Q&A with Steve Anderson

 

 

 

Steve Anderson is the author of the new novel Lines of Deception, the latest in his Kaspar Brothers series. He also translates German fiction into English. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

Q: Lines of Deception is the latest in your series about the Kaspar Brothers--do you think your characters have changed from the first book to this one?

A: They have changed a lot. Book one, The Losing Role, starts in the darkest days of WWII, and Max Kaspar has already suffered a great deal. But he’s still an entertainer at heart; he still loves life and a good time. All that he experiences from then on though has made him sadder, if not a little jaded and wary.

 

He also accepts that his acting skills transfer over to operating undercover and taking on the evil forces in the world.

 

The second book, Liberated, introduces Max’s brother Harry Kaspar. A naïve German American, Harry thinks he’s going to change the world as a US occupation commander back in his German homeland. Harry soon learns the world is not black and white.

 

By Lines of Deception, it’s 1949, the Cold War is heating up, and Harry still thinks he can change the world, but he now knows he must be far more subtle and crafty about it.

 

I should add that all the books are meant to be read as standalones as well as in a series.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Max and Harry?

 

A: It’s a common brother dynamic. They goad and frustrate each other but they would also do anything for each other, despite being opposites in their way.

 

Max spent more of his life in Germany than Harry but he’s ironically more casual, almost like a cosmopolitan Austrian than a Prussian-style German. Harry is more like the stereotypical stern and focused German though he mostly grew up in America. It’s the odd couple.

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: The internet always helps me if not saves me with those obscure details like travel papers, temporary passports, and far-flung border crossings along the Iron Curtain. I love it when research leads to something interesting I never knew.

 

For instance, the Soviet Polish government took in thousands of Greek Communist refugees from the Greek Civil War, and they stayed in their own Greek enclave. This world plays a central role in the climax of the story.

Q: The writer Dan Fesperman said of the novel, “In this convincing and atmospheric spy tale set on the haunted landscape of postwar Europe, the engaging Max Kaspar leads us into deepening shadows in which the certainties of loyalty and morality grow dimmer at every turn.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I was delighted to read it. Dan’s early writing, among others’, inspired me to try my hand at fiction years ago. I had no clue what I was doing but it was a start. I hope his description rings true for readers—he certainly nailed what I was going for.

 

Looking back, I realize another connection: Right after the Berlin Wall came down, I ventured beyond the Iron Curtain with just a backpack and a need to see that haunted landscape of postwar Europe before it became lost to history.

 

It was quite the adventure, but I was so young and off the grid and I could’ve disappeared anywhere from Poland to Prague to Budapest to Croatia! It was a different era for sure.

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve started the first draft of book number three for my Wendell Lett series, set mostly in the Pacific Northwest in 1950, a different setting with equally different themes.

 

I’m also between revisions of a pet project—a coming-of-age novel set in the late ‘70s about a (fictional) young American soccer star in the wild North American Soccer League, which skyrocketed in popularity before flaming out from its own flaws.

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: My new publisher is putting out another novel this summer, Show Game, a psychological thriller set in the present day. It’s a new direction for me, which makes it both exciting and a little scary.

 

It might sound like there’s a lot going on with my books, but all this resulted from years of writing and rewriting going back well before the pandemic. I just keep plugging away at it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Steve Anderson.