Alex Segura

“I like to keep readers on their toes. I like to pull the rug out from under them …”

- John B. Valeri

Alex Segura has been defying expectations since the publication in 2013 of his first mystery novel, Silent City, featuring Miami journalist-turned-private investigator Pete Fernandez. Good guys have died. Bad guys have lived. And gray areas have eclipsed black and white. Nowhere was this more evident than with last year’s Blackout, which found the author’s beleaguered protagonist felled by a bullet.

“I got so many emails when Blackout hit—begging me to reconsider killing Pete— and that warmed my cold heart, because it showed that they had come to expect the unexpected. They wouldn’t put it past me,” Segura said. “So, you have to create these characters with care—give them weight, heft, and meaning, and then have no fear when the grim reaper appears. You have to be willing to take them off the board if the plot demands it. That adds to the authenticity, I think, this sense that anything can happen.”

The saga’s fifth (and possibly final) entry, August’s Miami Midnight, boasts its own share of jaw-droppers, the origins of which can be traced back to a seminal reading moment.

“One of my most vivid memories was staying up late to read my grandfather’s tattered copy of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather at the probably-too-young age of eight or nine—and being completely blown away by the Sonny death scene,” he said. “Puzo constructed it so well … It was one of the earliest memories I had where I thought of the craft—that someone had to think of this twist and lay the groundwork for it, and if I didn’t know before, I knew then that I wanted to try my hand at it.”