Everything to Lose
Andrew Gross
A determined, (down on her luck,) mother caring for
her handicapped son becomes entangled in a murderous conspiracy to keep a
twenty year old secret buried in this blistering thriller, set during the
tragic aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, from Andrew Gross, the New York Times
bestselling author of 15 Seconds and No Way Back.
While driving along a suburban back road, Hilary
Blum, who's just lost her job and whose deadbeat husband has left her alone to
care for her son with Asperger's, witnesses a freakish accident. A car ahead of
her careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Stopping to help, she discovers
the driver dead - and a satchel stuffed with a half a million dollars.
That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep
her special needs son in school. In an instant, this honest, achieving woman
who has always done the responsible thing makes a decision that puts her in the
center of maelstrom of dark consequences and life-threatening recriminations -
a terrifying scheme involving a twenty-year-old murder, an old woman who's life
has been washed out to sea, and a powerful figure bent to keep the secret that can
destroy him hidden.
With everything to lose, everything she loves,
Hilary connects to a determined cop from Staten Island, reeling from the
disaster of Sandy, to bring down an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep what
that money was meant to silence, still buried.
Andrew Gross on Everything to Lose
A common question for all novelists is from where do you get your ideas? In my case, each book always seems to be a sort of triangulation of three, sometimes four, completely separate elements or themes that, married together, germinate into the nucleus of plot and character. They can be newspaper articles, TV clips, personal stories. Many times they are things that felt interesting to me a long time back that I didn’t know what to do with then, and put “in the vault” so to speak, to hopefully come to life and fit into something years later.
In Everything to Lose, there were four of these original, but completely separate, elements. The first was a question-- how far would you go as a parent to protect your own child? Would you cross the line and do something you knew was wrong? Even criminal? Does doing a bad thing for the right reason make it right? Or forgivable? So I created a gritty, devoted, but desperate mom, whose life has taken an unfortunate turn, and a son with hardships. And a deadbeat dad, and ultimately a tempting twist of fate that lures her over the edge. It’s just a small step from the moral high ground to total freefall.
Throw into the mix that a year or so ago I read a fascinating article on what are known as “C-U” kids—callous and unemotional—who behaviorists feel carry the twisted personality defect of future psychopaths. I began to wrestle with the thought: what if one of these kids grows up, learns to control his bad instincts, manages to get through life and ultimately finds himself as a person of power and responsibility—and then the urges come back. It would be like a lurking bad seed, someone admired and looked up to, but a time bomb waiting to go off. Someone with something to hide.
Five years ago, I saved a newspaper article describing the murder of a teenage girl by her boyfriend decades before on the blighted, industrialized shoreline of Staten Island. I can’t quite recall what attracted me back then: that it was buried and forgotten for twenty years; that when ultimately admitted to, it was such a seemingly spontaneous and motiveless act. I thought, what if that was my “bad seed” back then? Something he did, concealed, then ran away from. That article I threw in “the vault” suddenly sprang back to life.
Then sometimes, real life has a way of contributing things. Superstorm Sandy happened as I was putting all this together, a devastating game changer, especially in the low lying coastal areas, in this case, Staten Island. It all began to fit together, even more when I combined it with the personal tale of a good friend, who’s mother owned a house on the Jersey shore which was devastated by the storm—every memento, every antique, every photo, every piece of china, every filagreed frame, every piece of history of their life, swept out to sea and washed away. It was a compelling and heartbreaking testimony for me, and I wanted to weave it in, tie it into my silent, buried murder victim from Staten Island; into to my now-powerful bad seed with something terrible to hide. Back into my desperate mother who steals something she knows is wrong. All linked together by the storm, by something valuable washed out to sea, and then is carried back by the same waves that took it and returns with devastating consequences.
Andrew Gross has written six #1 best selling novels with author James Patterson. Read about how the two authors met and formed the writing partnership, how the two authors work together, and what's next.
Andrew Gross on Everything to Lose
A common question for all novelists is from where do you get your ideas? In my case, each book always seems to be a sort of triangulation of three, sometimes four, completely separate elements or themes that, married together, germinate into the nucleus of plot and character. They can be newspaper articles, TV clips, personal stories. Many times they are things that felt interesting to me a long time back that I didn’t know what to do with then, and put “in the vault” so to speak, to hopefully come to life and fit into something years later.
In Everything to Lose, there were four of these original, but completely separate, elements. The first was a question-- how far would you go as a parent to protect your own child? Would you cross the line and do something you knew was wrong? Even criminal? Does doing a bad thing for the right reason make it right? Or forgivable? So I created a gritty, devoted, but desperate mom, whose life has taken an unfortunate turn, and a son with hardships. And a deadbeat dad, and ultimately a tempting twist of fate that lures her over the edge. It’s just a small step from the moral high ground to total freefall.
Throw into the mix that a year or so ago I read a fascinating article on what are known as “C-U” kids—callous and unemotional—who behaviorists feel carry the twisted personality defect of future psychopaths. I began to wrestle with the thought: what if one of these kids grows up, learns to control his bad instincts, manages to get through life and ultimately finds himself as a person of power and responsibility—and then the urges come back. It would be like a lurking bad seed, someone admired and looked up to, but a time bomb waiting to go off. Someone with something to hide.
Five years ago, I saved a newspaper article describing the murder of a teenage girl by her boyfriend decades before on the blighted, industrialized shoreline of Staten Island. I can’t quite recall what attracted me back then: that it was buried and forgotten for twenty years; that when ultimately admitted to, it was such a seemingly spontaneous and motiveless act. I thought, what if that was my “bad seed” back then? Something he did, concealed, then ran away from. That article I threw in “the vault” suddenly sprang back to life.
Then sometimes, real life has a way of contributing things. Superstorm Sandy happened as I was putting all this together, a devastating game changer, especially in the low lying coastal areas, in this case, Staten Island. It all began to fit together, even more when I combined it with the personal tale of a good friend, who’s mother owned a house on the Jersey shore which was devastated by the storm—every memento, every antique, every photo, every piece of china, every filagreed frame, every piece of history of their life, swept out to sea and washed away. It was a compelling and heartbreaking testimony for me, and I wanted to weave it in, tie it into my silent, buried murder victim from Staten Island; into to my now-powerful bad seed with something terrible to hide. Back into my desperate mother who steals something she knows is wrong. All linked together by the storm, by something valuable washed out to sea, and then is carried back by the same waves that took it and returns with devastating consequences.
Andrew Gross has written six #1 best selling novels with author James Patterson. Read about how the two authors met and formed the writing partnership, how the two authors work together, and what's next.
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