The Book That Became A Frank Leland Novel

Early cover concept
– subject to change

ONE OF THE STRANGER THINGS about writing a series is that sometimes the main character doesn’t introduce himself right away.

That’s exactly what happened with The Betrayal of Danny Pryor.

Originally, this wasn’t a Frank Leland novel at all.

Years ago, I wrote the story entirely from Danny Pryor’s first-person point of view. Danny was the center of everything: a successful television director reconnecting with the great lost love of his life during America’s Bicentennial summer of 1976. The affair reignites. Old feelings come roaring back. Then the relationship spirals into obsession, manipulation, and eventually the disappearance of Danny’s two-year-old daughter.

Frank Leland existed in that version, but only as a supporting character — an ex-cop turned private investigator Danny’s wife hires to find out if her husband is cheating on her, and then later, to help find the kidnapped child.

And yet something interesting kept happening whenever Frank walked into a scene.

He felt more grounded than everyone around him. More emotionally honest. Danny was living inside the chaos; Frank could actually see it.

The deeper I got into Danny Pryor as a character, the clearer it became that he wasn’t simply a victim of events. He was helping create the disaster overtaking his life, even if he didn’t fully understand that yet. His marriage was already cracking long before the kidnapping. His choices mattered. His blind spots mattered.

That didn’t make him a bad character. If anything, it made him more human.

But it also made me realize the story itself might work better through Frank’s eyes.

Frank had his own failed marriage. His own regrets. His own child he barely knew how to reach anymore. Suddenly the novel stopped being just a kidnapping story and became something more personal: one broken man watching another man destroy his life in real time while trying desperately to save a little girl caught in the middle of it.

Once I understood that, I couldn’t unsee it.

Ironically, though, I didn’t rewrite Danny Pryor immediately.

Instead, Frank Leland followed me home.

I became so interested in him that I wrote an entirely different novel first: WORKING STIFF. That book introduced Frank as the main character and explored 1977 New York through the eyes of a disgraced ex-cop trying to navigate a city — and a life — that both seemed to be falling apart.

Readers connected with Frank in ways I honestly hadn’t anticipated. WORKING STIFF went on to receive a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite, and somewhere along the way I realized the original Danny Pryor story still hadn’t let go of me either.

Only now I knew who it really belonged to.

So over the past year, I’ve been reworking the novel entirely from Frank Leland’s perspective.

The result became THE BETRAYAL OF DANNY PRYOR.

Same central tragedy. Same missing child. Same dangerous reunion between Danny Pryor and Liona Weiss.

But now the story unfolds through the eyes of a man who understands, perhaps too well, how love and guilt and self-deception can quietly wreck a life long before anybody realizes the damage is done.

Frank Leland returns in Winter 2027.

And in many ways, this is the case that made him.