The Frost Trilogy — my mystery novels Permafrost, Mission, and Colorblind — is now available as an ebook bundle.
The Frost Trilogy brings together the mystery novels Permafrost, Mission, and Colorblind, which follow the amateur sleuthing of Tom Frost, a semi-retired businessman caught up in the cases of missing persons in northern Michigan, Boulder, Colo., and New Orleans, respectively.
Get the complete trilogy all in one place! All ebook platforms, including:
What made you write a book (Conclusion) that begins with a science fiction premise?
I’ve always read science fiction. These were among the first books I ever read, and I had this idea that I would write a book that would have a dystopian beginning but that it would evolve into an adventure story but that it would still function as a mystery.
Will there be a sequel to Conclusion?
I don’t think so. It begins and ends and doesn’t require anything else to happen beyond that point. I never intended for (my first book) Permafrost to have a sequel. I just wrote the book and put it aside for a long time. Then when I decided to write again, the most obvious thing I could think of doing was to continue Tom’s story but to move it forward a number of decades because I wanted him to be a better person. With Conclusion, I think it ends in a place where there’s not anywhere else you could go. Having said that, if Hollywood offered me a lot of money to come out with a sequel, I would somehow find a way to do that. But it’s a one-off book, and I’m very happy that it turned out that way.
Why did you decide to write about the northern Minnesota Boundary Waters?
My books usually begin with a desire to recreate a place that I find either wonderful or wonderfully weird. In the case of the Boundary Waters, I did initially want to write about it because I wanted to recreate it for people who have never been there. As I wrote, I was obviously aware that during this current administration, wilderness areas are being threatened far more than they’ve ever been threatened before. This is not a political book. I don’t have full knowledge of both sides of the argument, but I can say that there’s intense pressure to mine and to develop large parts of that area. This seems a terrible idea. My hope is that the Boundary Waters would be preserved just the way they are, so that my generation and future generations can enjoy them. So as I wrote there was a second agenda, a sense of responsibility, and a need to preserve the place.
When did you first come up with the notion of an alternate world where people would live a set number of years in good health and then expire?
I came across a short survey in the New York Times in which people were asked if they would agree to die at age seventy-five if they could have perfect health up to that point. My recollection is that young people were mostly reluctant, middle-age people were somewhat undecided, and older people were wholeheartedly behind this concept. None of these answers surprised me. I spent some time after that thinking about a world where this would happen.
The original version of Conclusion was much longer and it spent time in a kind of nostalgic NPR sort of way thinking about how this society would be. This musing took up 200 pages. I don’t think it was necessarily uninteresting, but I do think that the narrative didn’t really move at the speed I wanted it to go. It has occurred to me by now that I write mystery books that are also adventure stories. I don’t write thought-provoking nonfiction. It wasn’t awful to read; it just didn’t belong.
Why do you write?
I like to recreate places that I’ve found interesting. I also like to create places that I think I would find interesting if they existed. I’ve put a lot of myself into my books but not necessarily in the characters you might expect. But I’ve also put a lot of other people in there, too. All these things are real, and they make my books more autobiographical than many fiction writers would do or would admit to doing. I suspect that I do this because I want to preserve a record of myself and my world. There are recurring themes in my work; themes of homelessness and water. I’m not certain what they mean, but they clearly matter to me. I like to think that most of the characters in my books are optimistic. Most of them end up being mostly OK, having evolved somewhat in the narratives in ways that I hope readers find believable and interesting.
Conclusion, my latest book, comes out in October. As in my previous novels, I include fictional places and experiences inspired by my own.
I write about a city that closely resembles both Evanston and Chicago, places where I’ve lived. The final section of the book is set in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, where I have gone on camping and canoeing trips a number of times.
I’ve also taken this opportunity to branch out, to take my narrative in a bold new direction: not just in theme, but with the addition of characters who cook.
At one point in the story my main character, Colin, takes to the kitchen to rustle something up. While I can’t cook, I do have friends who can. For the meal Colin prepares, I turned to a specialty of my good friend, Don Thomas. I thank him for letting me share it.
Beans and Rice, Sausage and Shrimp
AKA
Shrimp and Sausage, Rice and Beans
Shell shrimp and sprinkle some spices. Marinate for an hour or so. Also throw the shells into 2+ cups of water and simmer to make a broth.
Have veggies ready
Serve with crusty bread.
* No Cajun spices? Try using 1 tbs paprika, ¼ tsp salt, some oregano, some thyme, and some cayenne.
I’ve been asked before about the significance of the titles to the three books in my mystery trilogy—Permafrost, Mission, and Colorblind—featuring Tom, an occasional businessman following a series of hunches in intriguing and colorful locations. For the first two books I’ve attempted explanations before, but now that the series is complete I’m reflecting on how all three titles represent central ideas in the work.
Permafrost
The term permafrost was referenced once within the narrative and my intention was to use the word to refer to the chilled emotional stasis that the main character, Tom, found himself in. I had also hoped to contrast Tom with Keith, the man he is trying to track down. My sense was that Keith, while geographically far adrift, was the more emotionally connected and vibrant of the two men.
Mission
When I talked about “mission” I had several intended meanings in mind. It could be the church’s worthy pledge to aid the city’s homeless in the novel’s Boulder setting. It could be Tom’s desire to find the killer. Or it could refer to the killer’s obsession with cleansing the souls of his victims.
Colorblind
This is my first pass at explaining what colorblind means. In the narrative Tom recalls the school test that he (and I) failed miserably. A series of multicolored patterns yielded an unrecognizable figure or a recognizable figure; recognizable, that is, exclusively to colorblind people. The weirdness of that test and the extended metaphors contained within it have stayed with me.
But there is an alternate meaning contained in the title of my newest book. I’ve traveled to New Orleans over a dozen times in the last thirty years. It functions unlike any other American city, and notions of color and prejudice are often equally unique to that particular place.
Before I continue I should probably qualify that. Race conflicts certainly exist within the Crescent City. Katrina exposed the poor black underclass that the storm waters fed on, while those African Americans who did flee were the bulk of those who then chose not to return, thereby profoundly altering the landscape and the demographics.
Yet New Orleans history is littered with examples of groundbreaking racial mixing and harmony, and my own limited exposure to this wonderful place consistently confirms that if any place can lay claim to being “colorblind,” it would be The Big Easy.
Peter Robertson 