For 20 years, The Province reporter Don Hauka sat beside Salim Jiwa, the newspaper’s investigative crime reporter.
And day after day, Hauka heard the grim tales of Vancouver’s underbelly. “You can’t sit next to this soap opera going on next to you and not tell a story about this guy,” he said.
Hauka penned a few fictional stories based on Jiwa in 1998, which were drew interest from Dundurn Press. He then turned them into his first novel, Mister Jinnah: Securities, which Hauka adapted for CBC-TV.
Since then, the Gemini-award nominated writer has penned She Demons and, most recently, Pizza 911: A Mister Jinnah Mystery.
On Thursday night, the New Westminster resident will talk about his craft — and the publishing business — at the Coquitlam Public Library (575 Poirier St.) with two other crime scribes.
The lecture with Port Coquitlam’s Allan Emerson (Death of a Bride and Groom) and Cathy Ace (Cait Morgan mystery series), a Maple Ridge resident, is being put on by the Crime Writers of Canada.
Hauka said interest in crime writing is strong. “It’s a genre that people gravitate to,” he said. “I think it’s part of human nature: People are storytellers and they hate an unresolved mystery. That’s what drives civilization. Why does it work like that? Why does that happen? Crime writing takes those two two intrinsically human qualities.”
• The Crime Writers of Canada talk on Dec. 3 is free but registration is required. Call the library at 604-937-4155.
