Shuman finds writing inspiration all around him

• By GREG LANGLEY
• Books editor
• Published: Nov 30, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Baton Rouge author Malcolm Shuman is a man with an unusual profession: he’s a contract archaeologist.

“It’s one of the best-kept “nonsecrets” — that is a secret in the sense that most people think that archaeologists work at universities and museums and most archaeologists do. But with the environmental movement and the requirement that there be permits issued by federal agencies for a number of federal undertakings like, say, Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, you have a permit from the Corps of Engineers and you have to have EPA permits for different things you do. These federal laws have interface with something called the National Historic Preservation Act which says that not only when you have a federal undertaking do you have to look at rare and endangered species, you have to look at wetlands, but you have to look at historic properties, you have to look at archaeological properties,” Shuman said.

“Most people think wildlife biologists go down and deal with the rare and endangered species and that’s it. Then they get a letter from some obscure office that says you have to have an archaeologist go out.

“So that’s what I do.”

But it’s not all he does. Shuman writes books, crime and mystery mostly. He finds his job is helpful in providing inspiration.

“A lot of the places where I go being an archaeologist — like day the day before yesterday I was in Grand Chenier, last week I was over in Allen Parish on the Coushatta Reservation — you get to meet a lot of different people, and naturally that makes you think of all sorts of possibilities. But I’ve always had this conspiratorial turn of mind. I’ve always been interested in crime writing and writing in general. It’s just that crime writing is the particular genre where I’ve been successful in getting some published,” he said.

While his latest book, The Levee, has no archaeological angle, Shuman, who has also published as M.S. Karl, has a lengthy publishing resume. “My previous series that Avon put out was about a contract archaeologist such as I am. It didn’t require much research. I could just invent things, twist the facts a little bit from things  I had done and invent some crimes and all. That was real easy to do.”

With his latest book though, Shuman drew on his own background. He grew up in Baton Rouge and an event that occurred here when he was in college lodged in his mind.

In 1960 a murder on the levee shook Baton Rouge society. Margaret Rosamond McMillan, a 38-year-old unmarried woman who was a biology professor at LSU in New Orleans (later UNO) was found bludgeoned to death. What came next was unreal. George H. Mickey, the 49-year-old dean of LSU’s graduate school and married father of two, was charged with McMillan’s murder. Despite much evidence, Mickey was never tried for the murder. According to an article in the Baton Rouge State-Times, DA J. St. Clair Favrot “recalled a warrant” against Mickey in April of 1960. The crime was never solved. Mickey lost his job and faded into obscurity. But not out of Shuman’s mind.

“I was a freshman in college when this happened. It was Jan. 10, 1960. I entered college at LSU in the summer of ’59. When this happened, it was big news all over the area. I was part of the university community. My mother worked in public relations at LSU for 28 years under Bob Maddox, and naturally, Bob and those guys in public relations, they had a pipeline to everything, to The Advocate and The State-Times, to the police, to the campus police and all that. And so I had heard a lot of stuff that was going on. I mean it was all scuttlebutt — stuff about Mickey and all this.

“I also used to go shooting with a kid who is now a quite reputable doctor, and his father was a chief criminal deputy for this parish. He was recounting to me about how Dr. Mickey took the lie detector test and just huffed and puffed on it so that it came out inconclusive,” Shuman said.

“It’s just strands like that that I wove together into something completely fictional.”

The Levee is Shuman’s 15th published book — he estimates he’s written 60 books. Most are about crime.