Babiak the Bookish Barbarian

by Scott Hayes

The sixth novel from Edmonton’s Todd Babiak is a return of his latest character, security expert Christopher Kruse, and also the return to a common theme: violence in the world and how people react to it.

The former Edmonton Journal journalist decided to bring Kruse back not just because the character struck a chord with literary audiences and made his first tale, Come Barbarians, a popular hit.

“I’m really trying to bring to life issues that are still quite alive today… in the news every single day,” he remarked.

In the first novel set in the early 1990s, the protagonist moves to France with his wife and daughter in an effort to salvage his marriage. His wife, it seemed, didn’t really care for what he did for a profession and Kruse himself was just coming to terms with how he didn’t either. Tragically, he is left to mourn each of them after they die in separate and horrible incidents. His wife involves them in “dark politics,” the author notes, which are connected to organized crime that he simply can’t save her from.

In this new novel, we learn that ‘our hero’ has remained in France and begun working on the mayor of Paris’ security staff. But Europe has become a strange and dangerous zone of burgeoning terrorism and fear. He’s haunted by his losses. There’s an explosion in a Jewish restaurant with many deaths and injuries although Kruse and the mayor are relatively unscathed.

For the point of the plot, it gives the security agent a mission and a motive: to fulfill his duties of protecting life and bring the culprit to justice but also to right the wrongs of the world: to restore order and peace where chaos and pain are rearing their ugly heads. Kruse himself is a man of violence, something that the author doesn’t treat lightly.

“It’s a curse in a sense too, where once you enter that world, there’s probably no easy, clean, simple, blessed way out of it. He’s stuck there. He’s hyperaware of who he is and what he’s doing. He’s not a James Bond or a hypermasculine figure or macho stereotype who doesn’t think about this. He’s obsessed with how it’s ruining his soul to be doing this work. I’m trying to be as careful as I can be about it. It’s a funny spot to be in where you’re writing about violence and also – like any human being today – stricken by it.”

Having just returned from London, Babiak remarked that all that he overheard people talking about were issues regarding the European Union, immigration and integration, terrorism… “all the themes that I have in these books.”

“I’m writing about it before Europe entered into this project and today people are obsessed with ‘will Europe leave?’, ‘will this project fail?’. It’s a neat way to look at a lot of the news and the pain and frustration coming out of Europe today. And of course here… it’s not like we’re immune to it. We have that here too.”

This sequel continues within weeks of the end of the first story but - in bookstore years - a few years have passed and the real world itself even more of a war zone for the worldly writer who once lived in France.

When asked about returning to such tumultuous subject matter, Babiak responded coolly. He neither balked nor bristled at the suggestion that perhaps he too is glamorizing violence to draw attention to his work and to sell books, plainly saying there is violence in the world and books must reflect that world.

“I don’t want to be paranoid about it. I’m also just borrowing from myself. I trained in that stuff for 14 years,” he hinted at, referring to his own self-defense and martial arts experience.

“It’s easy for me to use that. I don’t have to do any more research. But maybe it’s because I was beaten up a few times quite seriously as a kid. Maybe it did something to me. Maybe it pressed a button so that I’m continually thinking about it or revisiting it. It’s as mysterious to me as it might be to you as to why I’m so interested in it. Since it remains such a compelling theme in our lives, it doesn’t seem to be a solvable problem, I can continue writing about it.”

Instead, he readily accepted that he might also be an author who sensationalizes violence since it is so sensational to him. “Maybe I am,” he said. Life experience and one’s own psychological mindset means that he writes what he knows and feels. Since violence and the repercussions of it are so profound, it must be explored. An author’s very job is to plumb the depths of our murky souls and create something to try and make sense of it all.

“I’m as fascinated by terrorism and death and explosions and murder and the motivations it takes for people to do that and how we stop it… and just the smallness and danger of human ambition certainly get in the way of peace and order in the lives of the characters and in our lives too.”

Babiak ended by suggesting that a third book in this series is being toyed with, the fruition of which dependent on the reception of this current tale. He also has other ideas that he’s hoping to flesh out and publish. All good things in time.

For the moment, however, he’s thrilled to make a return appearance at the St. Albert Public Library where he has been a frequent fixture during the autumn STARFest of late.

“I love coming to the St. Albert library. It has some of the best readers and best audiences in the GEA!” (he said, referring to the greater Edmonton area).