Warning. Spoiler Alert. Please Do Not Read The Following Unless You Have Already Read Takedown
Takedown had a very interesting birth. I had come to New York to meet with my editor to pitch a completely different book. When my wife and I arrived, we checked into our hotel and then headed down to the lobby bar for a glass of wine before going out. It was the first time I had sat down and relaxed in I don’t know how long. Trish and I were talking about Manhattan, it being an island, etc. and suddenly this idea popped into my head – what if someone wanted to seal it off from the rest of the world? Could it be done? How would it be done? And on and on and on. Stephen King once said, “A writer is someone who has trained their mind to misbehave,” and that is definitely true in my case.
I began to hone the idea of sealing off Manhattan even further so that it couldn’t be reinforced from the outside for at least six hours – that meant snipers with serious weapons capable of bringing air and marine traffic to an absolute standstill. I liked where this was going, but I still needed the “why”. Why would someone, or some group, want to do this?
At the time, I knew the U.S. Government’s extraordinary rendition policy was going to be getting a lot of attention in the very near future. I’d also always been fascinated with clandestine intelligence operations being hidden in plain site, like in the Robert Redford/Sydney Pollack film “Three Days of the Condor” (adapted from James Grady’s thriller Six Days of the Condor). I wondered if I could bring both of these elements together as the “why” for isolating Manhattan from the rest of the world.
As Trish and I continued to talk, I grabbed every cocktail napkin I could get my hands on and made notes. Soon, I had almost the entire novel outlined. The next day, I went and bought a bunch of books on New York City and did a ton of research. In that unexpected moment of inspiration, I thought I had come up with a real winner.
That night when I met with my editor and pitched my idea, she was very quiet afterward. I thought to myself – she hates it. Then she looked up at me and said, “That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard of. I love it.”
AUDIO SAMPLE
