King's a mystery, and so is his new book

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Who is Hartley GoodWeather?

According to Tom King, author of six award-winning books of fiction, and creator/host of CBC Radio's Dead Dog Cafe, GoodWeather just penned the new mystery novel, DreadfulWater Shows Up.

"A few years ago he [GoodWeather] came to me and said he'd like to write anything but a literary piece, and he wanted to make a lot of money from it," King said. "And I thought that'd be the end of it, and he'd be good and forget all about it. But he didn't."

Funny though how GoodWeather looks an awful lot like King dressed-up in a feathered fedora and an 82nd Annual Crow Fair 2000 jacket.

OK, time to fess up. GoodWeather is actually King's alter-ego, and a clever marketing idea for King's foray into the mystery genre-mysterious author writes mystery book.

King's book was recently reviewed in the Globe & Mail by Margaret Cannon. She said the book set in a small, western town and featuring a cast of Native characters, was "a very good (but not great) first mystery by a writer to watch." She praised the author for "setting out to make some realities of Native life clear and topple some stereotypes."

Tackling outdated ideas and misconceptions about Native people is something King does on purpose in his writing.

"A lot of times, what I like to do is set up a stereotype and get the reader nice and comfortable with it, and then jerk it out from under their feet," King said. "It does a couple of things. It's an occasion for humor, but it also quietly points up some of the racism that exists. The quiet kind that you don't hear about."

King grew up poor in a town where class and racial lines were clearly drawn.

"I didn't know upper middle-class white people," King said to a group of about a hundred people gathered at the University of Toronto's Alumni Hall to hear him read from his new novel.

"I just imagined how they lived," he laughed. "The people I knew growing up worked on railroads, or fixed breaks and engines. These are the people I always go back to."

King/GoodWeather has already started his second mystery novel featuring Thumps DreadfulWater, an ex-cop and photographer turned ace detective. He's also working with APTN to create a Dead Dog Cafe cartoon series for television.

His advice to up and coming Native writers, like Hartley GoodWeather?

"Write whatever you want," King said. "It's a matter that you write well, not what you write. Some people will like it, some people won't."