John Knoerle was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1949 and migrated to California with his family in the 1960s. He has worked as a stand-up comic, a voiceover actor, and a radio reporter. He wrote the screenplay for Quiet Fire, which starred Karen Black and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, and the stage play The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, an Los Angeles Time’s critics choice. John also worked as a writer for Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Knoerle’s first novel, Crystal Meth Cowboys, published in 2003, was optioned by Fox TV. His second novel, The Violin Player, won the Mayhaven Award for Fiction. Knoerle is currently at work on The American Spy Trilogy. Book One, A Pure Double Cross, came out in 2008. Book Two, A Despicable Profession, was published in August of 2010.
John Knoerle currently lives in Chicago with his wife, Judie.
Q. Thank you for this interview, John. Can we begin by having you tell us why you chose to write spy thrillers?
Well, my standard answer is that I wanted to try to combine the terse, gritty style of the hard-boiled masters like Raymond Chandler and Dash Hammett with the greater substance of spy masters like Charles McCarry and John le Carré. And that’s true.
But I believe the deeper reason is that I grew up in a large, multigenerational family with warring factions. I know intrigue!
Q. Did you outline before you wrote your book or did you just go with the flow?
I’m not a go-with-the flow kinda guy. A proper thriller needs a worked-out plotline, a certain destination, IMHO. I spent about a year outlining A Despicable Profession.
Q. Who was your favorite character in A Despicable Profession and why?
Col. John Norwood, the gay, double-dealing head of Britain’s MI6 Berlin station. He’s a larger-than-life character. To me, he represents Great Britain of that postwar era: arrogant, demanding, but beaten down by all he’s survived. As Norwood says of England, “defeated by victory.”
Q. Who was your least favorite character?
I don’t think an author can afford to not like any of his characters, even if they’re rotten.
Q. Can you tell us about the setting and why you chose it?
Berlin in 1946 was a viper’s nest of intrigue as the former WWII allies schemed and plotted for advantage. And the ruined city itself is of course a perfect setting for a spy novel, almost a character in itself.
Q. What was the hardest part to write?
There is an extended action set piece at the conclusion. It was difficult to choreograph all the players in a way that the reader could readily visualize.
Q. What was the inspiration behind the story? Where were you when you came up with the idea?
I was on the last page of one of the many history-of-modern-espionage books that I read to prepare for my American Spy Trilogy. The writer had been telling the story of the wartime OSS and mentioned, almost in passing, that the dissolution of the OSS following the war would leave a gaping intelligence vacuum in the critical years before CIA was created.
I began to wonder what unofficial intelligence activities might have been undertaken on behalf of the United States at that perilous time.
Q. Do you plan on writing more spy thrillers?
I am currently working on Book Three of the American Spy Trilogy which, God willing and the creek don’t rise, will be published in late 2011.
Q. Thank you for this interview, John. Can you tell us where we can find out more about you and your wonderful new book?
I appreciate your interest. My website is bluesteelpress.com. The book is available on Amazon and in select bookstores.
