When Secrets Come to Light follows a retired NYC detective as he renews friendships with old teammates and secrets from their past start to surface along with murder. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

It is strange how I was inspired to write this story. Covid-19 was a difficult time for me. A number of close friends died of the virus, and I didn’t have the desire to write. The idea for the book actually started after I read a cartoon in our local newspaper about the death of Wild Bill Hickock who was shot in the back of his head while playing poker. I recalled the card games we used to play as teenagers. Then, I remembered the beginning of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where a group of men from various backgrounds are waiting on a boat for the tide to change, and Marlow tells the story of Kurtz. So, I decided to put a lawyer, a salesman. a bank president, an astrophysicist, a garage mechanic and a retired detective together and let the story develop. All the men shared a childhood together, but each had gone his own way in life. Each faced his own problems and dealt with them in their own way. The detective and the garage mechanic had been best friends as teenagers. I wanted to create tension among the men, and hidden secrets and spiritual beliefs gave me that opportunity.

Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing or did the characters personalities grow organically as you were writing?

I wanted to explore friendships, different beliefs, age, loss, and their effect on people.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

When Secrets Come to Light was the first book I have written from the first-person point of view. I am playing with the idea of continuing with first-person narrative in my next book which is gradually beginning to come together. Hopefully, it will be available by next spring. Tentatively, it will be about the retired detective trying to help his paperboy come to grips with the death of his brother. One of the themes will be that no good deal goes unpunished.

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