Trust No One by Gregg Hurwitz
ITW contributing editor, Keith Raffel, bonded with Gregg Hurwitz at ThrillerFest last year when they discovered their common background: Bay Area upbringing and the same college and grad school. Now Keith has caught up with Gregg again to discuss Trust No One which Christopher Reich calls "magnificent" and which David Baldacci says puts Gregg "at the forefront of suspense writers."
Is your next book is Trust No One or We Know?
It is Trust No One in the U.S. and We Know in the UK and Australia.
Can you give us a sneak preview?
It opens with Nick Horrigan, an average guy in his mid-thirties, awakening in the middle of the night when a SWAT team literally crashes into his apartment and knocks him across the room. Clueless and groggy, he's dragged outside to a street filled with dark sedans and police lights. A Black Hawk helicopter banks over the apartment complex and sets down - incredibly - on his street. As he's dragged toward it, he tears free of the agents and asks where the hell they're taking him. And the lead agent replies, "A terrorist has just seized control of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. He's threatening to blow it up. And the only person he'll talk to is you."
The Sunday Telegraph says, "The breathtaking pace of this thriller is set from the opening scene." How do you keep it going?
This is far and away my fastest paced book. So the challenge was to keep that momentum hurtling forward while not sacrificing character or plausibility. It was something of a balancing act, and I hope readers find that I pulled it off.
Are you writing what Graham Greene called an "entertainment?" Or are you shooting for more?
I always put it all out there on the page. I never feel like I'm done with a book until it has - after draft upon draft - thoroughly exhausted me. But at the same time, I'm wary of drawing my own conclusions about my work. I am all about story. At the end of the day, I want to write the best goddamn tale I can and if readers find something more there, then I'm quite pleased.
Is your next book is Trust No One or We Know?It is Trust No One in the U.S. and We Know in the UK and Australia.
Can you give us a sneak preview?
It opens with Nick Horrigan, an average guy in his mid-thirties, awakening in the middle of the night when a SWAT team literally crashes into his apartment and knocks him across the room. Clueless and groggy, he's dragged outside to a street filled with dark sedans and police lights. A Black Hawk helicopter banks over the apartment complex and sets down - incredibly - on his street. As he's dragged toward it, he tears free of the agents and asks where the hell they're taking him. And the lead agent replies, "A terrorist has just seized control of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. He's threatening to blow it up. And the only person he'll talk to is you."
The Sunday Telegraph says, "The breathtaking pace of this thriller is set from the opening scene." How do you keep it going?
This is far and away my fastest paced book. So the challenge was to keep that momentum hurtling forward while not sacrificing character or plausibility. It was something of a balancing act, and I hope readers find that I pulled it off.
Are you writing what Graham Greene called an "entertainment?" Or are you shooting for more?
I always put it all out there on the page. I never feel like I'm done with a book until it has - after draft upon draft - thoroughly exhausted me. But at the same time, I'm wary of drawing my own conclusions about my work. I am all about story. At the end of the day, I want to write the best goddamn tale I can and if readers find something more there, then I'm quite pleased.
What kind of research did you do on nuclear plants for the book? How much do we have to worry about?I do a good amount of hands-on research for my books. I don't want to reveal too much, but the threat in the nuclear power plant is not the obvious one - however it is all the more deadly, and all the more likely a nightmare scenario. Part of my job is to try to find a different angle into mayhem - a new sort of threat that readers haven't seen before. And at the same time, when it comes to this particular scenario, I also hope to raise a bit of awareness.
Trust No One is your ninth novel. What have you learned since The Tower came out a decade ago?
Wow. A lot, I hope. I'd say the main different between Trust No One and my earlier work is that I'm much more focused on suspense and less on violence. I've learned to explain a lot less, which means I trust the reader more. And of course, I've shifted to an "everyman" scenario with TNO - an average guy trying to escape and catch up to an impossible situation. Those are the books and films I love the most - that great Hitchcock slant on a normal life come unhinged - and that's another significant difference here. Nick Horrigan is a guy like you or me - but we're catching up to him on the worst day of his life. And that's just the beginning of it....
You've written both a series and standalones. Is it better to have "a love 'em and leave 'em" attitude toward your characters or settle into a long-term relationship with them?
While I did love writing the Rackley books, I feel like I've found a different stride with The Crime Writer and Trust No One. At heart, I think I'm a stand-alone writer.
Like me, you grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. What made you turn traitor and move to SoCal? The chance to hang out with movie stars?
A. Ha! I've always loved SoCal: the weather, the attitude, the sunshine - just about everything but the Dodgers. So that's number one: personal preference. But also, while I can write the novels anywhere, screenwriting requires me to be in LA.
How are novelists treated in LaLa Land? As poor country cousins to screenwriters?
Actually quite well. I think most everyone in the industry and out here is familiar with screenwriters, so being a novelist is a tad bit more...exotic. It also helps on the screenwriting side. As you know, screenwriters aren't always dealt with with the utmost respect in Hollywood, so coming from a different background less familiar to executives and producers can help.
You write comics? What's that all about? How's it different from writing your novels? Which do you enjoy the most?
Yes, I write for Marvel--Punisher and Wolverine, among other characters. It's an absolute blast. And unlike screenwriting, it's instant production! Working with artists and seeing the ways they realize and improve my stories is a pretty amazing experience. It's very different from novels in that it's enormously collaborative, and the characters I work with are lent to me almost as a public trust. They don't belong to me, so I have to be careful to preserve an existing tradition while trying to do something new as well. I love writing both, but I spend a lot more time on the novels, and there's something about novel writing that will always be primary for me. Novels are where I started and they'll always be my top priority.
What are you up to now? What's next?
Going on tour for Trust No One, which should be a blast. I'm working on the next thriller as well, and about to launch a new character for Marvel.
Contributing editor Keith Raffel wrote
DOT DEAD, "without question the most impressive mystery debut of the
year" according to Bookreporter.com. His next book, SMASHER, a
thriller set in Silicon Valley, is due out this fall.ThrillerFest
ITW's annual celebration of the thriller world is the largest event of its kind, a meeting place for authors, readers, budding writers, and publishing industry professionals.
For 2011, we’ll be back in the heart of New York in July with the ThrillerFest conference including CraftFest and AgentFest.
ThrillerFest VI will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.
The dates will be July 6-9, 2011.
More information to follow.
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