NEW YORK -- Novelists find their material in a variety of ways. Pete Hamill does it by shoe leather, like the great newspaper reporter he was.

At 71, Hamill looks as trim and sharp as he did in the 1960s covering New York for the Post, then one of America's great liberal papers but now a reactionary sleaze and celebrity sheet for Rupert Murdoch.

He was among the best-known of a collection of New York journalists that included Jimmy Breslin, James Wechsler and Murray Kempton. (Hamill does a funny impression of Kempton, pipe and all.)

They were last of a breed of hard-bitten, hard-drinking newspapermen of the Damon Runyon school.

In his 1994 memoir, "A Drinking Life," he admitted to mending some of his dissolute ways, but he retains a fondness for the newspaper days of the 1950s and '60s.

"As a reporter in New York, I saw some of the nastiest crap you can imagine," Hamill told me June 2 at BookExpo America here. "But, there were great stories, too."

He's never stopped writing about his native city in newspapers, magazines and books, but fiction writing provides the deadlines for Hamill's work these days. His 10th novel, "North River," will be in stores this month.

A story of Depression-era Manhattan, the book moves back and forth from World War I to 1934, the history of that era providing a rich backdrop for Hamill's story.

"I did my reporting on this book, like I've always done," he said. "It's the research that feeds your imagination. It marinates into your memory, and then you let that memory work into your characters."

Hamill said he drew upon the reporting of war correspondents like Alexander Woollcott and Runyon for the details on the soldiers from New York who fought in France.

"There's a scene in the book where a regiment of New Yorkers are marching behind the lines to be relieved and they sing "Give My Regards to Broadway" like a dirge," he said. "That's straight out of Woollcott's reporting."

Hamill's hero is Dr. James Delaney, a wounded war veteran, struggling with the miserable economy to care for his poor patients while trying to raise a grandson dropped on his doorstep by his wayward daughter.

"I wanted to write about a good man," Hamill said. "The idea came from the aftermath of Sept. 11 when we started to realize how many quiet heroes there are -- doctors, teachers, cops."

He hesitated for a bit, he explained, because "writing about good people is one of the hardest things to do these days. There's such a big fear of being sentimental, looking soft.

"The way criticism has evolved, we're supposed to see human life as nasty, brutish and short, but we know it really isn't that way."

Delaney finds a small boy on his doorstep on Manhattan's West Side, because his daughter and her lover are involved in revolution in Mexico, a country Hamill knows well.

After naval service, he attended college in Mexico City, pursuing a career in art and an appreciation for famed sculptor Diego Rivera.

Hamill wrote a well-received study of the artist in 1999. "It's important to use the things you know in your writing. It's one way to write in a natural, honest way," he said.

"In Mexico, I painted, I read and then got the idea that I could be a writer," he said. "Back home, I was going to face what I call the 'green ceiling.' It was the attitude among the older generation of Irish that you shouldn't aspire to anything too 'artsy.' The question was always, 'Who do you think you are?' when the idea of being an artist came up."

Offered a tryout as a reporter on the Post in 1960, Hamill shelved his painting ambitions for a notebook and a typewriter.

"That's how I learned to be a writer. The old guys weren't so bad. They took their time with me, showed me how to make my stuff better."

The education was bare-bones in the office of the Post, then owned by the tight-fisted Dorothy Schiff who kept her reporters on their toes -- really.

"There weren't enough chairs for everybody in the newsroom," said Hamill. "Reporters were supposed to be out of the office getting stories, but one time, I had to write a story typing standing up because all the seats were taken."

Hamill said he was inspired to write novels about New York's past because "it's important, I think, to imagine the world before television. Think about the conversations people must have had then! Things have changed amazingly after that era, so much so that it's hard to believe what the world was like."