Robert McCaw

Robert McCaw is the author of Fire and Vengeance, Off the Grid, and Death of a Messenger. McCaw grew up in a military family, traveling the world. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, served as a U.S. Army lieutenant, and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a partner in a major international law firm in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing major Wall Street clients in complex civil and criminal cases. Having lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, McCaw imbues his writing of the Islands with his more than 2-year love affair with this Pacific paradise. He now lives in New York City with his wife, Calli.

Twitter: @RobertBMcCaw

Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?

Food and wine (please don't forget the wine!) play essential roles in both my life and my writing. I generally favor the savory. Give me a chilled Russian River chardonnay and piping hot, perfectly prepared, vegetable or seafood risotto, and I'll be happy as a clam (pun intended). In writing the Koa Kāne Hawaiian mystery series, food helps to define my protagonist. He and Nālani, the love of his life, enjoy Hawaiian delicacies like nori-wrapped seared 'ahi, fresh ono, and hō'i'o, an edible fern like asparagus. He has a craving for haupia, sweet coconut cream custard squares. On occasion he indulges in a Hawaiian loco moco consisting of rice, spam, mayo-macaroni salad, and brown gravy. And he'll wash it all down with a Hawaiian craft beer, maybe a Paniolo Pale Ale or a Bikini Blonde Lager. Yet, as a former Special Forces officer, Koa is also a man of the world who, like me, fixes a mean risotto with real Italian rice and savors a buttery chardonnay. Thus, his tastes in local and international food, like his killer turned cop backstory, his fluency in English and Hawaiian, and his overall thought processes all help define his character for readers.

Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

My wife wrote her master’s thesis on Diego Rivera, focusing primarily on his Rockefeller Center mural. Because Rivera inserted an image of Vladimir Lenin into his composition, the mural was torn off the walls and destroyed before he finished it. Given that the original mural no longer exists, I’ve never had the opportunity to see that particular image. Rivera, however, replicated the Rockefeller Center mural in Mexico City. We went there to see the recreated mural and dozens of other Rivera murals, especially the 235 images which adorn the Education Ministry walls. These paintings are quite incredible in depicting the stories of Mexican peasants and workers from all walks of life. To me, each image is like a brilliant short story, perfectly portraying the life and hardships of the Mexican people. I often think of Rivera's paintings when I'm struggling to write a scene. I hope I can capture the essence of my idea as wonderfully as Rivera translated his visions into paintings.

Writing story vignettes as though they were paintings is a useful technique. In the opening scenes of Fire and Vengeance, for example, Chief Detective Koa Kāne confronts a volcanic eruption under an elementary school. The scene is utter chaos. Envisioning the way Rivera would render the scene—the specifics he would emphasize and the distractions he would leave out—is, for me, a useful way to focus my pen.

Is there another profession you would like to try?

I’d love to be an astronomer, the profession I almost chose in college. It is one of those fields, like computer science and biotechnology, that have contributed astounding advances in human knowledge during my lifetime. I’ve often thought it would be cool to say that I made even a small contribution to the sum of what we know about the universe. Alas, it was not to be. Still, my fascination with astronomy has not gone entirely unfulfilled. The first book in the Koa Kāne Hawaiian mystery series, Death of a Messenger, gives the reader an inside look at the real-life Keck Observatories (dubbed the Alice Observatories in the book) atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain. Several of the book’s observatory scenes required extensive research as well as visits to those incredible instruments and the Keck facility’s headquarters in the nearby cowboy town of Kamuela. For me, that research was pure joy. There is something quite magical about standing at the prime focus of the world’s largest optical telescope.

Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?

I’m an amateur photographer who believes in the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you. I find cell-phone photography to be an effective, if not elegant, way to communicate. I share pictures of things that interest me—flowers, ships, sunsets, doorways, sidewalk chalk drawings—with my wife and daughter. I also use photography as a research tool. When I see a scene, such as a strip of 1920s buildings in Hilo, Hawaii, that I might want to describe in a novel, I take pictures. They remind me of the little details that make a book credible. I used that technique in my latest mystery, Fire and Vengeance.

What do you worry about?

I worry about the future—about the kind of world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren. Long before the coronavirus pandemic, I felt we were living in an unsustainable bubble. We've ignored our reckless waste of resources, buried our head in the sand instead of facing climate change, pretended to live in a democracy while the top 10 percent reap 90 percent of the rewards, invented technologies like social media that control us rather than work for us, and barreled toward a world without privacy, etc. Inertia in human affairs, as in the physical world, is a powerful force. I fear our complacency will be our collective undoing.