Matthew Quirk
If there was one author you could co-write a novel with (they can be alive or dead) who would you choose and why?
I might say William Goldman. Marathon Man was a big influence on my
first novel, and he’s had a part in writing many of my favorite movies going back
to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It’s hard to imagine a better guide on how to tell a great story.
You began your writing career working for The Atlantic, what prompted the change
to writing novels? How did it help prepare you for writing fiction?
It's easier to jump when you get a little
push. Print journalism has been having a really hard time, and when the economy
crashed in 2008 I was let go in a round of cuts at the magazine. It was awful,
of course, but it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to
me. I had been working on a novel for many years, and I decided to live off my
savings and make a go of writing full-time. I still can’t believe it worked
out. Reporting is great practice for writing fiction. Living and working in Washington,
I picked up a ton of material about politics, foreign affairs, and high-level
intrigue. The discipline of writing professionally and being whittled down by talented
editors proved invaluable for writing books.
While writing for The Atlantic the resume of what you reported on was terrorism and
gang crime types, why did you decide to write in what would be considered white
collar crime? Do you see parallels between terrorism and/or gangs with white
collar crime that has yet to be explored in fiction novels?
Interesting question. The white collar
crimes were closest to the social and political worlds I knew pretty well, so
that was a natural place to start. There is a healthy dose of non-white-collar
criminality in the books, too, and that has been a lot of fun to research and
learn how to do myself: sneaking into buildings, running a con game, picking
locks. I’d love to explore those parallels you mention. Terrorism definitely has
those facets—what starts or masquerades as politics or ideology in the end is
about greed—that would make for a good theme for a book.
Your debut novel, The 500 would fall into
the mystery/thriller genres which can be a hard genre to get a following in as
there are many well-known and well followed authors within it. How do you think
that your novels differ from other authors within this genre?
I like to think that they have a
distinctive voice and humor, and I try to have my heroes react like real people
would in these very dangerous situations: they’re not invincible supermen. I
still have my reporter habits, and love doing research and adding authentic
details to the books. For my book about the Federal Reserve, The Directive, I worked with security
experts and even sneaked around the New York Fed. For my next book, I just came
back from a training in LA where I was kidnapped and had to escape expert trackers
who were hunting me down through the city. It gave me a lot of great insights
for book three.
What do you think would be the hardest or
most challenging genre to write a novel in and why?
Literary novels. It’s very difficult to
make a compelling 350-page book out of fine-grained character observations and
quiet epiphanies. I read someone like Tobias Wolff and I think A. This is
amazing and B. I could never do this.
There are points within your novel The 500
that seem to ring true in which the few control the many or in this case the
500, how true do you think this is with Corporate America? Did you have to do
additional research to make your book have a real feel to it?
I was fortunate with The 500 that I had lived
and worked in Washington, DC for many years and seen a lot of that up close. I
had friends who worked at the White House, or big lobbying shops, or Congress.
One of the main problems in politics is that interest groups that aren’t
representative of citizens’ desires wield outsized influence on the political
process. If you look at the money in politics, it’s incredible how few people
bankroll campaigns and how much time politicians spend begging them for money.
Mike has a very interesting skill set that
he developed over the years watching his father and brother work as con-men,
why did you think that these skills would be an asset to a lawyer?
The confidence games are really about
understanding human nature, so I’m sure that would be valuable to a lawyer. The
other, more criminal skills, like picking locks, aren’t helpful in the day to
day legal world, but when Mike finds himself in a scrape, they prove to be very
handy. Faking IDs, picking locks, stealing cars—it’s been a lot of fun to
research the skills Mike picked up in his bad old days. Picking locks has come
in handy in real life quite a few times!
You have had the opportunity to take Mike
Ford from a stand-alone novel to a series, as an author what makes Mike Ford
such a compelling character to write about? What do you think the benefits are
between writing a standalone versus a series?
Mike’s life and background brings out some
great themes: Sometimes those outside the law have more honor than those who
write the laws. Mike lives by the law, but comes from a family of criminals. These
ideas tie readily into contemporary political and financial corruption, and I
love to explore them. Series are great, because you have this continuing
exploration of characters and their relationships. And I like to do
standalones, as well, because then your characters can really surprise your
readers by revealing secrets about their pasts or their true natures.
Do you have any information on upcoming
works or events that you are able to share?
I’m deep into my third book now. It’s
fast-paced thriller about a special operations team at work inside the US. And
I’ll be at Bouchercon in November 2014.
What is one book (other than one of your
own) that you think everyone should read?
That’s a tough one. I’m looking at my
bookshelves now, and a few leap to mind. How about Catch-22? I haven’t read it in a while but I remember it being by
turns hilarious and heartbreaking.
I want to saw thank you once again to Matt for being part of my Blogoversary and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of The Directive. Matt has very nicely provided a giveaway to go along with his interview so check out and fill out the Rafflecopter information below :)
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