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WORK TITLE: The Roma Plot
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1953
WEBSITE:
CITY: Montreal
STATE: QC
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY:Canadian
RESEARCHER NOTES: He directed several films, wrote several others, and did television scripts, including a police drama called Haute surveillance (Close supervision). In 1991, though, he dedicated himself to writing. He has also taught writing for the National Theatre School of Canada and has served as the vice president of the Society of Authors of Radio, Television, and Cinema.
PERSONAL
Born 1953.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and novelist. Worked in film and television for two decades. Taught writing for the National Theatre School of Canada, Montreal, Quebec.
MEMBER:Society of Authors of Radio, Television, and Cinema (served as vice president).
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Crimes à la librairie: nouvelles, Éditions Druide (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 2014. Author of television scripts, including the police procedural Haute surveillance (which means “close supervision”).
SIDELIGHTS
Mario Bolduc is a French Canadian author who, in addition to writing fiction, has worked in film and television. Bolduc is the author of the “Max O’Brien Mysteries” series, which was originally published in French in Canada. The series features a professional con man who robs the wealthy and the corrupt. O’Brien is not only wanted by the law but is also haunted by his past. When he decided to write a mystery series, Bolduc was intent on not making the hero a detective, reporter, or anyone else in a profession that involved investigation. “In other words, my hero would be something like a ‘well trained amateur,’ involved in situations that would have a strong emotional impact on him; stories that would force him to find his way and succeed in an unfamiliar environment,” Bolduc noted in an interview for the Mystery Tribune website. Bolduc also remarked in the interview that he “thought that creating a character operating outside the law would add more tension and improve the suspense.”
The Kashmir Trap
The first book in the “Max O’Brien Mysteries” series, The Kashmir Trap, finds Max resolving to do his own investigation into a terrorist attack on his nephew, David, who was serving as a Canadian diplomat in Delhi, India. Max’s brother Philippe was killed years earlier while serving as an ambassador to El Salvador. As the novel begins, it is uncertain whether or not David will survive. Furthermore, no one has discovered why David was targeted in the first place. Max’s investigation is propelled by the fact that Indian authorities seem to be bungling the investigation on purpose, while the Canadian government is more intent on capturing the criminal Max than getting involved in discovering the truth about the attack on David.
Max ends up traveling to India to find the attackers and discover why David might have been targeted and was not just an innocent bystander. The novel also contains other mysterious elements, such as why Philippe’s wife blames Max for his death. “Boldoc expertly weaves history with politics into a colorful tapestry of intrigue, wrote Viccy Kemp in Library Journal. Christine Zibas, writing for Reviewingtheevidence.com, remarked: Boldoc “pulls out a brilliant trick to wrap up the story line perfectly, pulling all the disparate pieces together into a cohesive, satisfying whole.”
The Roma Plot
The next book in the “Max O’Brien Mysteries” series, The Roma Plot, finds Max, who is based in New York, traveling to Bucharest, Romania, to help an old friend named Kevin Dandurand. The police believe Kevin is guilty of murdering twenty-three people by burning down a building. Max learns that the people killed in the fire were Roma, squatters living in a condemned building. The Roma have origins in India that date back 1,000 years. It turns out that during World War II the Roma were persecuted by the Germans and sent to concentration camps along with Jews. As Max investigates, he discovers that the death of the twenty-three Romas has a connection to World War II and the concentration camps. As a result, the tale includes a subplot set in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. It involves the nefarious Dr. Josef Mengele, who was a real-life German officer and physician who conducted unethical experiments on prisoners, especially twins, at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The story also includes background on Max and Kevin’s friendship. It turns out that, although he is hiding from police, Kevin periodically contacts Max via phone. The real story behind the fire and the death of the twenty-three Roma begins to come together as Max learns of a mysterious thirty-eight-million dollar deal involving an Italian company. His investigation is furthered along when Max meets Kevin’s father at Trump Tower. “Displaying a lively curiosity for Romanian history and contemporary life in Bucharest, Bolduc weaves seemingly disparate plot threads into a twisted yet coherent yarn,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. An Internet Bookwatch contributor remarked: “Mario Bolduc as a gifted novelist with a genuine flair for narrative driven storytelling.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2017, David Pitt, review of The Roma Plot, p. 33.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2017, review of The Roma Plot.
Internet Bookwatch, January, 2018, review of The Roma Plot.
Library Journal, September 1, 2016, Viccy Kemp, “Mystery,” includes review of The Kashmir Trap.
ONLINE
Max O’Brien Mysteries Website, http://maxobrienmystery.com/ (June 11, 2018), author website.
Mystery Tribune, https://www.mysterytribune.com/ (March 19, 2018), “Interview: Novelist Mario Bolduc Talks About The Roma Plot.”
Reviewingtheevidence.com, http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/ (June 11, 2018), Christine Zibas, review of The Kashmir Trap.
Mario Bolduc has been working in film and television for nearly two decades. The Kashmir Trap, his first novel featuring Max O’Brien, was published in French in 2005. Mario lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Interview: Novelist Mario Bolduc Talks About “The Roma Plot”
BY : MYSTERY TRIBUNE March 19, 2018
Montreal-based screenwriter Mario Bolduc has written three novels featuring Max O’Brien, starting with The Kashmir Trap. Originally published in French, The Roma Plot, the second book of the series, won an Arthur Ellis Award in 2008.
Max O’Brien instantly became one of our favorite characters: A lonely con man who at times resembles “Simon Templar” and shows some degree of morality here and there.
Among the three books in the series The Roma Plot is specially of note: A first-class thriller novel which will capture the attention of readers no matter what their taste (see our review here).
Eager to learn more about the thought process behind these novels and Max O’Brien’s character, we had a conversation with Mario Bolduc which follows.
***
In 20th century, many notable characters were brought to life who in essence were criminals but had a strong sense of morale. The more famous examples are the Saint (Simon Templar) or to some extent the Batman figure in comics.
This is something we have seen less in recent years. What made you create a character like Max O’Brien?
Two things motivated my choice for the Max O’Brien character when I decided to write the initial novel of the series, The Kashmir Trap. First, the hero was not going to be a detective, a reporter or anyone whose profession is to lead an investigation or hunt a criminal. In other words, my hero would be something like a “well trained amateur,” involved in situations that would have a strong emotional impact on him; stories that would force him to find his way and succeed in an unfamiliar environment. Secondly, I thought that creating a character operating outside the law would add more tension and improve the suspense. This has been done in many Alfred Hitchcock movies, for example. That’s how the idea of my hero as a scam artist came to life.
The chapters which make flashbacks to the WWII period are so vivid and elaborate. How did you get your hands on such historical details? Did you travel to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp?
For The Roma Plot, I read a lot about WWII and the fate of the Roma in Eastern Europe until I found sufficient elements to build up my story. For example, I was thrilled by the idea of “Romanestan,” a country the Roma could claim their own, a dream (that never materialized) for many generations of Roma. Or the 1971 World Romani Congress in London, where international leaders of the community felt the need to organize themselves on a political level. I used these elements as a background in order to provide an historical perspective to the story. I did the same thing in The Kashmir Trap, where the characters are caught in the tension created by India and Pakistan preparing for war.
In the fall of 1987, I traveled to Poland and stayed in Cracow for a few days. I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on that occasion. Also, the book Auschwitz… Nazi Extermination Camp, published by Interpress in Poland was an excellent source of reference.
You have quite many locations in this book: New York, Bucharest, and various locations in Canada and Poland. Along with your parallel timelines, do you think moving from place to place made it easier or more challenging to write this book?
I had to do additional research to make sure the descriptions were realistic, especially in the case of historical settings, or places I did not have experience with. I have never visited Bucharest, for example, but I reviewed these segments of the novel with a Romanian contact in Montreal.
Parallel timelines was also a real challenge, because of the risk of confusion for the reader. I had to make sure the story-line was clear and moving somewhere, which is not always easy to achieve with multiple timelines. At one point in the writing, I simply separated the two main story-lines and treated them as independent stories to make sure they were complete and satisfactory by themselves and not repetitive.
Are there any memorable experiences and/or conversations about the Romanian or European politics that helped shape the present-day narrative?
When my first draft was completed, I contacted the Roma Community Center in Toronto, which put me in touch with two Romas, Ronald Lee and Constantin Enghel. They were very generous in answering all my questions. A native Kalderash, Ronald Lee has taught a course on the Romani Diaspora at the University of Toronto and wrote Learn Romani. He was very helpful in reviewing and suggesting some of the words I used for Emil Rosca, one of the principal characters in the book.
There are a lot of intriguing spy movie-like scenes in this novel, but there are also a lot of intimate, internalized scenes that focus on what’s happening inside Max’s head. Which do you find more challenging to write? Please explain.
I have been a screenwriter for many years, and I have found it frustrating sometimes to be restricted to dialogue scenes to convey essential information or a specific emotion to the viewer. In a novel, I take advantage of the writer’s “power” to get inside a character’s head. However, I try to mix different ways of carrying the story forward, without losing track of whose point of view we listen to. As far as action scenes are concerned, I build them in such a way that they contribute to the evolution of the story and have an impact on the main character’s psychology. As a reader, I find that action for the sake of action in crime novels tends to distract me from the story itself, that’s why I try to avoid it in my writing.
“The Roma Plot”, it seems, intends to mix two line of thoughts: On one side, it acts as a reminder of historical tragedies and links them to some of political issues Europe today. On the other hand, it also narrates a more personal tale of a man trying to save his friend and himself from destructive forces.
Are historical aspects simply a backdrop for Max O’Brien’s new adventure or there is a deeper meanings buried in them?
In The Kashmir Trap, Max O’Brien’s relationship with his brother is an important part of the story. Max feels guilty for having ruined his brother’s political career. When his nephew (his brother’s son) is murdered, Max feels the urge to go to India and find the culprits. In The Roma Plot, guilt is also a strong motivation for Max. He introduced his friend Kevin to the “art of the fraud”, and he feels he is responsible for what Kevin has done in Romania – he thinks his friend has gone to Bucharest to put together a scam operation that turned sour. According to Max, Kevin’s troubles are the result of his bad influence on him.
There is also a link between Max and Emil Rosca, the Romani leader, a man with a strong moral attitude and pursuing a noble objective. Inspired by his father who was killed by the Nazis, Emil wants the best for his people. But Emil is betrayed by the individuals he gave his confidence to, the first and most important of them being dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, his personal friend. In a way, Emil is abused by “political swindlers” who manipulate him for their own interest.
Max O’Brien adventures, so far, shape a trilogy. Are you planning to extend this series? Why?
That’s my intention, yes. But after the third novel, I felt the need to take a break from Max O’Brien in order to explore other characters and different types of stories. Max being a scam artist makes him a good protagonist but it tends to orient me towards “run and chase” stories that I wanted to put aside for a while.
What are you working on now?
The third book of the Max O’Brien series deals with the tragic fate of people with albinism in Africa. After India and Romania, Max is in Tanzania recuperating from his separation with his lover Valéria, when he learns of her assassination. As a lawyer, she was involved in the prosecution of quack doctors financing the killing of people with albinism for sorcery purposes. The novel will be released this year by Dundurn Press.
My latest novel, The Tsar of Peshawar, was published in French in March 2017. It’s not a Max O’Brien story but it’s also based on historical facts, where fictional characters are mixed with real life figures.
The Tsar of Peshawar tells the story of a Montreal carpet importer established with his family in Peshawar, Pakistan, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The importer’s daughter life is disrupted by the business relations her father entertains with an important financier for the Afghan rebels, Osama bin Laden.
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Print Marked Items
The Roma Plot
David Pitt
Booklist.
Mystery
Viccy Kemp
Library Journal. 141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p79+.
Bolduc, Mario. The Kashmir Trap: A Max O'Brien Mystery. Dundurn. Sept. 2016.424p. tr. from French by Nigel Spencer. ISBN 9781459733480. pap. $17.99; ebk. ISBN 9781459733503. M
Professional con man Max O'Brien loved his big brother, Philippe, a Canadian diplomat who died at the hands of terrorists in El Salvador. When Max hears that his nephew David, also a diplomat, has been assassinated in India, he vows to find the perpetrators. Wanted in several countries for his scams, Max loves his nephew and is willing to risk his freedom to uncover the truth about his death. Along the way he unearths many secrets floating around the Canadian Consular Office in Delhi. VERDICT First published in Quebec in 2005, Canadian screenwriter and director Bolduc's international thriller has been served well in this English translation. Political junkies and history buffs will enjoy the way Boldoc expertly weaves history with politics into a colorful tapestry of intrigue. Two more books featuring Max will follow.
114.3 (Oct. 1, 2017): p33.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Roma Plot. By Mario Bolduc. Tr. by Jacob Homel. Nov. 2017. 400p. Dundurn, paper, $17.99
(9781459736061); e-book, $6.99 (9781459736085).
Originally published in Quebec in French in 2008, and winner of the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award, this is
the second novel (after The Kashmir Trap, 2016) to feature likable professional con man Max O'Brien.
After finding out that one of his closest friends is on the run in Romania, accused of burning down a
building and killing 23 people, Max immediately heads overseas to help his friend prove his innocence. It
turns out that the arson and murders are somehow connected to the activities at a certain German
concentration camp near the end of WWII. The author bases his fictional story on real historical events, and
some real people make appearances in the book, the most notable (and slimiest) being Josef Mengele, the
German doctor famously known for his cruel experiments on young people, especially twins. A serious
story told with a light touch--the lively dialogue and characterizations counterbalance the weighty subject
matter--that should appeal to most historical-mystery readers.--David Pitt
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pitt, David. "The Roma Plot." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2017, p. 33. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A510653780/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bdffe8bc.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A510653780
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Bolduc, Mario: THE ROMA PLOT
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bolduc, Mario THE ROMA PLOT Dundurn (Adult Fiction) $17.99 11, 21 ISBN: 978-1-4597-3606-1
A strange case of wholesale murder has roots in the second world war and the brutalities of the German
concentration camps.New York-based con man Max O'Brien (The Kashmir Trap, 2016) has flown to
Bucharest to help his old friend Kevin Dandurand, improbably suspected by police for the murder of 23
Roma. Max gets a crash course in Romanian history and some details of the recent massacre from his local
guide, Toma Boerescu. The Roma, it seems, were squatters in a condemned building that went up in flames.
Ever since their origin in India a millennium ago, the Roma have been nomads, widely persecuted and
thrown into concentration camps alongside the Jews during World War II. So it's thoroughly logical that a
subplot introduced in the opening chapter and woven throughout the story is set in the Auschwitz-Birkenau
concentration camp and features the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. As additional flashbacks dramatize the
roots of Max and Kevin's friendship in the early 1990s and its vicissitudes up to the current day, Max
struggles both to piece together the story behind Kevin's alleged crime and to find his friend, who's on the
run but checks in periodically by phone. At length, Max finds the immediate causes of Kevin's crisis in a
$38 million deal, a sketchy Italian company, and a fateful meeting involving Max and Kevin's ambitious
father at, of all places, Trump Tower. Displaying a lively curiosity for Romanian history and contemporary
life in Bucharest, Bolduc weaves seemingly disparate plot threads into a twisted yet coherent yarn.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bolduc, Mario: THE ROMA PLOT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504217641/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=96e47416.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504217641
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The Roma Plot
Mario Bolduc
Internet Bookwatch.
(Jan. 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
The Roma Plot
Mario Bolduc
The Dundurn Group
3 Church Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1M2
www.dundurn.com
9781459736061, $17.99, PB, 472pp, www.amazon.com
Max O'Brien may be a professional con man, but that doesn't mean you can't count on him in a bind. So
when he hears that his old friend Kevin Dandurand is a wanted man over a seemingly racially motivated
killing spree, he heads to Bucharest to try to make sense of what looks like an impossible situation. The
buried truths he uncovers reach back to the Second World War, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration
camp, and an entanglement between a Roma man and a German woman whose echoes pursue O'Brien and
Dandurand into the present day. But if they can't escape the long shadows of the past, the two will find their
present cut all too short. A deftly crafted and riveting read from first page to last, "The Roma Plot" reveals
author Mario Bolduc as a gifted novelist with a genuine flair for narrative driven storytelling that offers the
reader a consistently entertaining and unpredictable plot of unexpected twists and turns. While unreservedly
recommended, especially for community library Mystery/Suspense collections, it should be noted for the
personal reading lists of dedicated mystery buffs that "The Roma Plot" is also available in a digital book
format (Kindle, $6.99).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bolduc, Mario. "The Roma Plot." Internet Bookwatch, Jan. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526574227/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6ef453c0.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526574227
THE KASHMIR TRAP
by Mario Bolduc
Dundurn, August 2016
420 pages
$17.99
ISBN: 1459733487
Buy from Amazon.com
Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada
Is it deja vu for con man Max O'Brien? More than a decade ago, his brother Philippe, an ambassador to El Salvador was murdered at his job. Now, his nephew David, a young Canadian diplomat in New Delhi, has been attacked by terrorists. Will David survive the attack? And just why was he the target of terrorists in the first place?
When Indian officials seem to be misdirecting the inquiry into David's attack--and the Canadians are more interested in catching Max for his crimes than focusing on David--there's only one solution, and that is for Max to travel to India to find David's attackers. It turns out, of course, that there's more to the story than David being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mario Bolduc has penned a compelling if complex tale of the secrets that underlie both the O'Brien family and their work. While Max is skilled at deception, his brother and nephew have been using their own skills in this area, albeit for the greater good of the people they are serving. When each falls afoul of the powers that be, their fates seem sealed, like father, like son.
As a result, there are many mysteries looping around each individual's story in this novel. First, there's the attack on David in India. Is it terrorism or something even more sinister at play? There's also the mystery of why Philippe's wife blames Max for Philippe's death and spends more time trying to send Canadian police chasing after Max than supporting him in his quest to seek the truth behind her son's death.
Just when it seems that the reader never is going to get any answers, the author pulls out a brilliant trick to wrap up the storyline perfectly, pulling all the disparate pieces together into a cohesive, satisfying whole.
§ Christine Zibas is a freelance writer and former director of publications for a Chicago nonprofit.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, September 2016