This novel traveled a long way to find you, reader. I worked on it on and off for many years, while going to school and working full time. It began as my college thesis and evolved. On September 11, 2001, I lost three years’ worth of work because I kept it at a cubicle inside the World Trade Center. Later that week, I began the story again, from page one.
Originally, I envisioned Gunmetal Black to serve as a cautionary tale. I grew up in tough neighborhoods in New York and Chicago and I wanted to speak to urban problems. As I matured, so did the novel. It remains action-packed and gritty; a thriller. It has sexy moments, and a touch of romance. The characters are dangerous and flawed, but I strove to make them complex and human as they face great crises.
While this is commercial crime fiction, it is heavily influenced by the classics. When I began to write at Shimer College, I was steeped in Greek tragedies, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, and others. On my own I read
Hemingway, pulp fiction, and detective novels; I studied movies to make the plot fast-moving and cinematic; and
I listened to everything from classic rock to hip-hop, and especially to salsa. The main characters are Latino, but Gunmetal Black is ultimately an American novel.
I hope you find the story entertaining, easy to follow, and hard to put down. If you do, by all means, recommend it to all of your friends. Enjoy it. Thank you for reading. And be on the lookout for my next novel.
Daniel Serrano, Esq.
New York City, 2007