We recently connected with Carmen Amato and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Carmen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
I’m a mystery author, but when the pandemic hit, corruption and cartels were tough subjects to write about so I put the award-winning Detective Emilia Cruz series (CLIFF DIVER, NARCO NOIR, etc) on hold and began work on the 4-book Galliano Club historical fiction series. MURDER AT THE GALLIANO CLUB just won the 2023 Silver Falchion award for Best Historical at the Killer Nashville International Writer’s Conference.
I headed for 1926 and built a literary universe around a men’s club for Italian mill workers in a small city in upstate New York. My hometown of Rome, New York inspired the setting. My grandfather’s stories of being a deputy sheriff during Prohibition became the nucleus of the Galliano Club historical thriller series.
Think Cheers meets The Godfather.
The 4-book series gave my mother, now 94, an opportunity to share her childhood memories even as dementia leaches them away. Sharing my research sparked tiny details about growing up in the Italian neighborhood where family, food, and Catholic feast days framed everyday life. These nuggets made their way into the books, promising to keep my mother’s memories alive long after they have been taken from her.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Now a mystery and thriller author, I was an intelligence officer for 30 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. My career spanned multiple mission disciplines, many of which involved technical challenges and extensive time spent overseas. I wrapped up my career as the head of one of the US national intelligence schools.
All those years of experience and adventure mean that my books are loaded with danger and deception.
In the Detective Emilia Cruz series (CLIFF DIVER, NARCO NOIR, etc.) she’s the first female police detective in Acapulco, taking on official corruption, drug cartels, and Mexico’s social inequalities. The series won the 2019 and 2020 Poison Cup award for Outstanding Series from Crime Masters of America, the 2019 Silver Falchion from Killer Nashville, and was optioned for television.
The Galliano Club historical fiction thriller series is similarly swimming in deception, this time during Prohibition.
What sets my books apart, especially the Detective Emilia Cruz series, is my lived experience. I’m writing from a deep well of authenticity, combining my boots-on-the-ground observations with area knowledge and research.
Oddly enough, drugs motivated me to start writing fiction.
Not mine, but the violent impact of what the illicit drug trade is doing to Mexico.
We lived there for several years, giving me a ringside seat to cartel violence. It really got in my face—literally—when an armed drug addict came into our church during midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. No one was hurt, but it was a wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee moment.
My first book, the standalone political thriller THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY, took on both cartel violence and Mexico’s vast social disparities.
Next came the Detective Emilia Cruz police series pitting the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico’s cartels, corruption and culture of machismo. Rival drug cartels fight for territory, politicians are bribed to look the other way, and ordinary people are caught in the middle.
Given that more than 100,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses in 2022 and there’s talk in Washington DC of designating drug cartels as terrorists, the Detective Emilia Cruz books are more relevant than ever. Sometimes fiction can bring an issue to the fore better than news outlets.
The series grapples with the impact of cocaine and fentanyl, takes the reader inside the looming narco-state and exposes the tragedy of the thousands missing amid the drug war.
But it’s also about a woman trying not to lose her soul in the wreckage.
Emilia’s challenges are pulled from the headlines. There’s no need to make up bizarre serial killers when cartel violence and corrupt politicians provide more than enough inspiration. For example, Emilia’s perpetual hunt for women who have gone missing–referred to as Las Perdidas or the Lost Ones–was inspired by the hundreds of women missing from the Juarez area.
I’m deeply proud of the Emilia Cruz series and the way so many readers embrace the series. They’re the same readers who love international crime fiction and mystery by Jo Nesbo, Peter May, Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, and Martin Cruz Smith, as well as Don Winslow’s cartel thrillers set in Mexico.
Many readers first meet Emilia in the free Starter Library, which can be downloaded here: https://carmenamato.net/starter-library/
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Ten years ago, when I was trying to get THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY published, I sought out an agent search firm. The woman who ran it was enthusiastic about the quality of my writing but we kept circling around an undefined problem.
“New York will never touch it,” she said finally. “And a New York agent is the only kind worth having. New York agents are looking for the next SEX AND THE CITY. Glossy. High heels. New York.”
“This is a political thriller,” I countered. “Makes the real Mexico accessible to the American audience the way Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series did for Russia.”
GORKY PARK, RED SQUARE and the other Arkady Renko novels were ground-breaking, taking us inside a crumbling Soviet Union and then a mafia-riddled Russia.
“New York won’t buy a book with all Mexican characters,” she said.
Remember, this was before AMERICAN DIRT and other books about immigration over the border. It was about those in Mexico fighting to save their country from descending into narco hell.
“And your main character is a maid. At least couldn’t you make her American?”
I made a gurgling sound.
“You know,” my tormentor blithely went on. “A college girl from Pittsburgh named Susan or Tess who goes to Mexico on a cultural exchange program to work as a maid for a semester. Something like that.”
I could have tossed off a barbed remark about how it would cost an American in Pittsburgh more to get to Mexico than they would earn as a maid in three months, but I was too busy being appalled.
This was a book about Mexico’s drug war, the people fighting it, and their chances of survival. It was also a Cinderella story taking on Mexico’s unspoken caste system. Sue and Tess were not part of that narrative.
That’s only some of the resistance I encountered trying to publish the book. It ran counter to the prevailing narrative on multiple levels.
Independently published, THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY was longlisted for the 2020 Millennium Book Award.
The moral of the story? Believe in yourself. The “system” isn’t always right or the only option.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I’m still working on building my social media presence, approaching it with a hub and spoke mentality.
My website is the hub. That’s where I establish the “look” of my author brand, with photography, font choice, and blog content. People should get an idea of who I am and what I write as soon as they land on the home page.
It’s also the place to offer free content like the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library in exchange for subscribing to my twice-monthly newsletter, Mystery Ahead. Every other week I share my latest news, an exclusive excerpt from what I’m writing now, and a review of a mystery I loved and think my readers will, too.
Social media platforms are the spokes. I can repurpose blog posts and newsletter content across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads and BookBub in formats specific to each platform. I’m not always consistent, but that’s the plan!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carmenamato.net
- Instagram: @authorcarmenamato
- Facebook: https://carmenamato.com/authorcarmenamato
- Other: BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/carmen-amato