A: I struggled to find just the right spot to set the shoot-out scene for quite some time and surveyed numerous locations in Brooklyn and Queens. I finally picked the Meatpacking District, in Manhattan, because of its notorious nightlife. When you stroll the neighborhood, there are dozens of expensive restaurants and ritzy nightclubs. It seemed like the kind of place where the wealthy daughter of the deputy mayor of New York might want to party with her friends. But there are also pockets in the community that depict the underbelly of New York. Little West 12th Street—which I chose for the location of the shootout—is a case in point. It’s a throwback to fifty years ago, with boarded-up buildings, sleazy old-man bars, and the last remaining meatpacking distributors still located in the city. It felt perfect for the book from the moment I saw it.
Q: The scene with Nikolai Stanislov and his prostitute was particularly graphic. How did you come up with this scene?
A: Explosive violence is endemic in the world of organized crime. That’s a given. All of us have read about it in newspapers and magazines and seen it on television in shows like The Sopranos. Nikolai Stanislov is an underboss in my fictional Russian crime family. He represents the essence of cruelty and ruthlessness. Short-tempered and explosive on the outside, he is also insecure and vulnerable on the inside. The scene with the prostitute was written to illustrate these personality traits so common in many real-life mobsters and to set up Stanislov’s downfall at the end of the book.
Q: Will there be a sequel?
A: Yes. The second Ethan Benson thriller is already finished, and the third book is sitting in the back of my mind, ready to be written in the not-too-distant future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey L. Diamond is an award-winning journalist with forty years of experience in television news who has produced stories for ABC News’s weekly newsmagazine 20/20 and ran Dateline NBC, Martha Stewart Living Television, and Judith Regan Television.
At 20/20, his responsibilities spanned every aspect of storytelling—research, budgeting, interviewing, directing, writing, editing, and postproduction. He’s been nominated for dozens of awards and has won six national Emmy Awards, two duPont-Columbia Awards, one Peabody Award, one National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award, two CINE Golden Eagle Awards, and countless others.
Mr. Diamond lives in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, where he is now embarking on a new career as a mystery writer. He’s an active member of the Board of Trustees at the Austen Riggs Center and at the Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative. A graduate of Lehigh University, he’s married, has two sons, a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, and a golden retriever named Bailey.
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