Q: What inspired you to create Dimase Augustin as the protagonist of the series?

A: I love Boston and New England. I’ve enjoyed many locally based books, TV shows and movies that featured Irish cops and detectives, almost to the point of being a stereotype, and wanted to create something different and realistic. I had met a couple of Haitian police officers in Cambridge at one point, and decided to combine them into one character and make him the chief homicide detective. At that point, I could just as easily have made my hero Russian or Asian or anything. Cambridge is a pretty diverse community and I thought Dimase would be a realistic cop in a little different mold than the usual. I also wanted to challenge myself to try and think like someone from a different background, to get to know them better through my writing. Afterall, if authors could only write about their own ethnicity and direct personal experiences, what limited results we would produce. In my mind, it is the opposite of cultural appropriation, it is cultural promotion, a search for commonality and understanding. I’m trying to become Dimase when I write about him. It doesn’t have be to be perfect. It’s the attempt that makes it enjoyable for me and hopefully, at least in some cases, for others.