Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part 1 Works
- 1 Thomas King's Abo-Modernist Novels
- 2 “Wide-Angle Shots”: Thomas King's Short Fiction and Poetry
- 3 “Turtles All the Way Down”: Literary and Cultural Criticism, Coyote Style
- 4 Thomas King Meets Indigenous Convergent Media
- 5 Rewriting Genre Fiction: The DreadfulWater Mysteries
- 6 “All My Relations”: Thomas King's Coyote Tetralogy for Kids
- Part 2 Impact
- Part 3 Approaches
- Part 4 Encounters
- Part 5 Thomas King—A Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
5 - Rewriting Genre Fiction: The DreadfulWater Mysteries
from Part 1 - Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part 1 Works
- 1 Thomas King's Abo-Modernist Novels
- 2 “Wide-Angle Shots”: Thomas King's Short Fiction and Poetry
- 3 “Turtles All the Way Down”: Literary and Cultural Criticism, Coyote Style
- 4 Thomas King Meets Indigenous Convergent Media
- 5 Rewriting Genre Fiction: The DreadfulWater Mysteries
- 6 “All My Relations”: Thomas King's Coyote Tetralogy for Kids
- Part 2 Impact
- Part 3 Approaches
- Part 4 Encounters
- Part 5 Thomas King—A Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Under the whimsical pseudonym of Hartley GoodWeather, Thomas King has published two detective novels, or “mysteries,” to date. DreadfulWater Shows Up came out in 2002 as the first installment in a planned series of altogether four novels on Cherokee freelance investigator Thumps DreadfulWater. It was followed by The Red Power Murders: A DreadfulWater Mystery in 2006. The original front cover of Dreadful-Water Shows Up sported only the pseudonym, but the author's true identity would have been evident to devoted readers of King's work: a small photo on the back flap showed the author as film-noir sleuth, complete with trench, fedora, and a face sunk in deep, portentous shadow. King claims that the book did not sell (J. Wilson 2009), which apparently motivated a change in design. A second edition from 2002 revealed in huge letters the mastermind behind the alias: “THOMAS KING writing as Hartley GoodWeather.”
Given the predictable marketing edge that comes with a well-known author's name, the question arises as to why King had originally opted for a pseudonym. Asked about the quirky writer's persona of “Hartley GoodWeather,” King explained that he “wanted to separate [his] serious work from [his] detective fiction” (in J. Wilson 2009; see also Simard 2002). While the author acknowledges a soft spot for his mysteries (“I quite like them. I don't think they're badly written, I think they're a lot of fun. I think they're a decent attempt at the genre,” in J. Wilson 2009), he apparently wishes to emphasize a difference—in both kind and quality—between the mysteries and the rest of his oeuvre.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thomas KingWorks and Impact, pp. 84 - 97Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012