The best way, I have found, to really appreciate a place never before visited, be it city, town or even the smallest village, is to walk its highways and byways, meander along its streets and alleyways, absorb the built environment, feel the culture, the calm and the buzz.
And that’s what Michèle and I did, during that memorable stay in New York in 2015. We walked and walked… and walked, soaked up the street music, felt the weight of the towering architecture that seemed to fall inwards as we looked up, realised it was quicker to walk the Avenues to a destination – even on sore feet – than hail a taxi caught in the constant vehicular logjam. We saw a lot, both good and not-so-good, the opulence, the vagrancy, felt a real sense that the place was as astonishingly special as it was imperfect.
We also discovered that to order French Onion soup with a cheese topping as a starter before a pizza main course is, in New York, a big mistake. The cheese topping brought to mind an orthopaedic mattress, there was so much of it. To we weedy Brits, one bowl of that soup would’ve comfortably fed us both for two days. So imagine the slog when the pizza, itself a banquet, arrived. But that’s New York, in a nutshell – big, in every sense, and a culture apart.
A Neat Execution is the story of a retired English contract killer who misses the thrill of the hit, who doesn’t want to return to the constant jeopardy of his work, but also doesn’t want his skillset to go entirely to waste. He comes up with a new offer, one without criminal consequence, and is eventually hired by a woman to execute her twin sister in... you’ve guessed it… New York.
I’m not entirely sure where the idea of a retired contract killer came from. Perhaps it was suggested by the few days we had in Chicago, right at the end of our holiday, when a couple of touristy tours painted a vivid picture of the sleazy days of Prohibition. I’m not sure, but writers should – at least to some extent – write about what they know… and I know a lot about retirement and trying hard to make the most of it. I also know something of identical twins (a dear friend of mine was the spit of his brother, and vice versa) and, thanks to that holiday, something of New York.
And so the story that became the book was framed, a story in which comedy sometimes jousts with solemnity, as it so often does in life. I had great fun writing it, and I hope that shines through for the reader.