Latest Books Don’t Look Down by Matthew Becker

Don’t Look Down by Matthew Becker

In the thrilling follow-up to Run, Veronica Walsh´s meticulously created ‘normal’ life has been torn apart by the public revelations about her past. Now she’s trying to piece it back together.

When a desperate Mikaela Alonso comes to her asking for help, Veronica jumps right in.

Mrs. Alonso claims her husband Tony did not commit suicide–that maybe he isn’t even dead, and then they uncover a connection between Tony and a recently murdered senator.

As Detective Emilia Brown investigates the Senator’s death with her new partner, Veronica and Mikaela dig into Tony’s past to try to uncover exactly what happened at a house that locals call World’s Edge, and who wants to unearth every last one of its secrets.

What was the biggest challenge DON’T LOOK DOWN presented?

The biggest challenge and biggest opportunity are one in the same. I’m working on a lightning-fast timeline—book three, the finale of this series, will be coming along only a few months from now. I am a stay-at-home dad with two small kids and we’re temporarily back in the United States between my wife’s overseas assignments, so there is very little downtime each day to write! But the opportunity to tell a more expansive story than a single novel could in this condensed timeline is a fun challenge and I’m enjoying every bit of it.

Without spoilers, is there any big change the previous novel, Run?

My convention upending take in this book is that I’ve written it as a sequel to Run but changed the protagonist. No further spoilers here but it’s a leap I’m hoping the readers will take with me!

Which took shape first: plot, character, or setting?

I am very much a plot-first writer. The setting in DON’T LOOK DOWN is by default because of the plot, so you could argue they happened at the same time, but the plot drives that correlation. My favorite thing to do is outline a new plot, go down all those ‘what if?’ alleys and see what comes out.

What attracts you to the thriller genre?

I’m drawn to the specific type of high-stakes emotion of thrillers that most of us will (hopefully!) never have to experience in real life. So many of us read to feel things beyond the constraints of our own life and, while it’s a little awkward to call reading about murder and mayhem ‘escapism’, that is what I’m in it for and what I want to provide to my readers.

What authors or books have influenced your career as a writer, and why?

There are more authors than I could possibly mention here, so I’ll narrow it down to my two primary writing influences: Harlan Coben and David Baldacci. Harlan Coben’s thrillers carry that perfect combination of plot and heart. You feel his characters’ feelings deeply, and he is the master at supplying just enough hope to keep them moving forward. Meanwhile, as a longtime DC area resident, married to a career federal employee (a foreign service officer in the Department of State), I love many of David Baldacci’s recurring characters and their government-adjacent positions. His Camel Club series was formative for me as a young reader, although I think as an adult his Mercy series has overtaken it as my favorite. My series I’m writing is DC-based, politics-adjacent, with the hopeful and emotional close-to-home setting of Harlan Coben.

Matthew Becker is a mathematician, and formerly worked as part of the national Covid-19 response. He has a doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.

Matthew currently lives with his wife, a U.S. diplomat, and their two children in Washington, DC, before they move to Nicaragua in 2025 for their next overseas tour.