Q&A with Daniel Kenitz, Author of Don’t Look Away

Don’t Look Away is a domestic crime thriller that follows a former defense attorney who is forced out of retirement to defend her husband—now the prime suspect in the serial murder case terrorizing Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Let’s get to know Daniel as he talks favorite novels, inspiration behind the book, his TBR and more!

What are some of your favorite novels?

It’s a big mishmash. For thrillers, Gillian Flynn’s GONE GIRL had a huge influence on me as it did for so many others, as did Lisa Jewell’s THEN SHE WAS GONE. WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens had a little bit of everything, murder mystery and courtroom drama with this unique setting and a literary voice.

I don’t know that I have a favorite Stephen King novel, because I usually just get caught up in the experience of reading it and think: here’s how you do it. Hemingway’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY had enormous influences on me a long time ago. George RR Martin’s A STORM OF SWORDS was a great meeting of plot twists with character arcs, though I spent too much time doing a poor George RR Martin impression earlier on in my writing career. 

When did you know you wanted to become an author?

Back in about 7th or 8th grade, I imagined that my life would go the following way: I’d start a business of some sort, easily become a billionaire by age 30, retire, and then have the time to spend on my passion project of writing novels. But that got me to the age-old question about finding your calling: what would you do if money wasn’t a problem? For me, the answer was to write books. At some point in high school, I realized I could skip the whole become-a-billionaire part and just pursue writing. I already knew I liked writing a lot, but high school is when I settled on writing being the main thing.

Why do you think readers are so drawn to the thriller genre?

So many thrillers take what seem like ordinary lives and ordinary characters and then plant them into extraordinary circumstances. It’s very easy to get lost in a story like that. Maybe this wasn’t a thriller, but I remember being a kid and reading MY TEACHER IS AN ALIEN by Bruce Coville. You have these two ordinary kids who start out in their ordinary kid situations, and then one day they’re outside the classroom and they witness their alien teacher removing his human mask. That blew my grade-school mind, and I think so many brilliant thrillers are variations of the same idea. We want to see ourselves in these crazy situations and wonder: what would we do? 

What is the inspiration behind Don’t Look Away?

I tend to get a lot of ideas by looking through headlines, but I can’t remember the specific one that was the seed for DON’T LOOK AWAY. The main thing I remember was wanting to write a novel about someone who saw themselves as being in the sunset of their life, had what they thought was their happily-ever-after, and then they’re ripped out of it—especially from Leslie’s perspective. I might be very wrong about this, but it felt like there are too few stories about people who are retirement age or thereabouts, even though retirement can be such a natural starting spot for a domestic thriller. And it led to some interesting what-if questions.

What was your favorite chapter or part to write?

Writing the prologue was fun in the sense that it felt like I got to use all of the tricks and training in developing a suspense voice to try and capture your attention in the opening scene. It was also one of the first scenes I ever wrote in which I was pretty sure someone might flip it open in a bookstore one day. Writing Patricia’s dialogue was fun; she’s not comic relief exactly, but she has a way of cutting the tension. And then any Leslie-Weston scenes were usually easy to write because there was a weird energy whenever they’d meet. 

What are you currently reading and what’s on your TBR (to be read) list?

On my Kindle right now is AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD by Laura Lippman. There are two books coming out the same day as mine, Jessica Knoll’s HELPLESS and Christina McDonald’s ALL THE LIES WE SEE that I’d love to when they come out.