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Hidden Secrets and Spiritual Beliefs
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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Meeting the five remaining players of his eighth-grade basketball team (a prominent banker, a well-known lawyer, a pharmaceutical salesman, an astrophysicist, and a black garage mechanic) at the wake of another friend, Cavanaugh finds himself drawn into controversy and uncertainty, defending one of his former best friends who claims to have had spiritual visions that seem to give him the ability to know secrets and to heal. As the men rotate monthly card games, and the story moves through the boroughs of New York City, animosity builds, careers are threatened, and warnings expressed until the garage mechanic is brutally beaten and then killed. Cavanaugh fights his own demons and sets out to find the killer of his childhood friend.
When Secrets Come to Light
When a couple of old friends reunite at a friend’s funeral after about 50 years apart, curiosity gets the better of them. So they agree on monthly meetups to catch up and reconnect, but things go differently than planned right from the first scheduled card game. Proceedings at the meetup threaten to unearth long-buried secrets, and each man finds himself faced with the uncomfortable need to confront their choices, pains, and secrets. Will these men face the truth about themselves or be consumed while trying to hide their failures and pains?
George R. Hopkins’ When Secrets Come to Light is a gripping novel that delves into a mystery with a tinge of the supernatural. It’s not some outright spooky deal; instead, it probes figments of the mysterious such as visions, miracles, and more that color everyday life. It’s stripped down, but not in an underwhelming way, in a clean, free-flowing manner that keeps the story skipping along yet remarkable enough to evoke images. One of my favorite writers says telling great stories requires you to withhold information strategically. Hopkins uses a deliberate build-up that ends in questions that will keep you turning the pages. I also like how the plot unfolds in the most unassuming way. One minute a couple of 70-year-olds are meeting for a card game, and before you know it, things begin to spiral. Hopkins also knows how to peel away the layers from his characters, revealing the elements that make them human and, thus, easy to resonate with.
When Secrets Come to Light: A novel of love and tangled friendships is a captivating psychological thriller that is easy to follow and makes for a quick and refreshing read. Readers will be hooked from the beginning of the friends’ story to the end as one unexpected event after another consumes the pages.
Pages 307 | ASIN : B09X4TDSJB
LITERARY TITAN 