Seymour Agency: You recently launched your new series, the NYPD Negotiators, with EXIT STRATEGY. Why hostage negotiation?
Jen J. Danna: In LONE WOLF, the first book in the FBI K-9s series, I wrote a character who was a hostage negotiator. This guy had a really tough job as the middle man between the FBI, who wanted to close the case, and an armed gunman, who was holed up with his family. The negotiator was not only trying to save lives, but was also fighting to satisfy his law enforcement brethren, many of whom saw force as the best way to quickly get their man. This character really stuck with me, partly because the situation he had to deal with was different than anything I’d written before.
SA: How was it different?
JJD: In all my other police procedurals, the protagonist is always reacting to the initial situation, usually a murder, sometimes a natural disaster. I wanted to explore police work from the opposite, proactive angle. Yes, there’s a crisis in play, but the challenge is to save lives before they’re lost, to get the hostages out in one piece, and hopefully contain and arrest the person responsible.
SA: How did you develop Gemma Capello and her first responder family?
JJD: This was the first book I wrote solo, so it was fun to take advantage of my own family history to flesh out Gemma. Like me, her family hails from Siculiana in Sicily. Like me she lost a parent at a young age (though her loss is by very violent means). But I like writing ensemble pieces, where the characters appear throughout the series, so I crafted a family around her, a father and four brothers, who with only one exception are all NYPD officers in various branches of the department (the other brother joined the FDNY). In this way, she can work with at least one of them during her cases.
SA: How does her family play a part in EXIT STRATEGY?
JJD: When an alert goes out, interrupting a family celebration, Gemma, her father, the Chief of Special Operations, and her two older brothers respond. But when the hostage situation takes a turn for the worse and Gemma has to put herself at risk with the hostage taker, everything, including her life, will rest in the hands of her younger brother.
SA: What can we expect next from Gemma?
