Behind the Books:
Born to Run

"Mr. Swyteck Goes to Washington "
© Copyright James Grippando 2008

Do we ever really know our elected officials? It seems like we should in this day of information overload, but invariably, some secret comes out the woodwork (or some $5,000-a-night prostitute comes out of a hotel room) and—surprise!—that guy you voted for isn't at all the person you thought he was.

It had been a while since I'd written a Washington thriller. The Abduction , my third novel, was the story of the first presidential election in which neither candidate is a white male. An African-American man is in a neck-and-neck race for the White House against a white woman. The Abduction was published in 1998, and even critics who loved the book wrote that "readers will have to work hard to suspend disbelief and accept the premise that the country is anywhere near ready for a presidential election like this one." Well, what a difference 10 years makes.

The renewed interest in The Abduction generated by the Hillary v. Obama primary got me to think about writing another Washington thriller. I love the role that Miami plays in the Jack Swyteck series, but every writer needs to stretch himself, and I thought it would be good to see Jack and his father (the former governor of Florida) in another setting—particularly one in which Jack and his sidekick Theo are such interesting fish out of water. The end result was Born to Run, a high-stakes thriller where dark secrets put Jack and everyone around him in a run for their lives.