Power In Justice is the third book in her DeLaney Mob Series, in which Andrea de Laney, embarks on a mission to restore order to her tumultuous world. Determined to seek justice for herself, Berkland, and the people she holds dear, Andrea navigates a treacherous path toward the truth. With a breakthrough in her pursuit of the F.A.D.F. fund, Andrea unleashes her skills to settle unfinished business. As the tension escalates between the DeLaney Mob and the O'Hare Mafia, the long-awaited confrontation looms on the horizon. Simultaneously, the most significant event of the year approaches, adding urgency to Andrea's already relentless race against the clock. Struggling to find equilibrium between her high-stakes endeavors and her blossoming relationship with Valerie, Andrea must strike a delicate balance to safeguard both her personal and professional life. A new fiancée and baby on the way bring new perspective to her world. Determination fuels her relentless pursuit of truth, justice, and redemption. As alliances are tested, secrets unravel, and loyalties are put to the ultimate test, she faces her biggest challenges yet. Andrea must summon every ounce of her strength, intellect, and resourcefulness to ensure her world doesn't come apart.
Kirby Ann stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:
I’m always afraid that the things I find myself researching for the books in my DeLaney Mob Series are going to put me on a watchlist of some kind. All the time, I’m searching about guns, drugs, and other things that probably throw up red flags somewhere in the deep reaches of the servers of the internet. I won’t lie, though—a lot of my research has been years in the making with the hundreds of hours of crime and police procedural TV shows I’ve watched. Some of those shows could’ve done with a little more research, in my opinion. But that’s the 'entertainment factor' at work. Viewers care less about the details of how DNA profiling actually works than the neat charts showing who the killer is.
Taking that into account, it’s easy to let my mind run wild when writing a scene. It’s more fun to add in an explosion or a gunfight than to sit around describing how a gun actually fires a bullet. In fact, that’s usually what I do. Other authors and professionals would say that I’m a pantser because I don’t sit down and plan anything out, not even the title. To me, plotting is a barrier, and to some extent, I feel the same thing about research. If I learn all I can about a subject by researching for days and weeks at a time, I burn out on it. It just doesn’t work for me. In my genre, unlike historical fiction or legal thrillers, I don’t feel the need to do tons of research. With suspense and thriller, even in romance, it seems as though readers are looking for more of an immersive experience.
We’re living in 2024. Life is hard, things are expensive, people are struggling. They need an escape. That’s what I try to provide for them. With my novel, Power In Betrayal, I try to give the reader a labyrinth of cityscape to navigate alongside the main protagonist, Andrea. They get to go down in the tunnels, ride around the city streets, and drive up the mountain to the lodge. Berkland, the city, is an escape all on its own. But to build that sort of complex landscape, I had to research different details to make it more realistic, where the reader could see it the same way Andrea does. Most of that research came from looking at pictures of different cities, landscapes, and mountains.
Moving past that, I did some research on how a port and port security work because, of course, mafias need to move product through some sort of major shipping lane. I didn’t let it take over, though. For me, it’s about finding the balance of enough detail and procedure to give the reader the picture without it becoming boring. I like to build an experience without bogging down in the details because I know when I read a book, if it's just description after description, detail after detail, I skim through it to get to the part where the story starts moving again.
Outside of online research and watching television, my other method of research is from books. Reading about the 'real' mob and learning how they operated, the things that were important to them, how family is everything—those are key factors that gave me a sense I was moving in the right direction. In my novel, Power In Justice, Andrea’s fighting enemies on multiple fronts with an end goal in mind that she has to save the family she’s trying to build and save the city she loves. Her character isn’t based on one particular mobster but a culmination of multiple people from history.
In the end, research is necessary for pretty much all novels, but I don’t like to let myself get bogged down in it. If I wrote for a different genre, then maybe I would feel the need to dive deeper. For now, I prefer to go just deep enough to make my point and let the story keep flowing. And for those of you that have to roll up your sleeves and dig into pits unknown to bring the story of what’s important to you to light for all the rest of us, I applaud your dedication and perseverance. There’s no right or wrong answer to how much research is enough research. When the author has what they need to tell their story, then that’s when the real work begins.
You can learn more about Kirby Ann and her books via her website and follow her on TikTok, Goodreads, and Instagram. Power In Justice is now available in print and digital versions via Amazon.
