The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jack’s Boys by John Katzenbach

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Jack's Boys by John Katzenbach https://amzn.to/3X9WTtH From #1 internationally bestselling author John Katzenbach Five serial killers ... Known only to each other as: Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Delta. Easy. Connected through a secure internet location, encrypted and concealed, a unique chat room they have named Jack's Special Place in homage to their ultimate model--the one killer they hold in the highest esteem: Whitechapel, London. 1888. The infamous murderer remembered in dark history as Jack the Ripper. And so, they are Jack's Boys. They delight in each other's crimes. They relish in taunting police around the world with odd clues and deep confusion--the modern version of the Victorian-era killer they emulate. While the original Jack sent letters to Fleet Street papers, they send pictures and online boasts and insults. In this fashion, they feed on each other's killings, a private community of death. Arrogant. Conceited. Untouchable. Or so they thought. Until one day they are hacked. Two teenagers, lying on their bed at home. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Slightly disaffected, each with their own issues--but deeply in young love and equally fascinated by the world of the dark web, where they accidentally stumble upon Jack's Boys in their private space . . . Whom they immediately mock. This triggers a landslide of anger and revenge as the killers decide to teach the two teenagers a lesson in humility and respect for their betters. And caught up in this web of death are the teenage boy's grandmother and grandfather--an ICU nurse and a former college admissions counselor with his own hidden, murderous history, an ex-Marine, Viet vet, still haunted by his time in that conflict. When the five killers emerge from their shadows, this odd band of young and old will have to find a way to expose them. Or defeat them. Or save their own lives. Katzenbach is New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award nominated author, with a background as a criminal court reporter for the Miami Herald and Miami News. He currently lives in Western Massachusetts. Notably, Scarlett Johansson is set to lead the Amazon limited series ‘Just Cause’ based on Katzenbach’s novel.

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we have an amazing prolific author on the show multi-book author i should say jack kensenbach is on the show with us today he's launching his newest series and book it's called jack boys it comes out may 28th 2024 and it's going to be part of the asset lance specter thrillers book series this is book one in the series and of course if you know him he's written a multitude of just amazing quality books and people love him that's what i hear on the amazon reviews people love him john is the new york times best-selling author of such novels as the edgar award nominated in the heat of summer which was adapted for the screen as the mean season the traveler day of reckoning just cause and hearts war which were also made into movies the shadow man another edgar nominee state of Mind, The Analyst, and The Madman's Tale.

He's been a criminal core reporter for the Miami Herald and Miami News and feature writer for the Herald's Tropic Magazine. He lives in western Massachusetts. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? Hi, Chris. I'm fine. How are you out there? I am great. Oh, yeah. See, they're calling to buy the book already. We just barely went on the air. Hang on a second. Let me just get rid of that. There we go. Sorry.

No problem. There's a lot of calls coming in. There we go. This went live, man. They're calling you already. What a modern world we live in. Isn't it, though? Sounds like you still have a phone.

That's kind of weird you know it is it every so often you sort of embrace certain dinosaur aspects of life you know like still having a landline yeah and you know you know a heating system that seems to work that kind of stuff yeah yeah my mom still has a landline i I think she finally gave up the AOL account about 10 years ago. I haven't. You still have your AOL thing? You know, it was that wonderful ad where the guy held up the flip phone and said, if it isn't broke, why would I switch it out? Anyway, so like I say, I i i i try to be you know i try to be modern in the books you know but i have this deep deep dark dinosaur soul there you go

it helps write good books evidently you know if it ain't broke why fix it that's what i said about my first 10 marriages and divorces so give us a 30 oh give us a dot com for you so people know where to find you on the interwebs. Oh, it's just johnkatzenbach.com. There you go. And it's very simple. And you can certainly find all my books at Amazon. You can find them at Blackstone, my new publisher.

You can find them. Hopefully you can find them in bookstores, but there aren't as many bookstores still standing out there. Sure. That's true. We love bookstores, but there aren't as many bookstores still standing out there. Sure. That's true. We love bookstores, by the way. So give us a 30,000 over your new book, Jack's Boys. Let me, it's a simple premise. It came from the notion of, you know, do you ever know what your teenagers are doing?

Sorry about that. And there you go. I mean, do you ever know what you're, that. And... There you go. I mean... Do you ever know what you're... That's my ex-teenager, my daughter, calling. Oh. Maybe they're just trying to get to you

out of your car's warranty. Exactly. But anyway, the book is about a unique group of serial killers, five of them, who have formed a... What, for lack of a better term, is a chat

group, you know, in the dark web, and where they feed off of each other's homicides. And they have a sort of relationship with, you know, they like to model themselves in a modern way after Jack the Ripper. What happens is they're online one day talking to each other, and they get hacked by a pair of teenagers. And the teenagers do what teenagers do, insult them. And fundamentally, what it is, is you've insulted the wrong people yeah definitely so they they come after the teenagers to quote teach them a lesson and it is how the teenagers and their

family you know extricate themselves from this rather significant dilemma. That's the book. Wow. Do the teenagers know what they've gotten themselves into, that these guys are serial killers, or do they find out later? They have this image, but they react the way all teenagers do. They don't believe anything. You know, what are you guys, some kind of wannabe kid? and you know in other words what they say is enough to trigger a fairly substantial reaction on the part of these killers i can imagine yeah you might

want to yeah i usually pick fights with killers adults chris we would keep our mouth shut yeah yeah i don't pick fights with serial killers that's a policy of mine that's one of my policies i keep around yeah don't pick fights with serial killers and don't pick fights with anybody you never know who's who anywhere you know true it up yeah that's that's also something i have with my 10 ex-wives and divorces uh so anyway now this is part of a new series you're calling it not not exactly it's sort of part of part and parcel of a a a series you're calling. Not exactly. It's sort of part and parcel of a series of books that sort of deal with, how best to put this, people having to take responsibility for actions that are imposed upon them. And we live in this world where it seems to me that, you know, we have responsibility is always a huge issue. And what I try to probe as an author and as a writer are those events that are where people have to seize their own, you know, find their own answers instead of having them delivered to them.

And that's the sort of foundation for any psychological thriller. There you go. What made you come across this idea? What made you come up with this? Who hurt you? My wife periodically sort of asks me, where did you happen to learn about all this psychopathology? And I kind of say, you know, it just sort of came to me.

But the fact of the matter is, when I was a journalist as a young man, I covered so many crimes and saw so much about the, what, for lack of a better term, it's the dark side of human nature. And the way to process that, for me, was to become a novelist, to explore that stuff on the page. There you go. So you're like, I'm going to just take this next level. Five serial killers getting together formula union that's that's quite unique i mean i don't think i i hope i hope so i hope so

in the in the literature of uh right in the literature about serial killers you know there tend to be that i've never sort of read about anything like this. You know, they tend to be, you know, sometimes you'll have a man and woman team, a couple of guys, you know, but never a group that's so linked together the way these guys are. And I named them all, you'll like this, I think. I named them all, you know, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Easy. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Those are also the names of my first next ones. No, Charlie, Delta, and Easy. Wow. Yeah.

Wow. Those are also the names of my first and next ones. No, I'm just kidding, folks. I just work those jokes. So how many books do you have under your belt? 16 now. 16. Wow.

It makes me feel old. Yeah. Oh, come on. I mean, you're not old, and still, that's kind of young. We have people on the 60 or 100 books. It's pretty crazy. They're pumping them out like it's a good style. at telling these stories. And I really admire, you know, the Lawrence Blocks of the world and, you know, the guys who can write, you know, who can follow, you know,

a Jack Reacher or a Matt Scudder and do, because people think it's easy. It is not. And you have to create a new circumstance for that character. And he has to, he has to develop in each new book. And I tell you, it's,

it's, that's the kind of writing I admire those guys greatly. Yeah. It's, it's a lot of work. Yeah. Just writing a book on its own. You know,

I write business books and, you know, I don't really have to make up characters and plots and, you know, I just tell stupid stories from business. But what you guys do is a whole new new level because you have to character development you have to plot lines and different under plot lines or entwining plot line and all that stuff and you know it's it's hard i can't imagine doing it. Somebody, I got asked about this once, and I cited the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and he used to say that when he was in a prisoner camp,

that the very worst torture they had was they would take you out in the middle of winter in Russia, freezing cold. And for the first four hours of the day, you would dig a hole. And then you'd stop and you'd wait. And then for the next four hours of the day, you'd fill the hole back in. And pretty soon, after a couple days of this, you would go crazy. And sometimes I think that's what writing a novel is. You're just digging a hole and then filling it in. So I mean, so I suppose in a way, there's a certain kind of craziness involved.

And certainly, you know, it's kind of, you know, weird emotionally when you're sitting there with five serial killers in a book and you really like them your your wife keeps one eye open when she's sleeping with you at night doesn't she i can tell yeah yeah yeah she she makes sure she keeps the knife in a private drawer rarely she knows where it's at you know a fully cocked nine millimeter probably yeah she's probably barbed wire around certain parts of the house.

Razor wire usually. She's got 10 guns in every room. No sort of all-out head of a woman's notice. Women are funny. I'm actually very fortunate. My wife was a journalist too. A Pulitzer Prize winner.

She's familiar with the craziness that is, you know, epidemic in the world. There you go. Yeah, and sadly there are. I mean, you worked in Miami Papers. Yes. You know, you got the Florida man going on there. That must have been quite interesting. You know, when I was at the Herald, we used to play a game where we would all say,

we would make up a story and say, is this story going into the paper the next day? And the reality was, a lot of times, nobody was making anything up. It was so crazy. And the game got ended finally, when the famous criminal crime and punishment reporter Edna Buchanan came up with a story about a scuba diver who had found a, looking for lobster on the bottom of the ocean and came up with a crab that had something in its claw and that claw in that claw turned out to be a finger with a ring on it and she said she said the next she said they're arresting the guy whose wife that was and we didn't nobody believed her and that was of course on the front page of the paper the next day absolutely word for word true i mean miami miami was and remains to this day a place of of extraordinary sort of craziness and yet wonderness too

there you go yeah flor, Florida, I mean, there's never-ending stories there of crazy. I mean, it's an interesting place. I think it's the humidity that makes people lose their minds there maybe a little bit. My friend's in Key West right now, and he was talking about the humidity, and he's like, it's really bad, Chris. It's even worse than just being in normal Florida.

Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yes yes all of south florida i i once in in when i wrote just cause which was also filmed i had a paragraph where i described it was as if america got tipped up on a axis like this and all the really crazy people just sort of flooded into florida just you know rolled right in yeah yeah which pretty much ted bundy proved that to be true pretty much yeah and then he moved and then he went to utah so he moved the crazy from florida utah so there you go on the book what more can you tease out we can't usually give away too much in the middle and the end of course it's well yeah happily the the the the main characters are of course the five serial killers and these these two very

rebellious teenagers and the the boy and a girl and the boy lives with his grandparents one of whom is a a vietnam vet with his own sort of very, very dicey history, and a grandmother who was an ER and ICU nurse. And what happens is, how do you balance as a writer, how do you balance these people? How do you find within them the means to confront and deal with these killers that enter their lives? And what was, for me, most challenging, and as you can imagine, was getting into the heads not just of the killers, but of teenagers, so that their behavior rings true. And, you know, teenagers cruising around the dark web, you know,

was something that was, you know, interesting for me to explore. Yeah. So was it hard to get in touch with your old teenage-dom sort of mindset? I would say I'd use the word challenging, but that doesn't quite capture it. You just desperately as an author do not want somebody to say, that can't be, that's not how they would act as a teenager or whatnot. And so I was very careful to make sure that I played the right psychological chords for those kids in this book.

Definitely. You got to make sure you stay true to that. You know, teenagers, one minute they're smart as hell and the next minute, you know, they do something cosmically stupid.

And that was what was, was you know what i was trying to capture there you go so it'll be fun to check out this book i'll be interested to see what other twisted who hurt you concepts you'll come up with in the future you know this this one's pretty unique i mean i i you know serial killers are bad enough when they're on their own and coming up with their their very dark ideas. But if they're going to get together and start comparing notes and trying to one-up each other, I mean, that doesn't sound like a fun world to live in. You know, the interesting thing, Chris, on this was, as you can imagine, was that they are Jack's boys. And if you think about Jack the Ripper back in the 1880s, what did he do, really?

He manipulated the press. He taunted the police. He made everyone in an entire section of London, Whitechapel, terrified. In other words, he was a template for the kind of thinking that is, it's not that unusual today. And, you know, exploring that relationship between them, you know, the new guys and this, you know, the person they hold in so much esteem in history was exciting for me as a writer to do. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how the plot of this book turns out

and how you go through everything. So definitely people want to pick up the book. Give us your final pitch out to people to order it up and.com as we go on in the show. Final pitch. You know, Chris, I never thought that a job title was influencer, you know, and that I could ever to find books that aspire to originality. And I really believe that this book is both exciting and has an original take on some aspects of life that people will find familiar.

There you go. Five serial killers hanging out. Sounds pretty normal. John, give us your.com, I think, as we go out. You know, as I said, it's just, you know, johnkatzenbach.com. But, you know, the books are available in every kind of, you know, format. And that's, you know, that's what people should see. People can hunt them down.

You know, I think readers are pretty clever, you know, at finding where authors, you know, exist. Be sure to hunt down those serial killer books, eh? And it'll be fun. Please come back for your next book. We'd love to have you. And hopefully by then I'll have been through therapy over the nightmares I'll get from this book. Chris, I would suggest that reading the book alone will be enough therapy for you for a

long time. Okay. That's why I listen to Metallica. It's therapy. So thank you very much, John, for show we really enjoyed it my pleasure my pleasure absolutely thanks for tuning in order of the book where refined books are sold stay away those alleyway bookstores because they might have serial killers and i'm waiting for you the book is entitled jack's boys it's coming up me i'm sorry that's what it looks looks oh yeah there you go yeah we got a shot there jack's boys about may 28th 2024 and now you can start calling john again on his landline phone

because he's absolutely there you go uh thank you guys for tuning in to go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas and all that jazz be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time