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A town with character By William Henderson, CORRESPONDENT Thursday, August 26, 2004 Equal parts "Da Vinci Code" and the best of the Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum suspense novels, Grossman's recently released "Executive Actions" will leave you guessing until the very end and checking the newspaper each day to make sure that something like the world he has created hasn't all of a sudden become all-too-entirely real. Most novelists, should they bother to admit it, are drawn to the "what if" questions, and Gary Grossman is no exception. Like wondering what would happen if an assassin takes aim at a presidential candidate but kills the candidate's wife, irrevocably changing the election's outcome. Grossman's just-released novel "Executive Actions" imagines a world not unlike our own, a world where terror alerts are frequent, American citizens live in a haze of fear and anticipation for the next big thing to occur, and the country can be subverted from within. Theodore Wilson Lodge, a Marblehead High School graduate, is the people's choice for president, at least in Grossman's novel. While the story skips to different places around the world, Marblehead and Boston figure prominently within the novel. As Lodge's past unravels, investigators zero in on his childhood in Marblehead as the place to begin looking for answers to their own "what if" questions. Grossman knew almost immediately that Marblehead would somehow factor into his novel, he said. Having spent numerous weekends and summers visiting an uncle who lived in town, he had long ago memorized the town's geography. "It's just one of my favorite places in the entire world," he said by phone early this month, echoing a sentiment that author Ben Sherwood might have uttered after completing research for his novel, "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud." While sitting in his Los Angeles office, Grossman will be interrupted by a building inspector and his assistant, but he will continue talking about what he calls his favorite subject, at least his current favorite subject - the novel that began while driving from New York to Los Angeles with his business partner in the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The book happened in a moment in time, that same moment in time that changed the world for everybody," he said. "During that drive to Los Angeles, there were a lot of miles and a lot of open country, and I started thinking about the plot to bring down the World Trade Center and maybe how it was the completion of plot that was begun years earlier with that initial bombing."What if there was a plot specific to taking control of the country that took between 30 and 40 years to incubate? What would be so important to invest so much time? "And I knew what it would be. It would be the presidency. He [or she] would be the one capable of bringing down the country from within." There it was - how Grossman said he recovered from 9-11. He created a world he controlled, characters that moved and spoke only when directed to do. At two pages a day for a few months, the novel slowly eked its way out of his head until finally, early one morning before his children and wife had even gotten out of bed, Grossman typed his last words, breathed a sigh of completion and returned to the first page. Having finished with the first draft, there was still revision and editing to complete. And complete. And complete. Grossman seemed to have had a crystal ball - before the idea of how to legally delay a presidential inauguration because of possible terrorist attacks became fodder for news programs, he was imagining just how it could be done. But does he share his ideas? Of course not. Again, why spoil the book's end before it's reached? One thing he does admit is that by the book's end, not every thing has been neatly wrapped up. In fact, he's about a third of the way into the sequel, again writing a few pages here and there, in those moments before the rest of his life intrudes (Grossman is half of a Los Angeles-based television production company that creates documentaries shown on the History Channel, A&E, the Home and Garden channel, the Food Network and HGTV). "We live in a world of constant conspiracies, late-night radio, newspaper tabloids. Society thrives on that now," Grossman said. "['Executive Actions'] is not about this year. It's about every year and every presidential election." Equal parts "Da Vinci Code" and the best of the Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum, "Executive Actions" will leave you guessing until the very end and checking the newspaper each day to make sure that something like the world he has created hasn't all of a sudden become all-too-entirely real. |