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A Novel Twist
San Francisco Examiner
Hot author of a book about a S.F. sex crime found new success with a pseudonym and a change in gender.
Jane Ganahl
Of the Examiner Staff
"Seven p.m., Thanksgiving night. A chill in the air. Mist clings to the streetlights while buoy bells and mournful foghorns float up to me from the Bay. I'm standing still and alert in the strip of park between Larkin and Hyde at the base of Russian Hill. The old clock tower at Ghirardelli Square is barely visible through the fog. I've chosen this location and also the hour, insisting that the meeting take place after dark..." -David Hunt, The Magician's Tale
One would expect the novelist who wrote those lines to be as dark and brooding as the November San Francisco night. But then one would not have met David Hunt, a literary reincarnation of Dashiell Hammett - with a seemingly Superglued grin.
"Come in! Come in! Would you like an espresso?"
Hunt swings open the door and ushers me in, clasping his hands like a delighted child. The fifty-something Hunt ("Say Im "middle-aged!'" he pleads) clearly loves showing visitors around the visually stunning ninth-floor apartment he shares with his wife, best-selling cookbook author Paula Wolfert.
With a nearly 360-degree view of The City, it's located on Russian Hill just across the street from where his heroine, Kay Farrow, lives in the new novel. "The Magician's Tale" has created a buzz in the publishing world - partly for the darkly sexual subject matter (it takes place largely in Polk Street Gulch, if that's a hint), and also for the sizable advance Hunt got for it, rumored to be in the vicinity of $1 million.
In addition to the synonymous locales, there are other examples of art imitating Hunt's life. Farrow, a colorblind photojournalist, spends a lot of time on foot, prowling through the city in search of clues to the murder of a young hustler she has befriended. Hunt is also a devotee of black and white photography, with a dark room and many fine prints on his walls. And he walks every day, too. A lot. Sometimes from Russian Hill to the Golden Gate Bridge and back.
"I thought up the novel while walking," he grins. "Just a typical San Francisco nutcase: walking and babbling to myself! "
One more twist: David Hunt is not his real name. The novelist in question is actually William Bayer, author of nearly a dozen crime novels, including the best-selling novels Pattern Crimes and Switch (which spawned a TV series starring Richard Crenna), and the Edgar Award-winning novel Peregrine.
David Hunt? Bill Bayer? It threatens to become a puzzle, like the sex crime of the book.
"Not at all! " he responds jovially. "I answer to both names."
Hunt decided to use this pseudonym for the new novel for various reasons - both commercial and otherwise.
"Kay Farrow was a new character for me; a new voice. And I was also writing in the first person, which I don't normally do," he says, then adds, "And to be honest, my book sales had gotten kind of flat as William Bayer, so it was a way to shake things up."
He chose the name David Hunt for practical reasons: "short names are good - they can make the letters bigger on the book cover" and "H is a good letter because in the fiction section you get put in the middle."
Hunt plunged into writing the novel after moving to The City from New England 2-1/4 years ago. "I'd always wanted to live here - its been a goal for a long time," says Hunt dreamily, looking across the water to Alcatraz.
It took a long time for Hunt to finally trade in his farmhouse on acreage in Connecticut for an apartment here; he says that one specific event pushed him into it.
"In 1994 there were terrible snowstorms. I went up on the roof of my writing studio to knock some snow off and fell right through my skylight!" he laughs, slapping his palms together vertically. "I broke two ribs and punctured a lung. And I told my wife, "that's it!"
Hunt seems to have a penchant for adventure. In 1960, just out of Harvard (B.A., Fine Arts), he went to work as a foreign service officer for the U.S. Information Agency, making documentary films. Eventually he was assigned to Saigon in the mid-'60s. "It was dangerous but we didn't care; we all wanted to be Lawrence of Arabia."
Quitting in 1968, he worked on Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful presidential run, and then moved to Morocco for the better part of the '70s with Wolfert, his wife-to-be.
"We've been married 13 years but have been together for 25," he says fondly of her, as olive oil crackles in the kitchen. Wolfert is experimenting again.
Hunt says he has really enjoyed writing in the role of a woman. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, but the more I wrote, the more I thought "Wow, I really like Kay!' And I was happy that the women I know who read the manuscript said it was very believable."
Does he hanker to be female? He laughs heartily. "No, but I would love to be 36 again!"
But mostly, he loves that he can write about San Francisco these days from an insider's point of view. "This is the best urban environment in the world. I have stars in my eyes, living here. I hope I never get over it."
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