SOURCE: “His Novel's Success is ‘Thrilling’ News,” in Richmond Times Dispatch, April 30, 1998, p. B1.

[In the following review, Clark discusses the release of Tidewater Blood, noting Hoffman's easy-going affability and the author's venture into the suspense thriller market with the novel.]

William “Bill” Hoffman came to town yesterday to promote his new novel, Tidewater Blood.

The book, a modern suspense thriller involving an aristocratic Virginia family whose roots go way back, is off to a fine start artistically and commercially.

It has been proclaimed a page-turner by some literary critics, and it is showing signs of becoming a best seller. If the book earns him a chunk of change, that will be just fine with Hoffman, an accomplished fiction writer who hadn't been known as a mystery writer.

“Some people have accused me of betraying my craft by writing a thriller,” he told a lunch-hour audience at The Library of Virginia. “My response is that a 72-year-old man has a right to make a little money.”

Hoffman is a serious writer and a funny guy.

His healthy sense of humor was in grand form at the state library, where his appearance was sponsored by The Virginia Center for the Book.

The audience included a number of men who have known Bill Hoffman a long time. Some of them knew him as a fellow student at Hampden-Sydney College in the 1940s. Others studied under him at Hampden-Sydney, where Hoffman taught literature and creative writing for three decades until retiring in 1983.

Looking at the familiar faces in the crowd, Hoffman said he was delighted to see some very close friends. “If I ever need a little cash, I could collect from them by promising not to write about them,” he said.

Hoffman was accompanied to town by his wife, Sue, who remembers seeing a picture of him in a magazine when his first book was published years ago. “I liked what I saw,” she said, smiling.

The Hoffmans have lived for more than 30 years on a farm near Charlotte Court House in Charlotte County.

One day, three of his friends drove into the town to pay him a visit. They approached some fellows who always can be found passing time beneath a big sycamore.

“Do you know where William Hoffman, the writer, lives?” one of Hoffman's friends asked the locals.

They shook their heads, “No.”

“Well, do you know where Sue Hoffman lives?”

“Oh, Sue! Sure. You just go down the road there and turn right at the Methodist church.”

Bill Hoffman grew up in Charleston, West Virginia.

“I'm not from Virginia, but I got here as soon as I could,” he likes to say.

His family often traveled by car to Virginia Beach on vacations when he was a boy in the 1930s. On the way, they always stopped in Richmond to spend the night at The Jefferson Hotel, which had live alligators in a pool in the lobby in those days.

“I tried to stare them down and make them blink,” Hoffman said. “But you can't stare an alligator down.”

The best advice for a writer, Hoffman said, is what high school English teachers have been telling their students for years: “Write about something you know.”

His stories are set in places he is familiar with. His characters are composites of real people he has known.

“I've been threatened by some people who saw themselves in one of my books,” he said. “One fellow threatened to hit me. I said go ahead, I need the publicity.”

Bill Hoffman is beginning to get a lot of publicity.

Heretofore, writing has brought him some literary awards, and it has earned him a reputation in literary circles as one of the South's best fiction writers.

Fame and fortune, however, were for big-name writers whose paperbacks are sold at airport newsstands.

Now, at 72, Hoffman is poised to be “discovered,” thanks to Tidewater Blood, his thriller.

“I didn't start out to write a thriller,” he said.

“I didn't think of it as a thriller when it was finished. In fact, I was offended the first time somebody called it a thriller. But if they'll buy it, they can call it a thriller.”