Book reviewers can tell you
how exciting it is to discover a novel that is ‘different’, that engages the
mind and makes one contemplate, provoke thought. Recently I was persuaded to
pick up a book entitled ‘Ordinary Bear’ by an American Author I’d never heard
of – namely Chris C.B. Bernard.
My friends and colleagues Jeff
Peirce of The Rap Sheet, and George Easter publisher of Deadly Pleasures Mystery
Magazine were extolling the novel’s virtues during Bouchercon in New Orleans,
earlier this Month. George went one step further, he thrust a copy into my
hands and said “…read up to page 38, and
if you don’t like it pass it to someone else….” Anyway, serendipitously I took
a front row seat at a book reviewing panel that George was moderating entitled “Crime
Rave: Mystery Reviewers Talk About Their Favorite Crime Fiction” with renowned
book reviewers / literary commentators Meredith Anthony, Oline Cogdill, Larry
Gandle, and Jeff Pierce. At one point, George Easter held up a copy of Ordinary Bear indicating it was one of
his recent favourite reads. George gestured to a bloke seated next to me and
said “…and the author Chris Bernard has
joined us here at Bouchercon…..” I blinked and grabbed my [gifted] copy of Ordinary Bear, and asked [in a conspiratorial whisper] the author
if he’d be so kind as sign it for me, which he did.
On my return to the UK, Ordinary
Bear was one of my early post-Bouchercon reads.
My thoughts?
This extraordinary novel is sadly
currently not published in Europe, but was released earlier this year in
America. I picked up a copy during the recent New Orleans Bouchercon thanks to
the book receiving a Deadly Pleasures Barry Award, and excellent word of mouth
in America.
I was energised by this novel, an
unexpected treat, full of heart but a very tough and hard hitting literary
thriller. Ordinary Bear provoked deep reflection and contemplation as the pages
turned and the tale was told.
Ostensibly, its theme is redemption but
the narrative is far more than purely a journey for the main character Farley
to find inner-peace. The narrative weaves the former army veteran from working
as an oil-field detective in Nanuqmiut [a small village in Alaska], to the
homeless tented camps in contemporary Portland, Oregon.
Read the Full Review HERE
I concluded my review with the
following paragraph –
Rarely does one receive such a wonderfully realised literary thriller, one that is sleek like a ricocheting bullet – but one that makes the reader contemplate life-and-death, fear-and-love, cause-and-effect in a world that perplexes us further with each passing day.
Hugely recommended even if one has to
order from America.
One of my top reads of 2025, so far [and I
read a lot of books].
As this novel was deeply
thought provoking, I had a few questions for the author, and Chris Bernard
cheerfully answered my queries with thoughtful [as well insightful] responses – which we present below for our readers – Ali Karim
Ali: Welcome to Great Britain’s Shots
Magazine
Chris: Thank you for inviting me.
AK: It was great to meet you
[albeit briefly] during Bouchercon
New Orleans, so can you tell our readers a little about yourself?
CB: Your reputation precedes you, Ali, so what fun to end
up sitting next to you at a Bouchercon panel.
Readers of my books will notice that place plays a key
role. That’s because it’s so important to me as well. America’s a big country.
I’ve moved back and forth across it six times and lived in nine states, and
something tells me I’m not done yet. For the last six years, I’ve lived on the
Rhode Island coast, in New England, but spent much of my adult life before that
in Alaska and Oregon.
When I’m not writing, reading, or talking about books, I’m
usually on the ocean—I love boats and have even built one—or walking with my dog
and wife.
AK:…you make me blush….anyway… How important are books and reading to you,
and are you a crime fiction reader? And what work did you read that made you
consider penning your own fiction?
CB: I was the weird kid who always knew what he wanted to
be. In my case, a writer—and since it took me a while to succeed at it, I guess
I was that weird adult, too.
Books can change lives, right? As a kid, books were how I
travelled. Books were how I learned. Books kept me company and entertained me. Books
taught me empathy and perspective, and helped me realize that the things I felt
and the things that scared me were not unique to me—that many of them were
universal. And that’s a comforting thing for a kid to learn.
As a lifelong reader, I try to be open to all kinds of
books. I find the concept of genre limiting. Write the best book you can and
I’ll read it. Just don’t bore me. But a survey of my shelves would probably
reveal a disproportionate share of crime fiction, literary fiction (whatever
the hell that is), outdoors and climate writing, and books by Irish novelists.
All of which is to say that no one book made me want
to write; every book made me want to write. Books have given me so much.
I just wanted to give something back. Every novelist wants to be a bestseller,
but I’d settle for having something I wrote connect with even one reader as
intensely as I’ve connected with so many other writers’ books.
AK: …and your favourite writers and why they are your favourites, and their
key work?
CB: This may sound like a dodge, but I think books are like
wine. Different types or varietals suit different occasions, so the answer to your
question would depend on my mood.
That said, some writers are automatic buys for me when
something new of theirs hits the shelves. I’ve read everything by the American
writer Robert Stone, and I’ll
continue to read everything by the Australian writer Tim Winton, the Irish writer Kevin Barry, and English
writer Sarah Hall. There’s a guy from
the American Pacific Northwest called Bruce
Holbert, whose books are difficult to characterize but never disappoint.
His novels Whiskey—about two brothers on the run with a kidnapped bear—and
Lonesome Animals, about a tormented sheriff called out of retirement to
hunt a serial killer, are astonishments.
But maybe you’re asking about crime writers? Man, I’m not
even sure how you would go about making a list, there’s just too many great
ones. I loved Robert Wilson’s Bruce
Medway series set in Africa, as well as anything Denise Mina, Tana French,
or Louise Penny write. I recently
read and loved Urban Waite’s The
Terror of Living, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers,
and Gin Phillips’ Fierce
Kingdom. My buddy John Straley writes
excellent detective novels set in Southeast Alaska, which bring the place to
life for me. And I’ve got shelves filled with Chandler, Leonard, and Greene.
How about Paz Pardo’s
The Shamshine Blind, because it’s classic detective noir set in an
inventively wild alternate universe—or Michael
Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union for the same reason?
AK: And was this your first Bouchercon? And can you tell us what you got up to in New Orleans?
CB: Ordinary Bear is
my first crime novel but my third book, so I’ve made the rounds of writers
conferences, book festivals, and literary conventions over the years. But this
was my first Bouchercon, and what a revelation to find such a supportive
community of writers, readers, and industry folks all lifting each other up and
celebrating each other’s work and successes. I spent much of the long weekend
in leisurely conversations about books with people like yourself, one of my favourite
ways to pass time. I also got to meet up with some online friends in person for
the first time, and sat in on some great panel discussions.
The Southern crime writing panel with S.A. Cosby, Ace Atkins, Henry Wise, Scott Blackburn, and Mark Westmoreland fascinated me. My
three books have all been set in Oregon, Alaska, or both, so the south itself
is a mystery to my sensibilities. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to so many
southern writers.
In addition, my wife and I made time to hit some of our
favourite NOLA haunts for oysters and beignets, for drinks at The Hotel Monteleone—which
has a rich literary history—and to listen to live music.
AK: It was winning the Barry
Award 2025 at the National WW2 Museum for Ordinary Bear that brought your
work onto my Radar, so can you tell us a little what it meant to you as a
writer?
CB: It meant the world to me, Ali. Look, I’m pretty
thick-skinned. As a writer, you have to be—the world of publishing can
sometimes feel like a machine engineered to efficiently crush the human soul. I
can take bad reviews and rejections, and I’m going to get up every morning and
write no matter what. But it was a gift to be nominated for Best First Mystery
Novel and an absolute shock to win.
What made it especially meaningful is that, a decade
earlier, my wife and I spent a day at the National WW2 Museum with some close friends,
and I’d been deeply moved by the exhibits. So taking the stage and speaking to
the audience there felt particularly gratifying. Not to mention looking out
into that audience and seeing so many writers whose work I admire.
AK: Though ostensibly a Crime Novel, Ordinary Bear has a literary air, so can
you tell us a little about its genesis and the writing process as well as
journey to publication.
CB: Blackstone Publishing
gave me a two-book deal when they bought my debut novel, Small Animals
Caught in Traps. I wrote Ordinary Bear after I turned in that
first manuscript.
Last year, while on a panel at the New Hampshire Book
Festival with Sarah Stewart Taylor,
Margot Douahiy, and Edwin Hill—all
fantastic mystery writers—someone in the audience asked if we knew the endings
of our books when we started writing them. I told them that I didn’t even know
the beginning of Ordinary Bear. It’s such a difficult book to discuss
without giving spoilers, but there’s a scene—you know the one—that came to me
first. Not only did I have to write my way out of that scene, but I also had to
write my way into it.
As you know, the entire book changes after that—tenor,
tone, setting, all of it—so the first 20 pages or so are a bit of a feint. As a
novelist, the challenge then became stitching those two parts of the book
together without leaving a seam high enough for readers to trip over.
I don’t think I sat down to write a mystery so much as to
send Farley, the lead character, on a kind of odyssey. Like in Dante’s Inferno,
but instead of Virgil, a different character guides him through each circle of
the particular hell in which he finds himself, each damned in his or her own
way. As the story began to take shape, I saw the opportunity to mirror a detective
story as Farley sets out to try to save the kidnapped girl, but also to have
some fun with it by putting him through some things along the way.
AK: I felt one of the major strengths of Ordinary Bear was how distinctly
painted were the minor characters like Lady McDeath, like Edge [aka George
Edgeworthy], Wayne and the cross-dressing former Army Veteran – turned
bartender, Dolly, to name just a few. So tell me how you managed to control
such an unusual array of background characters and make them so distinct in the
readers mind?
CB: It wouldn’t make for an interesting story if Farley
only encountered buttoned up accountants and people who have their shit
together, right? Anyone who’s ever spent time in Portland, Oregon, will know
what I mean when I say that it’s a city that punches above its weight in
characters. I don’t know whether Portland draws them like pilgrims to Mecca or if
it manufactures them, but they thrive there. That’s part of why I set the book
there.
Farley is hurting. He’s bereft with grief, crippled by
guilt, physically damaged, and actively trying to punish himself by sleeping on
the streets. When he sets out to find the missing girl, his physical well-being
diminishes as he gets deeper into his odyssey. At the same time, each character
he meets opens his mind a little, awakening his empathy and reminding him that,
as all-consuming as his grief and guilt are, they’re universal human emotions. Everybody’s
hurt in some way, all of us.
The trick with writing characters like that is to highlight
but don’t limit them to their quirks. Show what makes them human and readers
will connect—and if readers connect with characters, they’ll remember them.
AK: You are a big bloke, but perhaps not as hulking as your main character
Farley, so where did this protagonist come from?
CB: I don’t want to give too much away, but an extended metaphor
runs throughout the book, a kind of relationship between Farley and the bear of
the title. Polar bears are marine mammals. They spend most of their lives on
ice. But as climate change melts the ice, they find themselves increasingly, jarringly
out of place on land, mingling with humans. This leads to more negative
interactions.
I liked the idea of kind of flipping a Jack
Reacher story on its head. A giant ex-military type who lives out of a
bag and helps someone in need, except he kindda
sucks at it. Despite his size and obvious proclivity for violence, Farley
makes it as far as he does in his search for the missing girl only because of
all these characters who help him along the way.
AK: I see you have been writing a whiles before Ordinary Bear, can you tell
us a little about your writing?
CB: As I said, Ordinary Bear is my third book and
second novel, but my first crime novel. Small Animals Caught in Traps is
set in a rain-soaked runt of a town in rural Oregon and follows an
ex-boxer-turned-fly-fishing-guide grieving the loss of his wife as he tries
like hell to help his daughter find her way in the world, even as he loses his
own.
Obviously, I tend to skew dark in my fiction, but there’s
always humour. Humour is critical—not just in fiction, but in life. As a
novelist, if you’re going to write dark, you can use humour to give readers
room to breathe. Like a bell between rounds of a fight. You can also use it as
a jab to distract them so they don’t see the haymaker punch coming.
AK: And the backdrops in Alaska and Portland are vividly drawn, so I assume
you are familiar with the Pacific Northwest of America?
CB: In 1999, I moved from Massachusetts to Alaska and fell immediately
in love with the place. Not long after, I caught wind of an ancestor who’d done
the same thing during the Gold Rush a hundred years earlier. Having failed as a
miner, he became an explorer at a time when the Arctic still had a lot of blank
spots on the map and lived a remarkable life, spending two decades exploring,
shipwrecked, or frozen over in the Arctic. My first book, Chasing Alaska: A
Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now, tells the parallel stories of
his exploration and my own to show the Alaska we both knew and loved and how it
changed over the century between us.
After I left Alaska, my wife and I lived in
Oregon—twice—for more than a decade. As I said, place matters to me. The
landscape of the Pacific Northwest resonates at the same frequency as my heart.
But Rhode Island is beautiful, too—woods and waters—and we’ve built a good life
here, for now.
AK: So what’s next for Chris Bernard….as I noticed there could be a
possibility for a sequel, or am I mistaken?
CB: At the moment, I have no plans for a sequel, but never
say “never,” right? My next book veers away from crime fiction because I needed
a change in the months after I turned in Ordinary Bear, and because I
like to challenge myself. But after that one, I plan to get back to it—the
community of crime writers and readers feels too much like home for me not to
want to return.
AK: Thank you for your time
CB: This was a lot of fun. Thanks for the opportunity, Ali,
and thanks for all you do for writers and readers.
Shots Magazine thanks Chris Bernard
for his time and insight – more information about Ordinary Bear and his
work can be found HERE and HERE and in
the video interview below from “Must Read Fiction”
AND for information about next
year’s World Crime and Mystery Convention [Bouchercon] click HERE
