Interview with Thriller Author Lee Matthew Goldberg

On June 15th, Immoral Origins, the first book in Lee Matthew Goldberg’s Desire Card series of international thrillers, will be published by Wolfpack Publishing/Rough Edges Press. The second book, Prey No More, will drop on July 6th.  The series is described as mixing “Elmore Leonard with a Tarantino edge. It explores the characters and situations around a card (and sinister organization) that promises ‘any wish fulfilled for the right price,’ and what we will do to survive when money isn’t enough to get everything we want.” You can learn more about Immoral Origins here and also check out the first chapter of the book.

Recently, Beth Castrodale of Small Press Picks had the pleasure of interviewing Lee about Immoral Origins and the series as a whole.

BC: I love it that you chose late-seventies New York City as the setting of Immoral Origins. What was behind this choice, and how did it help drive the narrative?

LMG: I was born in Manhattan in 1978, so writing the book became an origin story for myself as well (even though I’m far from a mob-adjacent character like Jake Barnum*). In later books, the seventies is mentioned as the time when the Desire Card began, so I always wanted to write about its origin. There’s a grittiness to late-seventies NYC that has been wiped out completely in modern times. I remember it in snippets: graffiti on the subways, old Times Square. There was a beauty to old New York in its ugliness that reminds me of childhood. This–juxtaposed with Disco, seventies glam, and the fashions–made it a perfect place to begin the tale of the Desire Card.

BC: The novel is described as an origin story. Can you say a bit about what it’s setting in motion, not just for this book but for the Desire Card series as a whole?

LMG: Sure, the Desire Card is an elite club-of-sorts that promises “any wish fulfilled for the right price.” In later books, the company becomes a glorified hit-man operation, but when we first meet [members of the organization] in the origin story, they have their sights set on catering to wealthy New York. It’s over the course of the book that the wishes of its clients become more nefarious and the Card sees an opportunity to exploit the elite.

BC: “Any wish fulfilled for the right price” sounds like such a devil’s bargain. What kinds of complications does this bargain bring into the life of the main character of Immoral Origins, Jake Barnum?

LMG: Yeah, it’s a classic devil’s bargain! The problem with getting in with the Desire Card is that you are in for life. Each book focuses on a different character’s experience with the Card. For Jake Barnum, he’s someone who has already dipped his toe into petty crime. He’ll tell you he joins the Card to get money for his sick brother Emile, but it’s really the adrenaline of working for the Card that keeps him there. And his love for the girl in the Marilyn Monroe mask (each member of the Card stays incognito by wearing different masks of old movie stars). Jake’s fall and deal with the devil (in a Clark Gable mask) is the core of the book.

BC: Did any particular books, movies, or other pop-cultural elements inspire or influence this novel or the series in general?

LMG: A ton! Because the characters wear masks of old movie stars to hide their identities, I was heavily influenced by classic noir films and books. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, and The Friends of Eddie Coyle were books I read while writing. Film was a huge influence, too: The Killing, Naked City, To Have and Have Not, White Heat, Night and the City, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ace in a Hole, Touch of Evil, and a bunch of modern classics, too.

BC: I understand that a new book in the series, Prey No More, is coming out in July. Can you say a few words about this book and how it advances some of the story lines introduced in Immoral Origins?

LMG: So, Prey No More picks up in present time, when an operative for the Card, a former Iraq soldier named JD Storm, decides to leave the Card. And spoiler, you DO NOT leave the Card. It’s a hunter vs. hunted plot as JD has to evade his former co-workers who are after a bounty on his head.

BC: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Immoral Origins, Prey No More, or your plans for the series in general?

LMG: The books all deal with the nature of evil and how far we’ll stretch our morals before it becomes too much. After Prey No More is All Sins Fulfilled, about a Wall Street man whose liver is dying and [who] contacts the Card for a transplant off the black market. The next book is Vicious Ripples, which follows the characters of all three books and how their actions have consequences. The last book in the series, Desire’s End, is about the leader of Card (Gable) as he faces his reckoning for all the evil he’s caused over his lifetime. It’s been a blast to write the series, but I’m ready to finish from a novel standpoint. Prey No More I’ve been writing as a screenplay, so my goal is to turn the other books either into a series of movies or a TV series.

*Jake Barnum is the main character of Immoral Origins.