| 06 June 2012
It was a beautiful May morning in the nation’s capital, with a sky like blue porcelain. The blood that had soaked through my shirt was drying, stiff and scratchy. My left foot dragged on the asphalt. My knee had swollen to the size of a rugby ball. I tried to concentrate on the knee, to keep my mind off the injury to my chest, because if I thought about that – not the pain so much as the sheer creepiness of it – I was sure I was going to pass out.
As I approached, the office looked as classy as ever: a four-story Federal mansion set back in the woods of Kalorama, among the embassies and chanceries. It was home to the Davies Group, Washington DC’s most well-respected strategic consulting and government affairs firm, where I guess technically I may have still been employed. I fished my keys from my pocket and waved them in front of a grey pad beside the door lock. No go.
But Davies was expecting me. I looked up at the closed-circuit camera. The lock buzzed.
Inside the foyer, I greeted the head of security, and noted the baby Glock he’d pulled from its holster and was holding tight near his thigh. Then I turned to Marcus, my boss, and nodded by way of hello. He stood on the other side of the metal detector, waved me through, then frisked me neck to ankle. He was checking for weapons, and for wires. Marcus had made a nice long career with those hands, killing.
“Strip,” Marcus said. I obliged, shirt and pants. Even Marcus winced when he saw the skin of my chest, puckering around the staples. He took a quick look inside my drawers, then seemed satisfied I wasn’t bugged. I suited back up.
“Envelope,” he said, and gestured to the manila one I was carrying.
“Not until we have a deal,” I said. The envelope was the only thing keeping me alive, so I was a little reluctant to let it go. “This will go wide if I disappear.”
Marcus nodded. That kind of insurance was standard industry practice. He’d taught me so himself. He led me upstairs to Davies’ office, and waited guard by the door as I stepped inside.
There, standing by the windows, looking out over downtown DC, was the one thing I was worried about, the option that seemed much worse than getting carved up by Rad: it was Davies, with a grandfather’s smile.
It’s good to see you, Mike. I’m glad you decided to come back to us.”
He wanted a deal. He wanted to feel like he owned me again. And that’s what I was afraid of more than anything else, that I would say yes.
“I don’t know how things got this bad,” he said. “Your father… I’m sorry.”
Dead, as of last night. Marcus’s handiwork.
“I want you to know we had nothing to do with that.”
I said nothing.
“You might want to ask your Serbian friends about it. We can protect you Mike, we can protect the people you love.” He moved a little closer. “Just say it and all this is over. Come back to us, Mike. It only takes one word: yes.”
And so begins the Prologue of Matthew Quirk’s first novel, The 500, an accomplished political thriller that starts at the end and segues back to the beginning. It is the story of an up by the bootstraps young man named Mike Ford who, against all odds, is chosen over much more connected classmates at Harvard Law to join the Davies Group, the crème de la crème of Washington consulting firms that acted more as a secret society or shadow government wielding influence over the influential. Mike, it turns out, has a gift for applying the kind of subtle pressure needed in order to accomplish what turn out to be the nefarious goals of the Davies Group, and he is well paid for his skills. But what he soon comes to learn is that he has made a deal with the devil and there may be no turning back.
Neely: Nice to meet you. Your publicist at Little Brown sent me a prepublication copy of your first novel, The 500 and I loved it. It’s a real page turner. You have sort of come out of thin air.
Matthew: I’ve gotten a crazy reception for this book. I’ve been really really fortunate. This is the only book I’ve ever done.
Neely: The 500 is very reminiscent of Grisham’s breakout The Firm in that it concerns a young man who gets in way above his head and pay grade who’s drowning in a world of big deals and even bigger whales. It’s a combination of “Be careful what you wish for” and “If it seems too good to be true, it is.”
Matthew: This is a classic deal with the devil. It’s the ambitious young man goes to the city, the type of book that’s been written for centuries, who strikes a Faustian bargain.
Neely: Tell me what you were doing before you started writing this book.
Matthew: I was working at The Atlantic Monthly as a reporter having interned there between my Junior and Senior years.
I’d come to Washington where I was very smitten with politics and foreign affairs and was really lucky to get a job at The Atlantic where I was just thrown in. It was an amazing education to see how things worked there. This book was a natural because of all the material I took from my own experience, a sort of professional coming of age book. For a thriller, it’s natural for that sort of thing to be a deal with the devil.
There’s a lot of contemporary Washington and reality in the book. As a reporter you spend all day absorbing news articles about the most interesting stories. You find something and you’d say, “Oh my god, that’s fascinating.” And you just file it away. So when I was writing this book, those stories would pop back up, like extradition and all sorts of other topics.
I was in a mix where all my friends were reporters, so they also had great stories to share. One friend of mine was working on the E-Ring in the Pentagon, so I would get to go over to the Pentagon. There was just a lot of material lying around.
Neely: I didn’t know that the magazine was based in DC.
Matthew: Although I had always worked for it in Washington at its Watergate satellite office, the whole magazine moved down from Boston sometime between 2005 and 2007.
Neely: When does the book hit the shelves?
Matthew: It hit the shelves on June 5th.
Neely: I see that this is from a specialty imprint at Little Brown called Reagan Arthur books.
Matthew: Reagan Arthur is an editor with her own imprint. She has amazing taste and has an eclectic mix and a great vision. It’s a really nice place to be published.
Neely: Did you end up at Little Brown first and they sent you to Reagan or was it Reagan first?
Matthew: Reagan was the acquiring editor and she is part of Little Brown. I really don’t know how it works but it’s her imprint. I have to say, though, it’s really nice being part of the Little Brown family too. You get to meet the other authors there. I met Michael Peach who’s an editor at Little Brown and just amazing.
Neely: Little Brown represents several of my favorite authors. The two previous writers I profiled were both published by Little Brown – Nick Santora with Fifteen Digits and Terry McDermott who co-wrote (with Josh Meyer) The Hunt for KSM,
What kind of campaign is Little Brown launching for the book?
Matthew: They started with a lot of media outreach; they sent out a lot of galleys. What’s really exciting right now are the bus and subway ads in DC. All my friends are texting me whenever they see them. That’s fun. And I think there are going to be some newspaper ads.
Marlena Bittner, who I think is doing a lot of the publicity for it, got us into Entertainment Weekly the week of June 3rd. Miriam Parker is handling online press.
Neely: Tell me about Entertainment Weekly because I don’t know anything about it.
Matthew: Entertainment Weekly reviewed the book and gave it an A- and a really good review. They put it on the “must” list which is really neat. It’s the list of the 10 things you need to do this week. It was with “Game of Thrones” and “Men in Black.” And there was my book. It was really neat to see.
Neely: That is really cool. They don’t give out a lot of A’s.
Matthew: Everybody gets that magazine so I’m getting all these calls from people saying “Oh my god! I saw your face in Entertainment Weekly. It was really neat.
Neely: Let’s talk a little bit more about the book and its genesis. Your main character, Mike Ford, started out life as a petty thief with a conviction in his background and a father in the pen. How did he end up at Harvard Law?
Matthew: He comes from a background where a lot of the people in his family and around him were small-time criminals. When he was young, he was very talented and had a lot of confidence, but then he was arrested. A judge intervened and said “I’ll give you a chance to get out of this life if you clean up your act.” So he joined the Navy and the discipline helped him. Then after the Navy, he put himself through a school in Florida and got into Harvard Law where he was doing a joint degree at Harvard and the Kennedy School; a JD-MPP (Master’s in Public Policy) probably.
From there he got scooped up by the Davies Group which was a super connected strategic consulting firm – the term that firms in DC use for power brokers. They don’t call themselves lobbyists because they don’t register as lobbyists. They work a little bit more behind the scenes. That’s Mike’s journey to respectability.
Neely: The book’s title makes reference to the 500 men and women who really run Washington. Is there really such a thing and who would they be, broken down by category.
Matthew: There are a lot of powerful people in Washington who know each other, but there’s nothing so formal as “the 500.” In the book it’s a list at the Davies Group where their clients are the 500 most powerful people. You can certainly find 500 powerful people in Washington (Neely laughs) who are always meeting up and who collectively wield an enormous amount of power. There’s nothing really that formal and nothing quite like the kind of conspiracy stuff in The 500; but there are a lot of powerful networks.
Neely: Mike makes one good friend at the Davies Group. Tell us a little bit more about him and his reasons for leaving. Did you see him as functioning as a Cassandra- “I’m going to tell you the truth of what’s going to happen to you and you’re not going to listen and the consequences will be dire.”
Matthew: He served a lot of purposes. One was to let Mike have a buddy. When you write a thriller, you’re so focused on the plot that it’s nice to put in little breathers and show your character in context, not just running from people. I think Tuck is his name; I actually changed the name a couple of times. He was a Cassandra figure for sure, but as the Rhodes scholar son of a Georgetown public service dynasty he also served as Mike’s entrée into the circle of respectable children of the Washington elite, people who were very nice.
I wanted to show Mike joining that world. But I also wanted a character who showed that most people in Washington were very respectable and if they got wind of anything like the skullduggery that comes out in the book, they would run away from it and think about their careers.
Neely: Let’s talk a little bit more about you and your soon to be meteoric rise in the book world. Tell us some more about your time at The Atlantic Monthly. Did you get that job straight out of Harvard?
Matthew: Yes. A couple of times during my senior year I went back to the offices in the Watergate just to check in on projects. I was really glad to go back there after school. It’s an amazing place. There’s nothing like it. Just being able to sit and absorb the wisdom of these people and learn from the experience the reporters and the editors have. It’s amazing. It was just an incredible education without which I would never have been able to write the book. I wouldn’t have had the same experience in Washington, the same access, the same comfort writing about these special worlds.
Neely: Did you have any mentors at The Atlantic? People who helped guide you through the rocky shoals of journalism.
Matthew: It’s a really friendly place; kind of the opposite of The Devil Wears Prada. Everyone is really down to earth. The owner of the magazine who hired me out of college was great just for giving me that opportunity. Cullin Murphy was just amazing and gave me some great opportunities. And Jim Fallows who’s a reporter there and just the nicest and one of the most skilled reporters who’s been around Washington for a very long time, really great guy. Everybody at the magazine was really helpful.
Neely: How does magazine journalism work? As a staff writer, do you still pitch your own stories or are they assigned?
Matthew: It was great training for writing books. I was a staff editor. The Atlantic has plenty of big name people who they’re sending to Iraq and the hot spots. They all write the big features so for me it was great because I had to hustle and come up with my own stories, button hole the editors and then pitch them. And one of the most valuable things was the experience of getting a lot of those bounced back and realizing how hard it is to come up with a really good premise for something. So finding the concept for a piece that would actually work and realizing how much material you have to go through until you find something that fits was a great education. You really have to structure your own time which also helps later on when you’re writing books.
Neely: Can you point to one or a couple of articles that you wrote for The Atlantic that you’re especially proud of?
Matthew: Some of the most fun things were writing about exciting topics that are typical fodder for thrillers. I wrote about private military contractors, which are like mercenaries. I worked with a geographer on an article about opium smuggling out of Afghanistan. I wrote some things about international gangs moving between Central America and the U.S. That will be great material for later books. I also wrote about higher education, which was more public interest reporting. I wrote a few things about affordability in colleges. I like to think those articles had an impact; I’m also really proud of them.
Neely: Who are the authors who have influenced you?
Matthew: I’m always reading something; they all end up getting into the mix. You take something from everyone. William Goldman’s Marathon Man was something I was reading when I was coming up with this. It’s just a great thriller and he’s a great writer. It has a really fun attitude and voice for the protagonist. So that was influential.
John Le Carré is amazing just for the reality with which he imbues his worlds; his style. And I always go back to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
For the actual plot, one thing I went back and rewatched was “Wall Street.” It’s about a classically ambitious young man getting in over his head. It’s a film, so it’s really pared down. That was another thing that specifically helped with The 500.
Neely: Has there been any interest from the film industry?
Matthew: We sold the movie rights about four days after we sold the book, which was absolutely crazy!
Neely: Was it sold on pitch or did you already have a manuscript?
Matthew: The manuscript was going around New York at the same time it was going around LA. Reagan Arthur picked up the book on a Tuesday and I think on Friday evening I got the call that Peter Kang at Fox had picked up the movie. It was a surreal week.
Neely: Indeed!
Who were your agents?
Matthew: My book agent is Shawn Coyne and the book to film agent is Justin Manask. Both are just amazing.
Neely: Who do you see in the role of Mike?
Matthew: Oh dear. I think that’s above my pay grade.
Neely: Come on. You’ve got to have someone in mind.
Matthew: I’ll leave that to Fox and hope they get someone great. I don’t know.
I’ve seen Ryan Gosling do a lot of great stuff recently. Ryan Reynolds has done cool stuff. How about Tom Hardy, the guy from “Warrior?” Based on that film, he’d be a perfect thriller guy. He was such a bad ass in that movie.
The movie stuff is just an amazing boon on top of the book stuff.
Neely: And the villain?
Matthew: The villain is kind of an older guy. On the wish list there would be Pacino and DeNiro. They’d be fun for that. I would love to see Gary Oldman in it. I think that poor guy has been typecast as a villain too much, but he’s such a great actor. I think he’d be really fun.
Neely: Good call. You know he might play it a little smoother than either Pacino or DeNiro. You don’t want someone who looks like a villain from the outset (note: apologies to the aforementioned gentlemen).
Matthew: I agree because there’s not a lot of bombast to the character of Davies. You meet these incredibly powerful people in DC and they are plain spoken. They don’t go around speechifying. It would be amazing to see what Gary Oldman could do with it. It would be amazing to see what anyone would do with it.
Neely: It will be quite an experience to see it on screen.
Matthew: When I write, I just sort of sit there. It must look really boring from the outside. I sort of picture everything happening and then go to my computer and write it down. It’s a very visual process and kind of dramatic. So seeing someone actually put those images on screen would be uncanny.
Neely: What else are you involved in at present (as if you have time for anything else right now)?
Matthew: I’m writing Book Two and trying to wrap that up, but the book publicity stuff is really going into full gear. I’m in good shape on Book Two. I’ll probably hand that in this summer. It’s a sequel with Mike Ford. I hope that I can keep doing a book a year and keeping it fresh so that people will keep responding to it.
Neely: Did you always know that you wanted to write?
Matthew: I think so. I didn’t really ever have a plan. I did some creative writing in college a bit.
If you do academic creative writing, it’s very literary – short story oriented, domestic psychological realism. I loved those classes for being able to write but I don’t think of myself as a short story, domestic realism kind of author.
It was fun to go to The Atlantic which gave me some time to just write whatever I wanted. I spent several years writing a lot of stuff and playing around and finally came down to the thriller. Reagan Arthur and Little Brown are great because they do smart commercial fiction. It doesn’t have to be all action all the time. You can take your time with things and flesh people out.
Neely: I write primarily about TV and Film, so I’m interested in what you are watching and what your past favorites in both media have been.
Matthew: “Breaking Bad.” Going back to a point I just made, I adore the show because it is smart and the characters are amazing and it takes its time. It’s addictive and the pace is amazing. I love that show. When I was writing the book I wanted something that was a great thriller but also fun with some voice and tone, like some of Soderbergh’s movies. What’s the one he did with Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney?
Neely: “Out of Sight.”
Matthew: Yeah. “Out of Sight.” It was from a book…
Neely: …Elmore Leonard.
Matthew: There’s a lot of room in films for those kinds of thrillers with a touch of humor. The Cohen brothers’ grittier stuff is great. Whenever I think about the films that I like to keep in mind as I write books and are in the same vein, they pop up.
Neely: If you liked “Out of Sight,” and that’s your sensibility (and I happen to like it also), there’s a TV show that I would definitely recommend called “Justified.”
Matthew: I’ve watched a couple of those. It seems like a rollicking good time until the character played by Timothy Oliphant kills someone and then it goes back to a rollicking good time again.
Neely: It’s a very Elmore Leonard sensibility.
Matthew: It shows the similarity between those kinds of TV shows and books that all tell a good story with a little bit of humor and attitude. That’s what I shoot for. You know “The Departed” is just another amazing movie where I could read the script or watch the movie again and again and learn a lot.
Neely: Good choices all.
And has often been said before, if you want to write, read. What are you reading right now?
Matthew: I’m reading The Night Manager by John Le Carré . I just reread Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler…
Neely: …I love that one.
Matthew: It’s so good.
Neely: I think it’s probably his best.
Matthew: Chandler’s another guy who uses such incredible language in the service of these really enjoyable plots.
For Book Two I just read a bunch of guide books that people read when they’re going to go to prison. Mike Ford’s father was in prison. Mike had to take care of his mother when his father “went away.” She was sick when he was younger and supporting her was part of the reason Mike got into crime.
Neely: Wait! I want to stop you on something. There are guide books on going to prison?!
Matthew: Yeah. On my computer I have a Kindle e-book – So You’re Going to Federal Prison. It’s absolutely fascinating. Prison plays a very small part in the second book but I wanted to make sure I got it right.
Prison is so often represented in TV and film and it’s really crazy when you read a book by someone who’s come out. It’s practical advice for someone who’s going in because it doesn’t seem at all like any representation you’ve ever seen of prison.
Neely: You can’t just drop that like a bomb. Give me some idea.
Matthew: Sure. There aren’t knife fights all the time and it’s just incredibly boring.
Neely: What level of prison are we talking about? Was this a Club Fed?
Matthew: The guy who wrote the book was in with all sorts of different levels. Mainly it’s just boring. The thing that was surprising was that in a lot of prisons, the prisoners are in huge open dormitories. In a lot of places there aren’t bars, there are just doors. The other thing that blew me away was that since they’ve banned smoking, at least in the Federal prisons, a contraband cigarette, which is the only kind you can get, will cost $26.
Neely: One cigarette?
Matthew: One cigarette, yeah.
Neely: That would seem to me to be motivation enough to quit.
Matthew: (laughing) I know. I know. It must be delicious though when you finally get it. (Neely laughs loudly)
Neely: Well besides books about going to prison, what else have you been reading?
Matthew: Besides the Le Carré ? Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I just got an advance copy of Megan Abbott’s book called Dare Me. It’s a domestic thriller about a cheerleading squad and I couldn’t stop reading it. She just writes with such immediacy. I couldn’t believe I couldn’t stop reading this cheerleading book; it’s the most badass thing I’ve ever read. (laughs) The Le Carré stuff is really great so I’m just going to line up a bunch of late period John Le Carré.
Neely: I can’t remember the name of the Le Carré I recently read that took place in the Caribbean…
Matthew: That’s The Night Manager. The main character works at a Swiss hotel.
Neely: You read that one?
Matthew: That’s the one I’m reading now.
Neely: Aw, I’m not going to say a word then.
Matthew: I’ve read some of the early stuff and then I read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy this year because of the attention it got. Then I was looking for others and a couple of people recommended The Night Manager and I picked it up. He’s just such a great writer and he has so much real world experience. You can’t tell when he’s making stuff up. It just seems that he’s socialized with all those people.
Neely: I wish you were already done with it so I tell you the pithy exchange I had with another Le Carré fan about it. That will be for later.
So what’s next for Matthew Quirk? Are you guys going to Disneyland (note: a lame super bowl reference).
Matthew: We’re really up in the air. We’ve moved like three or four times in the last year. We got the book and film option news in March and then we got married in May and then I had knee surgery. So my wife and I haven’t had a chance to take a honeymoon yet because it’s all been so crazy.
What’s next? I’m just going to finish up Book Two. I’m going to Amsterdam tomorrow (note: that would have been May 30). And then I have some stuff on the East Coast and Southern California. I will probably spend the summer tweaking Book Two after I give it to my agent and editor. Then I hope to start on Book Three and keep doing this. It’s really crazy. As of a little more than a year ago I was this guy who was taking two years off right before he got married to do this novel writing thing. That’s always a gamble, and now it’s my day job.
Neely: How did you support yourself while you were writing?
Matthew: It was a tough time in journalism, so actually I had lost my job at The Atlantic due to downsizing in 2009. So I kept my overhead low and I had a bunch of money saved up and my wife was incredibly supportive. It all came together about a month or two before we got married. I was starting to run out of time on this writing experiment. I’m a very practical guy and I thought if this one doesn’t work out I’ll figure out another plan. It’s been wild. If I can just keep doing this as my day job, I’ll be very very happy.
Neely: It looks like you can. And, by the way, take your wife on a honeymoon. She deserves it.
Matthew: (laughing) I know, I know. But now she’s really busy.
Neely: What does she do?
Matthew: She does community development. She works in Central America a lot helping people, especially women, start small businesses.
Neely: Do you think you’re going to stay in San Diego?
Matthew: We’re not sure yet. I wouldn’t say we’re actually based there because we’re still sort of bouncing around now.
Neely: There’s another Little Brown author who lives in San Diego and that’s Joseph Wambaugh. Have someone at Little Brown send him a copy of the book and arrange for the two of you to meet. I love Joe and so would you.
Matthew: I would love to meet him.
Neely: Joe has gradually moved his way down the coast from the LA area. He loves San Diego.
Matthew: My wife and I were broke living in a one bedroom apartment in DC, right next to the police station with sirens going off all the time. So going somewhere there’s sun where we can relax, it’s a really nice break from my gritty time in DC. This is a nice break.
Raymond Chandler also ended up in San Diego (La Jolla).
Neely: Yeah, it was the end and he wasn’t exactly thrilled.
Matthew: I’m liking it because it’s like being on vacation.
Neely: It’s so beautiful and if you ever meet Joe, he’ll extoll the virtues of San Diego (note: Neely did, however, hate it when she lived there).
Matthew: I’m just glad to have a place where I can sit outside and write.
Neely: I’m sure you’ll be glad to get back and get out of the heat (note: New York was starting a heat wave when we talked, now it’s cold and damp).
Matthew: So you got a break in New York and got a nice muggy summer.
Neely: I’ve got to get back home and away from the heat. I’m more of a California girl (not in the Beach Boys sense) than I was willing to admit.
Matthew: I really like the space we’ve got now. My wife and I had been working from home in a 600 sq. foot one bedroom apartment for six years.
Neely: Yikes!
I adored New York and there are so many great things that I absolutely love. I’m really going to miss the subway and the water. But I’ve got to get away from the crowds and the jostling and the cramped spaces and small apartments. I sound like a singing cowboy yearning for the wide open spaces but the five foot setback between houses at the beach is looking mighty good at this point.
But I don’t want to keep you any longer. You’ve got to be rested up if you’re going to Amsterdam tomorrow.
Matthew: It’s so crazy because it’s Amsterdam and back to New York and then down to DC.
Neely: Is your wife going to get to go to any of these things with you?
Matthew: She’s joining me in New York after I get back from Amsterdam. She’ll be around for the book launch and Book Expo America. Then she’ll be with me when we go down to DC. It will be fun. It’ll be really nice to have her the first time that I do all this stuff; it’s all really exciting.
Neely: I think you’ll find it exciting every time you do it. I don’t think it ever gets old.
Matthew: Great! Great!
Neely: Have a wonderful time and a wonderful life!
Matthew: Thank you. It was fun talking to you. Good luck and safe travel to you, too.
