- The main character, Steve Martinez, allows you to talk about race in a unique way, one seemingly unconnected to the political correctness or rancor of most discussion on this issue. What informed this discussion or narrative? Your personal experiences or insights gathered from your journalism or both?

As a deaf person I've always been conscious of being something of a stereotyped outsider. People expect me to know sign language, which I don't, and to belong to deaf culture, which I don't either. I simply applied some of my experiences to Steve's life as a biological Lakota in a white culture, and invented others from the feelings I had had. Sometimes such experience makes us more sensitive to the experiences of others — and sometimes it also causes us to react in a knee-jerk sort of way. As I get older I realize that sometimes I cause people to react to my deafness in untoward ways simply because I expect them to. Steve Martinez has had to learn this, too. One doesn't always have to play what in other areas has come to be called the "race card."

I guess that as a journalist I've thought more about race than most Americans since the subject is such a prominent one in my trade. But I don't claim to have any more insight into it than they do. It's not a simple subject.

- Besides the mystery of Paul Possoja's death, a key component of the book is Deputy Martinez' love interest Ginny Fitzgerald. Did you make a conscious effort to include a love story or was that just an outgrowth of Steve's character or a plot device (she is a key source of information)?

A mystery novel is a commercial novel, and a large part of the mystery audience is female. They expect a love story as well as a whodunit. And that is tough to bring off in an unsentimental and un-hokey sort of way. But the love interest gave me the opportunity to meld two actual women — my wife, who is a librarian (the perfect consort for a journalist), and the real-life director of the Ontonagon County Historical Museum, who had a celebrated filing-cabinet memory of UP history. The result made a good sidekick for a county deputy not native to his jurisdiction.

- Not to spoil a unique plot twist but what exactly inspired the ménage-a-trois scene?

Damned if I know, really. I needed a device to pull together the two women and the oaf they controlled in such a manner that Steve Martinez would discover their connection and their crime, and that seemed a good one. Sex, after all, often is the driving motive for murder. Besides, the UP is full of gossip about sex. There's a local joke about there not being much to do in the UP except drink, make love and move snow. It just seemed natural.