Carl Kremer is a Fulton, MO writer who has co-authored and finished a novel started by the late O.T. Harris called “The Professor and the Spies.” Harris, a retired banker from Fulton, began writing the novel in his 80’s, but after he died his friend Kremer helped finish the novel. The fictional book starts with a professor researching the security measures behind Winston Churchill’s 1946 Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, MO, with the narrative bouncing to various international locales featuring spies, drinking, romance, intrigue and dark secrets. Kremer is a retired William Woods University English professor who has written essays and short stories but this is his first published novel. He was kind enough to take the time to be interviewed via email.
Daniel Boone Regional Library: How much of this book was written by Harris, and how much of it was written by you? Was it an easy decision to decide to finish the book or did it take you a while to consider and commit to it?
Carl Kremer: I read all the chapters as he composed them; he considered my suggestions and accepted most of them. A couple of days before his death he told me he had discussed his novel with his family and they all agreed that I could take it over if I chose to. He told me I could revise and try to publish it, or I could refuse it, or burn it. A few weeks later I got a large cardboard box filled with several copies of the manuscript in various iterations, and was told by his daughter that her brother had downloaded the manuscript from O.T.’s hard drive but was having trouble finding the password he’d been given. A few days later, he sent me the chip and I started proofreading and editing it. It took me two years to get it finished, but it was a labor of love. I think O.T. would have been happy with the result, though he would have been a bit surprised by the changes and additions I made. I named each of the chapters. I wrote three or four chapters.
DBRL: Like the fictional character of professor Hampton Weatherly in the book, Harris was a freshman at Westminster College in Fulton, MO when Winston Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech there in 1946. I’m assuming he saw the speech? I’m curious if you know what kind of impact it had on him, and how it may have influenced the creation of the book.
Kremer: O.T. was not able to watch the speech as there was no room for most of the students in the auditorium, so he went to the First Presbyterian Church and listened to it there with other students and local citizens. I’m sure he relied heavily on that experience to create the story and he was well acquainted with several of the principal figures on the faculty, administration and staff of the college and in the town.
DBRL: Who were the spy novelists that influenced Harris in your opinion? Do you share some similar influences yourself?
Kremer: He was an avid reader, and his tastes were broad. He probably read some spy fiction, but I don’t recall specific authors. I made it a point to read James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, “The Spy,” set in the Revolutionary War, and I have read a number of others, including nearly all of the James Bond series.
DBRL: The book is fictional, but draws upon a lot of real life history and people in the narrative. Did you or Harris have to do much historical research for the book?
Kremer: He was personally acquainted with all the local movers and shakers involved in the story, and I am sure he talked with those still alive when he wrote the book.
DBRL: Read anything good lately you’d like to recommend?
Kremer: I haven’t read any spy novels recently, but I am a fan of hard-boiled detective novels, and did my doctoral dissertation on that genre. One of my favorites was Robert B. Parker, who died recently, but other authors have received permission to write under his name, and some of them are fairly good at it. Parker finished an uncompleted work by another detective writer, Raymond Chandler, a contemporary of Dashiell Hammett, one of my favorite authors (he wrote “The Maltese Falcon,” and the movie helped launch Humphrey Bogart’s career).
DBRL: Where can readers get a copy of the book?
Kremer: The novel is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as other major outlets, or ordered from the publisher, Rosedog Books, 585 Alpha Drive, Suite 103, Pittsburgh, PA 15238. Their phone number is 1-800-788-7654.
