The Venetian Vase

Namaste Mart Confidential is the debut novel of Andrew Miller. It tells the story of Adam Minor and Richie Walsh, two buddies who work at Namaste Mart, a hippie grocery store in West Hollywood. By day they contend with the celebrities, hipsters and cult members that make up about half the LA populace. By night and in their spare time, Adam and Richie supplement their income by working as unlicensed private investigators. The two friends are good at what they do, but a new case is going to test their survival skills to the limit.

Joan Goldman was an action movie star of the 1980s, who now runs a chain of high-end lingerie stores. One of her top employees, Shayla Ramsey, has gone missing and she wants the boys to find them. On the trail of Shayla, Adam and Richie encounter vengeful Armenian gangsters and sex-crazed Mormon polygamists. It’s enough to make them wish they stayed in the grocery business…

Namaste Mart Confidential is a terrific novel. It’s funny, sexy, suspenseful and always keeps you turning the page. Andrew Miller knows his noir and, judging by his debut, is going to achieve great things in the genre. I spoke to Andrew about the writing of the novel.

Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about the genesis of Namaste Mart Confidential. What drove you to tell this story?

The time had come to write something personal. I had published numerous short stories and one novella in a book called L.A. Stories. This new project would be a novel. It was the second year of the pandemic, and I’d begun to really notice how much Los Angeles had changed since I’d been living here, a great deal of it for the worse. I could recall an older version of the city that was gone now. I’ve never been a detective (or wanted to be one). I’m not a tough guy. But I asked my good friend, the stand-up comedian and actor Mike Whelan, if I could turn him into a character for a novel, one that would feature fictional versions of us as detectives. Mike is not a shy man. He isn’t scared of much or embarrassed easily—imagine Bud White doing ten minutes of stand-up at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip, then you might get a reasonable picture of who he is. Mike said yes. This was when I envisioned it all—my life, and Mike’s—wildly inserted into a hardboiled fantasy fever dream of a P.I. crime novel, set in the long-gone world of L.A. in 2013. After that, I felt driven to begin writing. 

Interviewer: We are both James Ellroy fanatics. Could you describe Ellroy’s influence on your understanding of the genre, and name some of your influences as crime writers.

I first saw the movie of L.A. Confidential twice in the theater during its first run when I was in the seventh grade. I was enthralled. The VHS came out, and I remember watching the Making Of documentary at the end. When it arrived at the guy who wrote the original book, he looked right in the camera with intense, beady eyes, and said, “My book is unconstrainable, uncontainable, and unadaptable.” While all the Hollywood people looked and behaved in the pleasant, agreeable way they were supposed to these videos, this Ellroy guy came off like a maniac. Was he a maniac? I bought the original novel, and it floored me. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a writer. The next Ellroy book I read was American Tabloid. During my junior year of high school I was in an AV course, something cutting edge at the time, which demanded a long video project to be turned in at the end of the year. My teachers approved me making a feature-length, black and white, R-rated VHS adaptation. I had my high school buddies playing Pete, Ward, Kemper, Hoffa, JFK.

Much of my outlook during these formative years–-not just about writing, but even of the world at large—was shaped by Ellroy’s novels. I am influenced by his vision of history, the passion and dedication he puts into his craft, the inspirational life he has led, his willingness to go against the grain, and, of course, his legendary sense of humor. He got me to see that hardboiled crime fiction can be great literature and great fun simultaneously. His line from the opening of American Tabloid was with me often as I wrote Namaste Mart Confidential. “Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.” Outlandish fiction and truth are blended recklessly in my book.

As for other influences, many of the hardboiled greats—Hammett, MacDonald, and Chandler, are all important to me. Dan Fante, the son of L.A. legend John Fante, wrote a terrific P.I. novel called Point Doom, which was a major influence.

Interviewer: The novel features funny and iconoclastic portrayals of the Armenian Mafia and the Mormon Church. How much research did you do on these topics, and as a novelist how bound did you feel to the facts?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Mormons, but I don’t know many, so there was quite a bit of research there. Joseph Smith lived a fascinating life. I spoke to some ex-Mormons, and I read books like No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie, Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, and of course, Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Crime fiction fans will enjoy Prophet’s Prey, by the Mormon P.I. Sam Brower. It’s his true-life account of his years-long investigations into the Jeffs family and the FLDS, which is probably the most powerful and insidious Mormon polygamist cult still operating today. Since I encountered so many true stories in these books that were far more fantastic than anything I wanted in the novel, I felt completely justified if I needed to stray from the facts for the sake of telling a good story.

As for the Armenian Mob, they’ve been an ongoing presence in L.A. for a while. Many of the younger Armenian gangsters who arrived in L.A. well after the fall of the Soviet Union adopted the L.A. cholo persona, which I always found entertaining. I’ve seen them around, and heard stories. This story line didn’t require as much research. While I don’t plan to get into the habit of clarifying what’s real in the book and what isn’t, it’s been public knowledge for years that my friend Mike, mentioned above, had a real-life confrontation with the Armenian Mob that I recounted accurately near the end of chapter four.

Interviewer: There are some funny celebrity cameos in the novel by Drea DeMatteo and Charles Martin Smith. How did you want to portray the cult of celebrity in Los Angeles?

I get what you mean when you say “cult” but I don’t think of it that way. In L.A., celebrities are just around. I wanted to show them as real people, going about their lives. Encounters with them can be incredibly interesting, but just as often they can be mundane. For the most part, L.A. celebrities seem genuinely grateful to have been noticed, especially actors.

Interviewer: Finally, what are your future writing plans?

Looking directly ahead, I plan to focus on promoting this book as much as possible. There will be a short story collection. I want someone to make Namaste Mart Confidential into a movie. It would be a superb one in the right hands. I’m working on my next novel, which will be bigger, and set in Pasadena in the late ‘50s. I’m going to expand my darkly comic, tragic, and ultimately hopeful vision into many more crime novels.

Namaste Mart Confidential is published by Run Amok Crime