Interesting Trivia About Winter Kills

Hats are subtly present in Winter Kills and the other Victor Storm books, for no particular reason. Both of Victor's parents wear hats in Winter Kills. Victor wears a hat as part of his disguise in Summer Storms. One hat of particular interest is Victor's father's straw hat. Though it isn't stated, the FBI Agent Ronald Hill's straw hat in Summer Storms will remind Victor of his father, and he will feel protective of him because of it, even though the FBI man is out to get him. Both Agent Hill's hat and Victor's father's hat are copies of the straw hat I bought in Hawaii in 2005.

In Winter Kills, Victor attends a philosophy class at the local community college. The St. Louis Community College really has an Introduction to Philosophy class, and its course description (as of 2006) is used verbatim in this book.

The conduct of Victor's philosophy class in Winter Kills is modeled after my own experience in a community college philosophy class. Though the characters, of course, are different, many parts—the writing on the board, the pointless questions for the sake of questions, the people with all the answers—are true to life.

In Victor Storm's chronology, he was an instructor at the U.S. Army Airborne School in Fort Benning, Georgia, in February of 1987—which is when I was going through the school. This is strangely interesting, almost tempting me to look through my souvenir photograph book to see if I can spot him.

The jazz club where Victor and Lou both want to watch their backs is the same one where Victor takes Amy in Summer Storms. Victor likes jazz because I like jazz. I made the decision to set the story in St. Louis because it is central for Victor's travels. It turns out, by pure coincidence, that St. Louis is a big jazz city.

All the major characters from Summer Storms appear in Winter Kills. We see Amy Bishop become Victor's travel agent; we hear Rebecca Dubois try to get a story from Victor; and Agent Hill is the unnamed FBI agent who offers to help Detective Ortega with the investigation.

My parents, like Victor's in Winter Kills, were victims in a robbery of a restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, though the outcome of the robbery of my parents, thankfully, was quite different. The reaction of my father, however, was nearly the same as the reaction of Victor's father, and I'm proud of that.

Victor likes to ride Greyhound, and so do I. In my younger days, I took quite a few extended trips on Greyhound, going from Florida to Buffalo and Phoenix to Buffalo and back and so on. Many Greyhound stations retained the grand feel of their heyday, and traveling by bus was like looking back in time. The St. Louis Greyhound station, however, was my favorite. By the time I went through, much of it was no longer in use, but the original fixtures were there: ornate clocks, fine decorative tile floor, grand hallway, fancy windows, little shops, and even shoeshine stands. It was easy to walk through that place and imagine another time.

The Greyhound trip that Victor takes in Winter Kills is true to the real details of that route (at the time it was written, anyway). That route is Greyhound's schedule 4711, departing St. Louis at 6:40 in the evening, changing buses in Nashville, Atlanta, and Lake City (Florida), and arriving in Jacksonville at 4:15 in the afternoon. I should take that trip someday.

Both water and the color blue are featured strongly in Winter Kills, though it is left to the reader to determine what significance that may carry.

Winter Kills is also the title of a song by Yaz, on their album Upstairs at Eric's. I listened to the song repeatedly while writing the book, and the tone of the book, I like to think, is the same as that of the song: very somber.