Claire Hamner Matturo interviews Dennis “Mitch” Maley, author of “Fish Kill”

Claire Hamner Matturro: Mitch, let me start by saying how much I enjoyed Fish Kill (Punk Rock Publishing, April 2026). Congratulations on writing this wickedly entertaining and high-energy novel. With its wild Florida crime-caper spirit and shades of an eco-thriller, Fish Kill is an absorbing, character-driven mystery that asks who killed activist, publisher, and documentarian Micky “Fish” Pesch. It also spins an engrossing tale of a band of people who have just flat-out had enough of corruption and set out to correct and avenge some serious political wrongs.

I applaud your courage in writing a book so close to home. Your novel is set in a fictional Manatee County—the county where you live. In your novel, you call the location Mullet County, which no doubt harkens back to when the local newspaper was called the “Mullet Wrapper” and mullet fishing was a major industry there. While the book is clearly a work of fiction, given the descriptions of Mullet County and its location, anyone who knows Florida geography will understand that Mullet County is Manatee County. Since I also live in “Mullet County,” a.k.a. Manatee, I recall news events that might have triggered some energetic and fictional reimagining in Fish Kill. So, I just have to ask, what kind of feedback are you getting from others who live here?

Dennis Mitch Maley: Thank you so much, Claire. I appreciate that. I’ve obviously incorporated subjects that I’ve covered as a journalist in Manatee County, including overdevelopment and the very orchestrated destruction of our wetland protections. As a result, I’ve mostly been asked questions about whether some character is supposed to represent someone specific from real life, and while fictional characters tend to, on some level, be composites drawn from our lived experiences, I assure them there is nothing to decipher in Fish Kill. It’s a work of fiction and half of the fun, especially in this genre, is creating characters that are much weirder and infinitely more interesting than the people I cover out in the wild.

CHM: Fish Kill is sure to be compared to books by Carl Hiaasen and the late Tim Dorsey, which I hope you take as a compliment. Like them, you are a journalist as well as an author. It occurs to me that many fine contemporary Florida authors—for example, in a non-exclusive list, Hiaasen, Dorsey, Edna Buchanan, Dave Barry, Randy Wayne White, and Elaine Viets—were also journalists. Going further back, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Zora Neale Hurston were also journalists. Please tell our readers a bit about your own journalism background, and why you think journalists so often make great novelists.

DMM: Well, that’s very generous, as any comparison to Hiaasen or Dorsey is an enormous compliment. To be honest, I made a very deliberate choice to pursue a career as a journalist in service to my literary ambitions. And I did so precisely because, as you noted, so many other novelists have gone that route. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with Hemingway’s books. I remember him once explaining that journalism forced him to write every day, regardless of whether he felt inspired or had an attachment of any sort to the subject and that, as a result, it made him a much better writer, especially early in his career.

I have found much truth in that assessment. It’s much easier to log your 10,000 hours, so to speak, with a full-time job that requires you to read and write on a near constant basis. I also really loved the opinion page of the newspaper even going back to my teen years, and I thought Jimmy Breslin, who also wrote some novels, was so good as a columnist. I dreamed of having the privilege of colorfully sharing my opinions with a readership that way. While many journalists live for the feeling of cracking a story and often view the writing as a necessary hardship in the process, for me, the thrill is in finding just the right sort of impactful prose that captures a readers emotional reaction, either challenges it or validates it, and maybe puts it into words they struggle to find.

That said, I’m careful to try and strike a balance. When I was still an aspiring journalist, I found it much easier to find the energy to write fiction, which requires more of the writer, in my experience. Sometimes, the last thing I feel like doing at night or on weekends, is sitting back down and creating a story whole cloth or even doing revisions on a manuscript. Then again, the more you practice, the more proficient and efficient you get, so there’s a trade-off of sorts.

CHM: You do an excellent job of educating the readers of Fish Kill as well as entertaining them. The title of the book no doubt comes in part from the toxic red tide kills that cover the coastal beaches with rotting dead fish. You show the scientific link between red tide and the gross overdevelopment of Mullet County and the resulting destruction of wetlands. It’s a difficult thing to blend actual information and scientific facts into a novel, especially one as fast-paced as yours. Might you take a moment to talk about your techniques and how you blend the hard environmental and political facts into the flow of the plot?

Mitch Maley

DMM: Well, I’m a sucker for a good double entendre, so Micky’s nickname was built in to play off the title. There’s an old movie that I absolutely adore called 29^th Street, and the protagonist’s last name is Pesch, and people in his neighborhood called him “Fish,” which is where I got the idea. In terms of the science involved, it actually felt quite challenging in terms of whether I was asking too much of the reader in that regard, and I found myself cutting a lot of the technical background, or folding it into dialog or the public meeting scenes, so that readers who were less interested in that component of the story didn’t find themselves getting pulled out of the broader narrative.

CHM: While the novel asks who killed activist and publisher Micky Pesch —and why—a second plot line concerns an attempt to turn out three unscrupulous county commissioners who are each seeking re-election. All three politicians are in bed with a developer and collaborate with the developer in ways that seriously endanger Mullet County’s fragile coastal ecosystem. The commissioners are, in a manner of speaking, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs by destroying the very things that draw tourists and new residents to the county. The odds are long and hard against success in turning out these crooked commissioners in the upcoming election. Yet a motivated widow, an older political activist, and the journalists make a bold try at defeating them. The resulting shenanigans in the political campaigning are a whole lot of fun to read. But behind the humorous plotting, a bleak picture of corrupt local politics emerges. Yet, despite all the negative aspects of the political situation, you find hope in Fish Kill. Do you, as a journalist, observer, and long-time resident of Florida share the same hope for coastal Florida?

DMM: Yes and no. As I’m sure you are aware, we experienced what I would definitely call a change election here in 2024. Local voters became so incensed and engaged that big money finally lost. Our local county commission flipped and without the help of a benefactor like Amber Pesch. It was the most hopeful political moment I had ever experienced, certainly post-Citizens United. However, the same sort of bought-and-paid-for politicians in Tallahassee simply set about passing a series of local preemption bills that have prevented the new board from reversing all of those bad policies. I’m hopeful that voters will be even more active and engaged this year, but I worry that if we cannot make demonstrable progress soon, it will lead to more voters feeling disenfranchised and maybe disengaging again.

CHM: The novel makes extended and adept use of exaggeration, ridicule, quirky characters, outlandish situations, and irony to entertain, and yet it contains a strong undercurrent of social criticism, even some biting commentary. Thus, would you consider Fish Kill a satire? How would you describe it?

DMM: I think it certainly reads like satire, but more and more, it feels like we are living in a world that has become so absurd that it is fair to wonder whether parody is even possible. I’m currently reading Hiassan’s Squeeze Me, which fictionalizes the world of Mar-a-Lago, and I was struck by the idea that while the stories and characters are every bit as zany in his earlier novels, this one seems so much less of an exaggeration. That said, regardless of what kind of story I’m writing, it becomes a release valve for my frustrations to some degree. And as an opinion columnist, I think the social commentary naturally bleeds over.

Claire Matturro

CHM: Fish Kill has so many varied, wild, quirky, complex, and fascinating good-guy characters, and they are all so marvelously flawed—well, maybe Emily Bartleston, the brilliant environmental scientist, is not flawed. Ringo, the gonzo-esque photojournalist who steals every scene he is in, certainly racks up a list of major flaws, yet he proves himself not only kind-hearted but devilishly clever. Even the lesser characters like Dutch, the political consultant, are well drawn. So, first, I congratulate you on your imagination in bringing these folks to literary life. And next, let me ask which one is—or which ones are—your favorite(s)? Maybe that is like asking a parent to name their favorite child, but still, I’m going to ask.

DMM: Oh, hands down, I had the most fun with Ringo. So much so, that if I was feeling particularly uninspired, I would sometimes skip ahead on the outline to write one of his scenes, and it would usually jump start a good block of writing time.

CHM: Yes, I suspected Ringo might have been one of your favorites and he was one of my favorite characters. Shelton, Emily, Ringo, and Tina, Ringo’s bohemian girlfriend, all cry out to me for a sequel. I’d enjoy seeing Amber and Dutch back again in a new adventure. Is there a sequel in the works? And if so, might you tell us a bit about it?

DMM: I wasn’t even halfway through writing the first draft when I decided that I wanted to stay with these characters for at least another book. So, yes, my next novel will be something of a sequel that I’m already outlining. I’m planning to take the story north of the river, where I’ve already developed some characters in Fish Kill. The whole gang will be back. The working title is LeGrotto Shuffle.

CHM: Well, I definitely look forward to reading LeGrotto Shuffle. Thank you, Mitch, for taking time from your busy work week to share some of your thoughts and answers with the Southern Literary Review.

DMM: My pleasure, and thank you.