In my family, I am the older sibling. I’m the first child, first grandchild of many on one side of the family. Heralded and feted and spoiled, some might say. (My younger sister, probably, has thoughts.)
In your face! First child forever.
But I’m also part of the crime fiction family, and in that family? I’m Little Sister. Sometimes I’m Big Sister. I am never Mother, thank you, no. Mostly I try to be Little Sister, because she gets to rove around picking up anything anyone drops: ideas, thoughts on craft, advice, lucrative contracts.
And no one in the crime fiction family brings out my younger-sibling Brat faster and with such precision as Lou Berney. I say this with affection: that jerk made me work pretty hard for this interview that I OFFERED to do for him—and called me a bully (one hopes, in jest) for asking a follow-up question. How dare I! When he had worked so hard to avoid answering the first round of questions in the first place.
It’s a good darn thing I’m also a huge fan of his work and of his new book, Crooks, which is about… family. Of course it is. In many ways, all of Lou Berney’s novels are about family: family of origin, family of choice. Crooks is intensely about family, the kind you’re born into and didn’t ask to be, the kind whose bad blood you soak up like a sponge but might not ever be able to wring dry. (The stains are certainly never coming out.) The kind that provides a safety net, of sorts, while you’re flying high and doing crime.
Oh, did I not mention? A family that is also a crime family. In Crooks, the Mercurio parents are cons born and bred and their kids orchestrate thefts from an early age. The parents are mob-tied. The kids are a team of little rascals and felons-in-the-making who, as they grow up and away, start to run their own scams and swindles or try to resist the pull of the family business.
At one point in the book, a Mercurio sibling thinks, “When you grow up like that, crowded into every car and room and experience with your brothers and sisters, you never have to wonder where you fit in the world.”
In a police line-up, obviously. But maybe the Mercurios can find a way to gather around the Thanksgiving turkey without anyone getting killed.
Crooks is a banger. It’s harrowing at times but fun, most of the time, even touching. It’s a crime novel with so much personality and heart, you’ll probably be a little mad when it ends and the Mercurios go on without you. Little siblings, every one of us, left behind.
Lou Berney (barely) answered my questions by email about sibling relationships, his crime family influences, and writing for your own joy. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Lori Rader-Day:
What was the origin of the idea for this book?
Lou Berney:
One night at a family dinner my sister and I were arguing about something. My two niece-in-laws started laughing. I asked them why, and they said, “You two are such children together.” And I realized how true it was—my sister and I are, often, when we’re together, still 5 and 15 years old (and not 61 and 71). I started thinking about how relationships between siblings get frozen in time to some degree, and how family freezes you in time to some degree, and that got me thinking about how we’re always escaping (or trying but not escaping) our earliest influences.
Lori Rader-Day:
Tell us about a favorite scene, maybe one that you’re proud of, or that took some effort to get right? It seemed like you were having some fun with this one, though.
Lou Berney:
One of the most fun sections I wrote was when the Mercurio parents open the first disco in Oklahoma City in 1978 and all the children go to work there. For some reason that setting and time period and situation just came alive for me in such a powerful, enjoyable way. I wanted to work there too (even though, like the Mercurio kids, I’d have to deal with the damage the rest of my life).
I really had a joyful time writing this book, which is very unlike me. I’m not entirely sure why, and I worry that if I think about it too much I’ll screw everything up for the next book. But, okay, I think writing a good, original novel is always going to be hard. By definition, you’re creating something brand new, for which there is no map or recipe. I think the big step I’ve taken as a writer, I hope, is that I’ve accepted it’s going to be hard, and hard is not a sign that I’m failing or messing up, but instead a sign that I’m on the right track. That takes a lot of pressure off.
Lori Rader-Day:
How were you considering other crime family stories, fiction or nonfiction, as you wrote, either being influenced by them or trying to push against what’s done before? What did you borrow or reject from any crime family stories you’ve read or watched?
Lou Berney:
I thought about The Godfather a lot, and how each brother in that book/movie has a very essential core, and is defined by that (for better or worse) by the family. The good boy hero, the hothead, the strategist, the loser. I tried to think about that with the siblings in Crooks: the brains, the muscle, the golden boy, the daredevil. (And Piggy.)
I also, though I didn’t realize it at the time, was tapping into one of my all-time favorite novels, and the great novel about dysfunctional siblings, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. That famous quote of Faulkner’s is about family more than anything else: “The past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.”
Lori Rader-Day:
This story is pretty epic in how much time it covers. How did you decide on its scope and then its structure to carry that scope? What craft decisions did you have to make as you wrote? (I think you mentioned point of view once while writing this book, and referenced reading a James McBride book as an example?)
Lou Berney:
I was coming off my previous novel, Dark Ride, which is a single, first-person point of view set in a small, ordinary city, and I was in the mood to do something completely different. I was eager to dip into different perspectives and visit different times, places. The structure of family, POV 1, POV 2, POV 3, POV 4, and then finish with family again came to me pretty early. I did toy with the idea of two points of view for each of the four main siblings, but the book would have been twice as long and I’d be dead now.
Lori Rader-Day:
This novel has, yes, a lot of crime, but also a lot of humor. Was that a conscious choice?
Lou Berney:
I never try to be funny—that’s my approach to funny. Whatever feels right for a scene or a character is what I go with. It’s usually later I discover that something was funny or not.
I’m also consistently surprised by what other people think is humorous in my books. I think I’m usually so deeply embedded in a character I’m dead serious about most stuff.
Lori Rader-Day:
You’re very deadpan about most stuff, which is funny.
There’s a moment in the story of the Mercurio parents, Buddy and Lillian, that becomes a bit of family lore. I love how each of the children have a different relationship with that moment. Tell the people what you were up to there.
Lou Berney:
That’s something that evolved over multiple drafts. I didn’t realize the importance of that moment for the kids until I started thinking about character arcs in each of their individual stories. It eventually occurred to me that a seminal family moment could be something they each embraced, or rejected, or ignored, or…
Lori Rader-Day:
Which of the five Mercurio children do you think of as the center of the family, and why? You can make as many cases as you’d like. My vote is for Ray, though I could see Alice getting a vote.
Lou Berney:
I agree about Ray! I’m not sure I can explain why, though, but Ray seems like the ballast of the family. Maybe because, secretly, he’s the most self-aware of the bunch—though of course no one else realizes that.
Lori Rader-Day:
One of the Mercurio siblings is very interested in whether people can change. Another does seem to change, but then changes again. Another might have finally rejected the Mercurio way, eventually, to build a family of her own. What do you want to say about the capacity for changing the trajectory of your family inheritance or generational trauma?
Lou Berney:
That’s the big question! I don’t really know. I guess I think some things you can leave behind and others you can’t, and it all depends on the individual, the individual circumstances…there are so many moving parts. Which makes it great for a novelist!
Lori Rader-Day:
Which Mercurio sibling are you and why?
Lou Berney:
Sadly (but luckily), I think I’m probably closest to good old boring Piggy. We are both very good novelists, though. Or at least we like to think so.
Lori Rader-Day:
All right. I’ll give you that one. You’re a great novelist.
FICTION
Crooks
By Lou Berney
William Morrow
Published September 9, 2025
