NEW YORK — For a time, Steve Hamilton felt like an escaped convict, like a character in one of his novels. And all he was doing was switching publishers.
The award-winning crime writer startled the book world last year when he canceled his reported near-seven-figure, four-book contract with St. Martin’s Press just two months before the publication of his novel “The Second Life of Nick Mason” and signed days later (for even more money, reportedly) with G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Hamilton, a recipient of the Edgar Award, had worried St. Martin’s wasn’t committed to promoting his work.
“It felt like … this book was just going to go out there and die,” the author said in a interview in New York. “It was just the most horrible feeling to know they were just sending this book out to die.”
With publishers releasing hundreds of thousands of books each year, authors routinely complain about the lack of attention. But it’s far less common for a writer of Hamilton’s stature to speak out and even rarer to buy back such a large advance just to get away.
Hamilton, 55, had published all of his work with St. Martin’s since catching the attention of the beloved and influential crime fiction editor Ruth Cavin nearly 20 years ago. But Cavin died in 2011, and another close associate at St. Martin’s, publisher and executive vice president Matthew Shear, died in 2013. Hamilton recalled a hostile final meeting last year, with warnings from St. Martin’s that he was ruining his career.
“I hope authors do get a message that it’s OK to bet on yourself,” said Hamilton, who had the support of his literary agent, Shane Salerno. “It’s OK not to settle on second best.”
A spokeswoman for St. Martin’s, Tracey Guest, said in a statement the publisher has “always been and will continue to be fans of Steve’s. We only wish him the very best.”
“The Second Life of Nick Mason,” which came out last week, is about a man sprung from jail. Nick Mason was sentenced to 25 years to life for felony murder, only to be freed after five years through the influence of a crime boss in the same prison. There is one condition: Mason is on call for any “work” needed on the outside.
The new book is the first of several planned Mason stories by Hamilton, known to readers for “A Cold Day in Paradise,” “Winter of the Wolf Moon” and other thrillers.
“I was just itching to do something different,” Hamilton said. “I wondered what if I tried to create a fully committed career criminal and still have that bond with the reader like Donald Westlake did with the Parker series.”
Hamilton had long loved crime fiction, and cites Raymond Chandler and James Crumley as favorites. At the University of Michigan, he won a Hopwood Award for fiction, but he spent much of his 20s busy with his career as an information developer at IBM and seemingly resigned to being of those would-be writers who never quite gets around to that book.
He changed his luck by changing his life: He joined a writer’s group, which gathered weekly in the basement of the Starr Library in Rhinebeck, N.Y.
Hamilton’s “Cold Day in Paradise,” published in 1998, won an Edgar and a Shamus Award for best first novel. He won the Edgar for best novel overall in 2011 for “The Lock Artist.” his acclaimed story of a lock picker traumatized as a boy into silence. Hamilton found a lock expert willing to teach him the trade and still keeps some locks around for practice, calling it a “great way to clear your head.”
