ON THE CREATION OF “IRON
CITY”
By David Scott
Milton
Ten
years ago I made the first notes on “Iron City”. It began as a stage play,
became a screenplay, and eventually was written as a novel. It’s a companion
work to my earlier novel, “Kabbalah”, though I hadn’t planned it that way. Both
take place in Pittsburgh, Pa., the Squirrel Hill and Greenfield sections, and
both involve murder. In “Kabbalah” the murder takes place at the very beginning
and the reader knows who the murderer is. It is a chase novel in which two
people who grew up with the murderer, a cop consumed by ineradicable envy and a
rabbi obsessed with the ancient Jewish practice of Kabbalah, for their own
complex reasons, set out to find him.
(You can read the preface to
the reissued edition of “Kabbalah” to learn how I came to write it, not an
uninteresting process. See www.dsmilton.com or www.redroom.com/author/david-scott-milton)
“Iron City” is more
traditional, a dense mystery involving a string of bizarre murders that is not
solved until the very end. A disgraced ex-cop, Frank Kalinyak, a Greenfield
native, is on a mission to find why the victims are being killed and who the
murderer is. Kalinyak, who has suffered a tragic loss in his life, seeks to
redeem an existence that is drifting, splintering, by tracking the murderer who
has terrorized the city he grew up in, Pittsburgh, Pa., known by people raised
there as Iron City. The area that Kalinyak operates in, the area where the
killer lurks, is a harsh, brutal environment of pimps, hookers, druggies, failed
clergy, business hustlers, closed-down, rotting steel
mills.
We
follow Kalinyak on his increasingly desperate search for the murderer and to
prevent further terror and slaughter, through the underbelly of Iron City. We
find ourselves in a maelstrom of political and church intrigue, brutal
encounters, surprising duplicities, ghosts of the past, furies of the present.
There are complex
psychological elements in both novels. I have always had great respect for the
mystery form. Dostoyevsky was an early influence on my work, as were the novels
of the Belgian, Georges Simenon. I admired the seriousness, the complexity in
their works, Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, “Brothers Karamazov”, “The
Possessed,” Simenon, “The Man Who Watched Trains Go By”, “Belle”, “The Brothers
Rico”: they were less “whodunits” as “whydunnits”, mysteries of character: they
were about peeling away levels of reality to reach the core of a human being,
the person’s soul.
“Iron City” is a mystery
that’s not solved until the end. I’m limited in what I can reveal about what
propelled me to write this story. It involves a series of murders that are
connected by a horrific act that has poisoned a community. As is true of all of
my novels it has relevance to my life and the complications in my life.
The
texture of the neighborhoods I grew up in is a very important element in the
book, as it is in many of my books. Squirrel Hill and Greenfield to the south;
North of Forbes, above Squirrel Hill—these neighborhoods have become my Dublin,
North and South Sides, the Hill District, my Nighttown. Squirrel Hill proper was
middle-class; as you moved into Greenfield the environment became working class.
North of Forbes was upper middle class with pockets of wealth. These areas form
a checkerboard of class and religious tensions, envies, wounds that fester,
scars that remain open.
I
must warn you—the novel is dark. I recently read a review of Simenon’s “The Man
Who Watched Trains Go By”, and the critic said of the book, “Despair
and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's ‘The Man Who Watched Trains Go
By’, a book that I considered to be darker than noir.” I’ve told you how much I
admire Simenon. And it’s possible that “Iron City” is darker than noir. It’s
possible that all of my novels are darker than noir.
Sorry.
The
book forms an intricate puzzle. I think the writing is strong. I have not
condescended to the genre. It’s a serious novel, ambitious, ingenious. If you’ve
liked my earlier novels, plays, and films, I think you’ll like “Iron City.” It’s
a tough book, a journey through a hellish world of harsh entanglements, brutal
relationships, reversals, twists, piercing insights into the dark night of the
soul. To be true, also, there are bright spots and entertainment and the
pleasures in what the novel illuminates, much darkness, but also explosions of
light, rich characters, the way they talk and behave, their ambitions, dreams,
foibles. And there is also tenderness and love and the generosity that grows
from love.
I
aspired, ultimately, to reveal something true and strong about our lives, about
retribution, foundering dreams, guilt, love lost, and love redeemed, to tell one
tale of this strange journey we all take to a dusty end.
About
the Author:
David
Scott Milton (born September 15, 1934) is an American author,
playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their
theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and
films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been
compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson Algren. Ben
Gazzara’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony
nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award.
His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best
one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second
novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award “for
significant contribution to American literature.
Learn
more about David at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Scott_Milton
You
Tube Video of David reading from Iron City
http://youtu.be/U-ERnDTWhaA
Iron
City
By
David Scott Milton
Publisher: White
Whisker Books Date Published: September 1, 2011
Genre:
dark mystery
Frank
Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., “Iron
City”, his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a
desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has
been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who
murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a
whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church
duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the
fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he
struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is
he and can he survive?
“David
Scott Milton can write like an angel… a writer hell bent on
fulfilling the legacy of John Steinbeck, carrying on the tradition of
James Jones and exploring his own heights.” -- Alabama Journal
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