Towboat Cook Writes Mysteries Between Meals

Between serving lunch and preparing dinner on the mv. Rich McCarty, Max Hiller sits down at the table in the galley and writes the next chapter in his award-winning detective mystery series.

Hiller, 67, has published seven books in his Cadillac Holland mystery series, with most written on a strict schedule from noon to 3 p.m. daily.

“The guys have gotten used to it,” Hiller said. “When they come in the galley, they clean around me. I’ll pick my feet up so they can mop.”

Hiller was working on a dredge doing coastal restoration work off the coast of Morgan City, La., in 2012 when he returned to his childhood love of writing.

“Sitting on a crew vessel in the middle of a swamp” gave him the time he needed to focus on writing without distractions, he said.

When Hiller went to work for American Commercial Barge Line (ACBL) later that year, he found the 28 days on and 28 days off schedule to be a perfect fit for continuing to write. He now writes between shifts on the twin-screw, 6,000 hp. boat, then edits what he wrote during his time at home. It takes about 100 hours of uninterrupted writing time to write the books, each of which has around 40 or 45 chapters.

Hiller lives in Hannibal, Mo., but his books have drawn heavily from his 15 years living in New Orleans, with many of the mysteries set in that city around 2009 and 2010, about five years after Hurricane Katrina, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was completing much of its recovery work, and the city was left on its own to deal with the remainder of the rebuilding effort.

Around that time, Hiller managed a restaurant on St. Charles Avenue near the Sixth District police station in the Central City neighborhood, which Hiller said was sometimes called “Little Baghdad” at the time. A lot of police officers hung out at the restaurant, and Hiller got to know many of them.

“I started telling all these stories that the people I knew had lived through and what was going on in the city and started making them the subplots of the stories,” he said.

Hiller said he explores very real issues through the fictional mystery in each book, including white-collar crime, storm-related scams, a shortage of New Orleans Police Department officers, veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the lack of affordable housing.

Exploring these topics as part of a fictional mystery gives Hiller a lot of leeway as the detective at each book’s heart explores and investigates each case, he said. The reoccurring protagonist in the series is Cooter “Cadillac” Holland. Hiller came up with his name in an unusual way, from names of towns listed on an interstate exit sign along I-55 in Missouri.

“I thought obviously he’s a great character, but what do you do with a character of that name?” he said.

Holland turned out to be a Louisiana State Police detective with a background in military intelligence and special forces and a family history in police work.

“Things started falling through the cracks, which is where having this character come in from the outside came in, being able to bring things to [the other characters’] attention,” Hiller said.

Sometimes, real news items also make their way into Hiller’s story, such as one that sprang to life after Hiller heard about a car found in a drainage tunnel in New Orleans. The car drifted into the tunnel following Hurricane Katrina and wasn’t found for years.

Each day, Hiller begins his writing time rereading what he wrote the day before. Then he tries to write about a chapter a day, or perhaps two if they chapters are short.

“I have an idea for a book, but I never have an outline,” he said.

Hiller said the characters become very real to him, and, if he has an issue with a plot point, he has an internal conversation with them.

“If I’m stuck on something, it behooves me to ask what I’ve asked them to do that they wouldn’t do or to have them tell me what they would do next based on what they’ve already done that I might not have thought of,” he said.

In one case, he said, the characters even changed the identity of the killer in the mystery he was writing.

“Their idea was so much better than mine, I went with it,” he said.

In each book, Hiller’s goal is to give readers all the pieces of information they need to try solve the mystery, but to do it in so cunning a way that they don’t put it all together until the detective reveals what happened near the book’s conclusion.

Hiller’s work has found success, both with critics and the public. His book “Blue Garou” was a Global Book Awards silver medalist. “Ghosts and Shadows” was a Book Excellence Awards finalist. “Everybody Pays” was a finalist in the Global Literary Book Awards. His latest book, “Shell Game,” published May 31, was a Regional Summit Book Awards winner and received a recommendation by the organization Reader’s Favorite.

Hiller’s books are available to order on Amazon or through local booksellers. Autographed copies are always available through the Mark Twain Bookstore in Hannibal, Mo.