Looking Twice: An Interview with Andrew Gross Andrew Gross' third thriller, and the second to feature Connecticut police detective Ty Hauck, Don't Look Twice, is being published next week by William Morrow. Mystery Books News is pleased to post an interview with the author provided by the publisher in which Andrew talks about the book, a sequel to The Dark Tide (which we reviewed last year, calling it "a must-read for thriller fans and those looking for high-stakes adventure"; read our review at Mysterious Reviews: The Dark Tide by Andrew Gross).
Looking Twice: An Interview with Andrew Gross
One of the strongest appeals that readers often cite about your writing are the complex web of family ties and family relationship dynamics that weave throughout your stories. In Don't Look Twice, you explore the bond between two brothers -- as well as the parent/child relationship (across two sets of characters). What draws you to focus so deeply on family in your novels? Why do you think that quality is so compelling for readers?
It’s never my precise goal to write “crime” novels, but to write stories about compelling, human situations in which a crime, or some other world-shattering event, takes place. My stories are rooted in the drama of broken trust, of calm disturbed, when something a person counts on for sure turns out to be false. The family unit is the most universal one where a rupture can feel the most traumatic. I know I’m not exactly the first to work with this material. Our most compelling stories and myths are tales of families in conflict going all the way back to Genesis......
....This is set in a relatively small town, mostly in Greenwich, Connecticut ... but it has global implications, from New York City to Asia to the Middle East. Can you tell us a little about the way corporate misdeeds can have massive, global, political repercussions?
Greenwich is a perfect “small” place with universal dimensions. It is the home to hedge fund barons and powerful CEOs. Yet, as I like to say, it’s a town of yoga moms and dads who cheer their kids’ teams from the sidelines. So what happens in the “big” world filters down to the small world pretty quickly. My books are also about conspiracies, and ultimately, the people behind them, who are not bigger than life, or twisted, evil doers, but people we all might know, and people for whom, greed, fraud, and deceit are part of the corporate misdeeds. People who have been tilted off the moral plane by the evil in life.....
What's next for Hauck ... and for Andy Gross?
To me, it was hard to set these books around New York City and Greenwich and not deal with the financial meltdown. So the next book pits Hauck in the middle of a group of conspirators who use vulnerable fund managers to bring an already teetering economy to its knees. For me, the struggle is for the whole story not to be too gloomy -- especially when it deals with the personal side of what’s going on today -- because I don’t believe in gloomy, especially for escapist fiction. But again, I think Hauck will find himself on a similar quest.
Full Story: www.mystery-books.com
Author's website: AndrewGrossBooks.com
================================================================
Please send your comments to greenwichRoundup@gmail.com or click on the comments link at the end of this post.
