to make up for lost time, Deverell pounded away for 10 and 12 hours a day. He'd finally opened the door to a crime-writer's version of the Aladdin's Cave - his trove of experiences as a Vancouver lawyer who'd overseen more than 1,000 cases. For the first time ever, he felt absolutely confident as a writer. "When it started to come," said Deverell, leaning forward intently, "I knew absolutely within my heart that this would get published."
He always was, and still is, dedicated and disciplined. While studying law at the University of Saskatchewan, the Regina native did grueling double duty as a night editor at the Star Phoenix. Deverell had briefly considered being a full-time newspaperman, but decided it didn't pay enough to support a family. What he really wanted to do was write fiction, but "fear of failure" led him to law instead.
Before completing law school, he took a year off and worked as a reporter for the Vancouver Sun. Deverell fell in love with the West Coast and its mild winters. When he finally became a lawyer, he and a few friends launched a firm that first operated on South Granville Street in Vancouver, then in Gastown.
Back then, in the '60s, a dope-smoking hippy could land six months in jail for possessing a single joint. Deverell soon developed a reputation a something of a crusader; a lawyer who'd battle for the underdog.
"I must have defended every pot-head in Vancouver, every down-and-outer," he said.
One of his favourite recollections is the case of the Karma Sutra calendar. A head-shop owner was busted for selling these "obscene" items, each month depicting a different sexual position. "The judge decided, 'Well, January through March I find not guilty. April, May and June I find guilty,' and so on." The defendant was fined - but only for the obscene months.
Deverell enjoyed law as a intellectual exercise, and relished the competition. Yet ultimately, as his reputation grew, he found himself defending not the little guy, but high-rolling drug lords with scads of cash.
"Eventually," he says, "the fun goes out of the practice of law when you're defending those for whom you have little sympathy. And there was always this voice whispering in my ear, "When are you going to start writing the Great Canadian Novel?"
His friends all say one of Deverell's defining traits is a strong social conscience. This takes various forms; for example, he and Tekla retain a small cabin on their property that's rented out for a pittance to aspiring writers. As chairman of the Writers' Union of Canada, Deverell boldly condemned a controversial publishing house merger of Doubleday and Random House, saying that it would result in book discounts and smaller pay cheques for writers. A journalist declared Deverell was "unafraid to bite the hand that feeds him," noting that some of the writer's own paperbacks are published by Random House Canada.
Deverell is an environmentalist who bemoans the encroachment of streets and power lines on a rustic retreat the couple own in Costa Rica, where they spend several months each year. And he's become an outspoken opponent of what he sees as irresponsible development of the Gulf Islands. In an October opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun, Deverell complained of this "bucolic paradise" being battered by huge population masses and pummeled by developers. His friend, poet Brian Brett, says Deverell has been ensnared in some incendiary battles over land issues on Pender Island. Another chum, writer Audrey Thomas, believes that he was recently booed at a public meeting by those who disagreed with his views on island development. She says: "I think that was really distressing to him."
Of late, Deverell's been rummaging through a life-time of personal papers, requested by the University of Saskatchewan for its archives. He unearthed a diary he'd kept as a teenager. The entry for April 24, 1954 reads: "Someday I may shock the world into noticing me. I hope to be a great writer." A few lines later, he continues: "I'm dispirited because I'm afraid I'm falling in love with a girl. I wouldn't mind that very much, except that the girl seems to be quite bored with me."
The chief influence on the lovelorn teen was his father, Robert Deverell. Like his son, Robert was a newspaper man who harboured literary aspirations. He'd worked for the Regina Leader Post, and had "unsuccessfully" submitted short fiction to the New Yorker.
Robert's mother - Deverell's grandmother - was a vivacious and beautiful Irish woman who worked for a cook in the Toronto mansion of Sir Clifford Sifton. Sifton was a member of Canada's social and political elite, serving as a prominent member of the federal cabinet at the turn of the century. He later purchased the Manitoba Free Press, then one of Canada's most influential newspapers (it later became the Winnipeg Free Press). The family went on to acquire the Regina Leader Post, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and a clutch of Prairie radio stations.
The rumour, which Deverell believes to be true, is that his father was an illegitimate child of Sir Clifford Sifton. (Pierre Berton once tried to investigate it, but was unable to sleuth out definitive proof.) Robert Deverell quit school in Grade 6, and later led a free-wheeling itinerant existence. He was a card-shark who rode the rails, lived in "hobo jungles" and traveled through each of the 48 U.S. continental states.
The Siftons eventually tracked Robert down, brought him back to Canada and found him a job at the Regina Leader Post. An alcoholic who drifted in and out of work, Deverell's father was nonetheless a brilliant man with a keen literary bent. He read Goethe and Schiller in the original German, and in his cups quoted reams of Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats. His son also remembers him as an overbearing fellow with a chip on his shoulder. Robert Deverell was cursed with the sense of having failed to live up to his promise.
"He would sit around with professors from the university and he would be correcting them constantly," said Deverell.
William's mother was a nurse who kept the family together emotionally and otherwise. She also hungrily devoured mystery novels. Robert Deverell didn't share that interest. "My father pooh-poohed the whole genre."
Deverell found the old man rather overpowering. There's little doubt his father's long shadow contributed to adult angst over being pigeon-holed as a mere crime writer as opposed to a man of letters - the sort of writer Robert Deverell admired and tried to be.
Deverell recalls - with the crystalline clarity of the injured party - once being roundly criticized by Lane, a poet who has achieved national renown for his writings. "He said you write all this commercial shit and you make all this money. And we true artists don't make anything."
Despite this, the pair became friends. Lane admits to the comment, saying he made it 12 years ago when the poet was in a miserable mood. "I pricked him fairly good with it, I think I probably hurt him," he said. Adds Lane: "It's a gift to be able to write like Bill Deverell. And I can't write like Bill."
Literary critic Margaret Cannon, who recently lauded Deverell's The Laughing Falcon, is a Toronto-based Arkansas native who's read crime and mystery novels for 40 years, and reviewed them for a quarter of a century. Today, she notes, there are many critically acclaimed Canadian writers who specialize in the mystery-crime-thriller genre, including include Eric Wright, Peter Robinson and the late L.R. "Bunny" Wright. She believes Deverell is amongst the cream of the crop - an ambitious, complex author whose novels have oodles of literary merit.
In her view, The Laughing Falcon is as fine as his best work.
As for those who dismiss Deverell as a mere crime writer, Cannon lobs a few words of advice. "Instead of agonizing over this, he ought to give them a quick chop over the nose. He writes real books."
Does William Deverell truly feel caught in a prison with bars forged out of his crime novels? After all, his friends say he can be a bit of a joker, at times. Perhaps he's just following the advice of British humorist Jerome K. Jerome, who once wrote, "If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest."
The writer says he suspects his old lawyer cronies may envy his laid-back lifestyle on a patch of Pender Island paradise. Most of the time, it's virtually stress-free.
He leans forward with a half-smile and confides: "I don't feel I'm aging, you know."