In his latest novel, Victoria’s Grant McKenzie offers tips on how to make cadavers look their very best.
Here’s an excerpt from Speak the Dead: “To preserve the body, as decomposition happened faster than most people thought, a surgical tube was inserted into the carotid artery, giving direct access to the heart. Approximately two to three gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid was then pumped into the arterial system. This procedure flooded the capillaries and forced all the blood in the body out of a second tube in the jugular vein.”
How did the author get such detailed information on body preservation?
McKenzie says he simply hooked up with a private chat site for morticians. (They allowed him to join after he explained he was doing research.) He then quizzed them on the tricks of their trade in order to give Speak the Dead an authentic feel.
“It was interesting, because they were kind of a kinky group. Eccentric. A lot of them talked about leather and vinyl and whips and stuff. I found that quite fascinating,” McKenzie said with a grin.
The main protagonist in Speak the Dead is Sally Blue, a young woman who works as a beautician in a mortuary. It’s a fun job; however, her life is derailed when her dark past catches up with her. The question is, can Jersey Castle — homicide detective by day, punk-rock drummer by night — help her before it’s too late?
If you haven’t yet guessed, McKenzie writes thrillers. Speak the Dead, to be released Tuesday, is his ninth. On Wednesday, Chapters Victoria will host a book launch from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The hardcover release of Speak the Dead marks the beginning of a North American push from McKenzie’s new publisher. He recently signed a five-book deal with New York-based Polis Books — something he hopes will shift his writing career into high gear.
By day, this Scottish-born novelist works as communications director for Our Place Society, the Pandora Avenue community centre that provides meals (1,500 a day) and transitional housing for Victoria’s street people. Before that, McKenzie was editor of Monday magazine. He also worked for such newspapers as the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun.
To date his most commercially successful novel is Switch. Published in 2009, its sales have topped 25,000 internationally. Polis has now launched Switch in the U.S. and China for the first time.
“Polis is not one of the big five companies. But what I love about them is that they’re super-excited and they really want the books to succeed,” McKenzie said.
Growing up in East Kilbride, outside Glasgow, McKenzie started writing early. When he was about nine (his family immigrated to Canada when he was 13) he penned a trilogy of plays based on his favourite cartoon show Hong Kong Phooey. The short-lived series was about a dog who solved crimes in his spare time.
Hong Kong Phooey may have been a crime-fighter, but he was also an ordinary janitor. The notion of regular folk who become embroiled in the crime world is a constant throughout McKenzie’s novels. His heroes are everyday citizens, the bus driver or the failed-actor-turned-security guard.
“What I like to do is write about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances,” said McKenzie, 52.
After his childhood Hong Kong Phooey obsession, he became interested in Enid Blyton’s books, particularly the mystery-solving Famous Five series. Then young McKenzie got hooked on hard-boiled detective writers such as Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. He even assembled a complete library of Spillane’s novels, culled from used bookstores.
“I loved that noir-style language and Spillane and Chandler and Hammett had. To me, there was almost a poetry to it,” he said.
As a novice journalist, McKenzie found he had a front row seat on the fringes of the real crime world. While in college, the Calgary Sun hired him for the night shift. McKenzie was assigned to check out leads on murders mentioned on the police scanner. If it seemed legit, he would inform a senior reporter and photographer who would cover the crime.
“I was responsible for any interesting dead body that popped up. It was what I called the ‘dead body beat,’” McKenzie said.
He speaks of it lightly — however, it wasn’t fun and games. McKenzie says he’ll never forget hearing a terrific crash while having a meal at a McDonald’s outside Calgary. The young reporter dashed out with his camera. He found himself standing beside the driver of a vehicle that had been hit while parked on the side of the street. Inside the smashed car, now fully engulfed in flames, was the driver’s brother.
“I remember being there, being this journalist. Then looking on and seeing this horror … I saw the body being burned,” McKenzie said.
Another unforgettable memory is the women who used to called the Calgary Sun at night. At the time, a serial rapist was terrorizing the city. “I got a lot of calls from people who were frightened and wanted to know more information,” he said.
One might think McKenzie’s current job would provide fodder for his fiction. Our Place is a “low barrier” facility that allows street people to use the facility even if they’re drunk or high. Consequently, it attracts a goodly share of colourful characters (as anyone who strolls by the entrance can attest).
McKenzie doesn’t advertise the fact he’s a novelist at his workplace. But he says working at Our Place for two years has indeed given him extra insight into the human condition.
“It really humanizes my characters,” he said. “If I’m writing about a homeless character today, they’re not one-dimensional. Because I know so many of them.”
