Critical Mick

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Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

Evil stuff, hunh?

Hunting the King author Peter Clenott on the tomb of Jesus, the failings of Dan Brown, the years of rejection slips, and Anne Hathaway. An unruly email interview, September 2008.

Critical Mick: Your novel Hunting the King sends motley teams of multinational characters chasing around Iraq, eyes swimming with supernatural visions as they dig for Jesus' bones. Are you going straight to Hell?

Peter Clenott: Hopefully. Unless my wife is going there. Then I'm going to Glasgow.

Critical Mick's review of Peter Clenott's Hunting the King

CM: James Cameron's 2007 announcement that he had found the lost tomb of Jesus caused a minor stir. The discovery he made his documentary about was actually made in 1980 and Antonio Banderas had already made a feature film out of it. Is there any truth to all this Jesus tomb stuff? What's the big deal? PC: There was a report last year by an archaeologist that he had found a tomb bearing the name of Yeshuah. Unfortunately, there may have been 450 Yeshuahs living in Jerusalem at the time, so no one could ever prove if this Yeshuah was Jesus. Anyone who says they've discovered Jesus is just looking for money. Kinda like me. CM: So no big black thunderclouds are gathering over Haverhill, Massachusetts, getting ready to chuck down lightening bolts at blasphemers? Or is weather.com wrong? PC: I'm not evil. Though there may be benefits to it. I have worked for non-profit organizations for about twenty years in the field of housing. I work primarily with homeless families and individuals, people who are threatened with eviction or loss of utilities. I try to keep them housed or help them find stable affordable housing. Evil stuff, hunh? I am Jewish, so that might be the problem.

CM: Dan Brown also wrote a book about a chase that revealed the long-suppressed truth about Jesus and his family. He also almost nuked the Vatican with an antimatter bomb. Is Dan Brown going straight to Hell?

PC: Only if he doesn't improve with his next book. People with true faith aren't troubled by works of fiction and shouldn't be too upset by books like Da Vinci Code. Jesus, as a public figure, is up for grabs.

CM: I can think of a couple more reasons why Dan Brown should be damned. Well, maybe eternal damnation is a bit harsh. Let's have him demonstrate for us how a man can jump out of helicopter a mile in the air and parachute to safety using only a sun visor.

PC:That's hilarious. I asked my wife to jump out of a plane at the same distance using only a pair of my socks. She didn't bite. I think most people will agree that while, Brown can write a page turning story, he is not Shakespeare. Or Anne Hathaway.

CM: Other than a welcome absence of nuclear-powered airplanes and water polo fights to the death, what sets your fiction apart from Dan Brown?

PC: In everything I write I try to keep a balance between entertainment and thought. Successful books must entertain, Da Vinci Code does that. I want readers to remember my work. I want it to provoke discussion. Brown's characters are flat and are tools to move the plot. Molly O'Dwyer, the archaeologist heroine of Hunting the King, is a complex woman with a troubled past. She is conflicted between her thirst for knowledge and her loyalty to her Catholic faith. Hunting the King is a story of lost faith. At one point in the novel, the characters discuss Jesus. Either he was the son of God, and the Christians are right, or he wasn't, and the Jews and non-Christians are right. My point in the book is that this question does not have to be an either-or. You can have it both ways. People just need to be able to accept one another's different faiths and not be troubled by the fact that differences exist. CM: What research did you complete for the book? Was it comprehensive, like ol' Dan claims his was? Or, like Brian McGilloway, did you write this book for yourself without ever envisioning that one day a picky hyper-critical know-it-all named Mick would be questioning every little detail?

Peter Clenott's Hunting the King has its own movie trailer, even though it is a book. Click to watch on YouTube!

PC: Years before I wrote Hunting the King, I wrote a novel called Gospel of Hannaniah. This is the purported story of Jesus's illegitimate daughter. Written in the early 90s it was completed long before Da Vinci was ever heard of. That novel required a lot of historical research. I had also written an introductory Molly O'Dwyer novel called Traces of a Life. Hunting the King was meant to be the sequel. In Hunting the King Molly uncovers the scrolls written by Hannaniah. There is a unique literary bond between these two women. For Hunting the King I had written a screenplay also in the 90s. At the time Saddam Hussein was in power. When I decided to novelize Hunting the King, I had to research modern-day Iraq in regards to the military operation as well as other details.

CM: Any interesting reaction to it? Have any veterans of the Iraq war read Hunting the King? What did they say?

PC: I placed an ad for the book in Stars & Stripes, which is the US military magazine. I have had no response yet. The response in general has been positive. The only negative reaction has been from one or two fundamentalist Christians who will reject anything fiction or otherwise that portrays Jesus in any way other than the biblical way.

CM: I understand you have just completed another novel.

PC: I am very hopeful about Albertville. It is being read by a NY agent now. This is my Oprah book. Again, it is meant to entertain and provoke. It features another strong female lead in Alma Jesse Westcott. Jesse grew up in the segregated Alabama of the 1940s and 50s. She suffers a traumatic assault on the road to Albertville, Alabama, losing her only brother. She goes on to a college education with visions of becoming an author living in Paris. Instead, she is recruited by a former lover to join the US State Department and she is assigned to the Congo in 1960 at the time of that nation's independence from Belgium. The novel will parallel America's Cold War foreign policy, which often included assassination, with the internal Civil Rights struggles as experienced by Jesse who ultimately turns against her State and CIA handlers in support of the new Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.

CM: You have also lived in South Africa and written about the realities there.

CM: Your publisher, Kunati (motto: "Provocative. Bold. Controversial."), offers a selection of novels that look interesting. Tell us a bit about how Hunting the King came to be published.

PC: After years of rejection slips, I got so fed up with American agents and publishers that I decided to look elsewhere. I went onto a site called FirstWriter and looked for Canadian agents and/or publishers. As it turns out, Kunati had just been incorporated a year or so before. Their first novels came out in April 2007. I contacted them in March 2007, per their submission guidelines, with a log line and synopsis. That led to sending three chapters then the whole novel. In August of '07 I got an email from Kunati publisher Derek Armstrong saying he wanted to offer a contract. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. The book came out in April '08 just a little over a year after my first contact with Kunati.

CM:I see you've blurbed Dan Ronco's Unholy Domain. A Kunati title, it's working its way up my TBR stack. Should I be bumping it to the top?

PC: I don't know what other publishing houses do with regard to their authors, but Kunati encourages its authors to support one another in every way possible. We're always blogging one another and passing along information to help one another promote. I think any Kunati author is worth going to the top of your stack. (Kunati, by the way, is Eskimo for, put book to top of stack or we call in the Mob)

Editorial Note: I've heard of being "in" with the Mob, I didn't know I had to be "Inuit" with them too. I'm gonna wind up sleeping with an icy school of fishes.

CM:What's the most recent book you've come across that that's left you dizzy and made you go, "Damn!"

The Body, a 2001 Antonio Banderas film about the reported discovery of Christ's tomb, is an informative but ho-hum thriller.

PC: As difficult as it has been for me to write, it has also been difficult for me to find time for pleasure reading. I have made some contact with other writers through my blogging and did recently finish a book by South African writer Richard de Nooys. His Six Fang Marks and a Tetanus Shot won him the debut novelist first prize in South Africa. The thing that made me say "Damn!" most recently was the Republican National Convention. Four more years of that is enough to make anyone sick. CM: Have we read any of the same shtuff? (Critical Mick Full alphabetic index) Was my review way off about them? PC: Now, I'm completely embarrassed. We share two books: Hunting the King. I completely agree with that review. And Angels and Demons, the only Dan Brown book I've read. That was the best review I've ever read. You should publish a book of your reviews. In fact, you should publish a Dan Brown parody. I know a good lawyer. CM: What project are you working on now?

PC: I have two possibilities: Comrade Lolita about the Puerto Rican nationals who tried to shoot up the House of representatives in the early 50s. Or Liegeia about a slave in the White House in 1850 teaming up with the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe to uncover the assassination of the then president Zachary Taylor. (Taylor's body was exhumed in the 90s and traces of arsenic were found. The theory was that Taylor, rather than Abraham Lincoln, was the first president to be assassinated.)

CM: What project must you complete as your life's work?

PC: Bring common sense to the political life of this planet. Doesn't anybody get it?

CM: What's on your nightstand at the moment? (books, I mean, but other items if you wanna….)

PC: I don't have a night stand. But, if I did, it would contain anything written by Mick Halpin.

CM: Many thanks, Peter, and best of luck in your career!

Peter Clenott has promised to name a villain after Mick Halpin. Visit peterclenott.com for news on his forthcoming books and an indication of which one sends Mick straight to Hell!

Yo! This interview transcript and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2008 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 12 September, 2008.