Hamline University Prof. John Brandon whisks readers to sunny Florida for a noir caper

Although John Brandon and his family have lived in Hugo for a dozen years, none of his six novels are set in Minnesota. That may be less because of where he writes than when he writes.

“Winters here are extreme enough that I could see getting into something that had that snowbound quality, that feeling like the winter is never going to end and everything you try to do is harder,” said Brandon, whose new (Florida-set) novel is “Penalties of June.” But Brandon, 48, also teaches creative writing at Hamline University, which means the only time he can write is in the summer, when nobody’s mind is on shoveling out or sipping hot chocolate.

“I’m not going to even try to put any spin on it: It takes a lot of time, having a full-time teaching job,” said Brandon. “If I had all that time to write, I would write more and more easily. But I will say this about teaching: You’re forced to read a lot more than you would otherwise, and a lot more widely.”

Brandon didn’t have to do much research to write “Penalties of June,” a noir-ish contemporary thriller in which fresh-out-of-prison Pratt falls into work as an amateur detective, staking out crime bosses and dealing with shady cops in the Tampa area. A native of Florida, Brandon often returns to the Sunshine State to visit his parents and in-laws (his wife, Heather, also is from Florida). He says its vibe is “scorched” into him.

One of the book’s settings, a cluttered-verging-on-hoarded apartment that Pratt rents while its elderly resident isn’t using it, was inspired by a Naples, Fla., apartment Brandon and Heather lived in, one he said they couldn’t occupy until they moved its debris into an extra bedroom: “I always thought, ‘I’m going to use this sometime,’ because it was so wild.”

A fan of Florida noir writers such as Charles Willeford (”Miami Blues”) and John D. MacDonald (”The Deep Blue Goodbye”), Brandon said he was drawn to writing about a guy who was pressured into the role of observing unsavory behavior.

“This is the first of my books where I’ve consciously thought of it as sort of a detective thing,” said Brandon. “I thought, ‘He’s going to be watching, doing stakeouts and having something to solve, and then there are these different nefarious influences he’s having to balance.’ Some of my other stuff has crime in it but I never thought of them as noir-y but, this one, I liked that this is someone who doesn’t want to be doing this and is forced to do it.”

Unlike many novelists who do consider themselves mystery writers, Brandon did not know how “Penalties of June” was going to turn out. There’s an open-ended quality to the resolution of the book, although we do learn who committed its series of crimes.

“I’m not going to give myself too much credit when it comes to endings. For me, at least, it’s always, ‘I’m drowning and where is the land? What’s the best way to get out of this?’” said Brandon with a chuckle. “I have written books where the ending seemed like it was just there for me, but other ones, it’s more like: ‘What is the best possible way this could end? Or what’s the least bad way to end it?’”

For Brandon, it feels like endings are the parts of his books over which he has the least control. What he can control, and this is something he often discusses with writing students, is what kind of trouble he can get his characters into. In the fiction class he’s currently teaching, that’s what they spent the whole first week talking about.

“What makes most stories work is you’re delivering very specific trouble. That’s what I tell my students: ‘You’re in the trouble delivery business and the faster the trouble feels specific, the better,’” said Brandon. “In the first 50 pages of this book, I had a lot of context I wanted to give but I could also feel the pressure to make it go faster, get things going.”

Brandon said he enjoyed capturing the details of how uncomfortable it is to sit in a hot car in the Florida sun but the most entertaining part of writing “Penalties of June” was creating the villain, a cop named Gianakos who spends much of the book toying with Pratt.

“I always imagined Gianakos was going to be sort of dirty but, initially, I didn’t know what that would be like,” said Brandon. “That was so much fun to figure out, exactly what kind of [jerk] he would be: that tone of his, which is menacing but also sort of witty and not really super-serious. Until he really is.”

Now that “Penalties of June” is in readers’ hands, Brandon is intrigued to see what readers make of Gianakos and Pratt.

“I’ve always had a really healthy perspective on reviews and feedback and everything you hear after a book comes out. Part of it is I’m grateful just to have anyone reading it. If someone says, ‘I read your book; I didn’t’ like it,’ my answer is, ‘Well, thank you so much for reading it,’” said Brandon. “And I’m not a big enough name that places will review me just to dump on me. I think you have to be pretty famous for critics to be like, ‘Let’s review this person’s new book that we hated.’”

Early reviews of “Penalties of June” have not hated it. They’ve been quite strong, in fact. But, either way, the Hamline professor said the advice he gives himself is the same that he gives to his students: Start writing something new, so you’re more worried about the future than the past.

Penalties of June

By: John Brandon.

Publisher: McSweeney’s, 266 pages, $28.