NEWS/EVENTS FROM WAYNE D. DUNDEE
- In the 100-issue anniversay edition of Mystery Scene Magazine, Joe Hannibal is listed among the top 100 private eyes who have, during the "Mystery Scene era," made a noteworthy mark upon the genre. More information here (PDF).
More information about the upcoming publication of The Day After Yesterday coming soon. But first, if you haven't meet Joe Hannibal, learn more about him below.
ABOUT JOE HANNIBAL
In one sense, Joe Hannibal sprang fully realized to the pages of "The Fancy Case," my first story to feature him. Other than the Rockford, Illinois setting and whatever "personal voice" I managed to bring to my writing, there was little to distinguish Joe from many other tough-guy fictional private eyes. He didn't hesitate to get physical or bring his trusty .45 into play if the need arose, was attractive to beautiful dames despite his knocked-around appearance, tossed off irreverent wisecracks, drove a battered Ford Mustang, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and kept an "office bottle" of bourbon in his desk drawer to be indulged in by himself as well as any distraught clients who might drop by. After choosing his name and deciding once and for all that he was going to be a PI, the rest -- as a result of influences by dozens of other protagonists from the kind of hardboiled detective mysteries I'd been reading all my life -- fell into place almost automatically.
In a broader sense, however, Hannibal had been gestating inside my head for years before "The Fancy Case." At various stages, those times when he wasn't always envisioned as being a private eye, he had been a spy (James Bond influence), a contract killer for the government (Matt Helm influence), a cop (TV influence), an outlaw on the run between the mob and the law (Richard Stark's Parker influence), a bar bouncer who did "favors" for people as a sideline (Travis McGee influence), and so on. His name in these different incarnations was, at one time or other: Lew Torrent, Ward Houston, Dan Cash, Dan Hannibal, Mike Rex, Joe Dancer, and probably a few others I no longer remember. Because I thought it was a sort of prerequisite for these types of stories to be told against some kind of well known, already established backdrop, the settings I chose tended to be places I had never been -- usually cities like New York, Miami, LA -- which gave me no authenticity, no genuine "feel" as far as capturing the right atmosphere or sense of place in trying to write them.
Finally, the combination of Hannibal's name (influenced primarily by Mark Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, coupled with just plain Joe as in "average Joe") and my own smaller-city backyard setting of Rockford, Illinois, gave me a set of ingredients that I felt more self-assured and comfortable with. It would be these ingredients, ultimately, that also provided some of the background and personal characteristics that began to give Joe at least a little distinction from the rest of the pack of tough guy protagonists.
Like me, Joe has very deep blue collar roots. His parents were killed in a car wreck when he was very young, and he was raised by his grandparents on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. He firmly made up his mind as a teenager, however, that he didn't want to grow up chained to the risk and demands of farm life. Influenced by stories he'd heard of the time his grandfather had spent as a policeman in his younger days, Joe went that route instead and became a Chicago cop, earning detective rank in near-record time. He also married young, his high school sweetheart, only to have his marriage and his life crushed a few years later when he caught his wife cheating with his detective partner. His grandparents already passed away by then, Joe turned away from all he had known in his life up to that point, and roamed restlessly and bitterly across the country for a few years. He became hardened and more dangerous during this time, although he never really lost the basic decency and middle class values that had been instilled in him early on.
I purposely did not give Joe a hitch in the Army as any part of his background. He, like me, was of the Vietman era, and it obviously could have added some depth to him if he had served in that conflict. But because I injected so much of myself in Hannibal and I never served in 'Nam, I didn't feel comfortable trying to reflect something, through him, that I'd never experienced. As detailed in some passages of chapter 25 in And Flesh And Blood So Cheap, Joe, like me, at times feels a curious kind of guilt about "sitting out" the war. Neither of us protested it or did anything to dodge the draft -- our numbers simply never came up and so we went on with the rest of our lives. Only in retrospect, thinking back on friends and family members who did serve (and especially the ones who never came back) do we wonder...
Eventually Joe found himself back in Illinois, in Rockford, and that's where he decided to settle and hang out his PI shingle. The series picks up some years after he is already established there. His best buddy has become Bomber Brannigan, a huge bear of a man, a former boxer and pro wrestler, who now runs the Bomb Shelter, a popular downtown bar. Bomber's gal Friday is Liz Grimaldi and she is also Joe's other closest friend, theirs being a sort of Matt Dillon/Miss Kitty kind of relationship that the reader (at least this was my aim) always felt might be on the brink of turning into something more. Another recurring character and friend (of sorts) is Lieutenant of Detectives Ed Terry, RPD. County sheriff Dar Schmidt, newspaper reporter Chet Mundy, and Benny Jewel, a low-rolling local gambler, are other characters who make more than one appearance.
All of this -- the setting, history, and cast of characters -- unfolds in the course of the early handful of short stories and then was fleshed out more fully as the novels began. In the course of the novels, I think my writing and characterizations (including Joe) have evolved into something a bit more complex than the rather straightforward sock-and-shoot type of tales I was doing in the beginning. I'm not trying to suggest that I am now doing anything of lofty significance, nor am I apologizing for my self-admitted pulp influence and the action-driven style that came from it early on. I am merely submitting, for reader consideration, that there has been some change and growth in the series. Nor can I claim this was anything especially calculated... I suspect it was largely due to me maturing as a person as much as anything. And maybe maturing as a reader, too. Plus I think it's safe to say that the hardboiled mystery fiction of today, in general, has more depth and complexity than most of the post-WWII paperbacks (enjoyable though they were!) that influenced my generation of reader/writers.
Consciously or unconsciously, Joe has taken on many of my traits and sensibilities. In the beginning I was in my thirties and I envisioned him to be a few years older than me. Now, as I progress into my late fifties, I have begun to sort of "freeze" Joe in age (as other writers including two of my favorites, Mickey Spillane and Donald Hamilton, have done with their protagonists). For however long the series and I are able to continue, Joe will stay vaguely in his middle fifties.
Other things about Joe that have changed or become more clearly defined in the course of the series so far: He no longer smokes (a habit I gave him for a while albeit one I never had myself), he continues to rely on his .45 semiautomatic for hairier situations but his backup hideaway gun is now a palm-sized 9mm Kel-Tec P-11 instead of the .22 Magnum derringer he used to carry clipped in his boot. He fights a thickening gut and various aches and pains from past injuries and just plain getting older, his beer of choice has changed from Budweiser to Michelob Ultra, he now drives Honda automobiles, he is still nuts about greasy thin-crust pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs ("no ketchup allowed in a 12-foot radius!"), and he has established a fairly serious relationship with news magazine reporter Jan Mosby, whom readers first met in And Flesh And Blood So Cheap and who went on to play even more of a key role in The Fight In The Dog.
But, fair warning, with the upcoming publication of The Day After Yesterday many things in Hannibal's world are about to be shaken up. Just remember that the most interesting things in life often happen on the brink of chaos and, first and foremost, Joe is a survivor. Hell, if he wasn't, considering all the shit I've put him through over the years, he'd have buckled under a long time ago.
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