Crime Fiction HIT AND RUN with Vincent Zandri

ALL IT TAKES IS ONE BAD DECISION TO DESTROY YOUR LIFE AND AN EVEN WORSE DECISION TO RESTORE IT!

When a down on his luck former businessman arrested by the FBI for illegal commerce activity manages to flee prison due to Covid, he pays a Russian mobster to change his identity. But now that he owes the mobster tens of thousands of dollars, he needs to get at the $500,000 in cash he buried in the backyard of his former home. Problem is, he can’t locate the exact burial plot of cash.

Plus, he’s now wanted for a hit and run and worse…a series of murders.

Vincent Zandri

Award winning author Vincent Zandri recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss his latest crime fiction, HIT AND RUN.

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?

This book is based on a real event, but only slightly. The rest is my demented imagination. However, the theme of the story is riches to rags to riches to rags to riches to rags with about a half-dozen murders mixed in. A real American Crime Story which I’m fascinated with lately. People who are born with two silver spoons in their mouth and who are so greedy, they are willing to cheat and gamble everything only to lose it all and find themselves in federal prison.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?

This is a short novel that I wrote over the course of a couple of weeks, part-time. It was a pure pleasure since it was one of those stories that wrote itself.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

I’m always fascinated with the man or woman who once had it all, and who now has lost everything, from his money, his home, his family, his reputation, and his freedom. But what happens when a black-swan event occurs like the COVID-19 pandemic, and the once incarcerated criminal is granted a “get out of jail free card?”

Is this the opportunity of a lifetime to change your identity and escape the country? What if you had a half a million dollars buried somewhere? If only you could get to it, it would allow you to escape and start over again in a new country, with a new name, and where no one knows you.