Andre Hardy
Author Interview - Andre Hardy
Author of TEAR THE CITY DOWN
Coltrane Davis is at once a knight and a hustler. He has risen to wealth and success, graduating from San Diego's back alleys to the halls of power through his partnership with Saul Sollman, a crooked kingmaker among the city's elite. Running multimillion-dollar scams with Saul, he has been Saul's fixer, but now he wants out of the hustle so that he can focus on his teenage daughter's burgeoning tennis career and finally be the dad he has always wanted to be.
But when the Los Angeles Chargers' star running back vanishes for nearly twenty-four hours and misses practice ahead of the biggest game of the year, one with playoff implications, Saul and his protégé, the player's agent, pull Coltrane in to find out what happened. The stakes escalate with a gut-punch when the trail leads into San Diego’s underworld of drugs and prostitution and reveals clues to the disappearance of his daughter's best friend, whose loss has haunted him. Torn by the unreconcilable demands of the life he can't seem to quit and the fierce desire he has to protect his own, Coltrane brings himself and his loved ones to the brink of destruction in his quest to free himself once and for all of Saul's control—and focus on what really matters: family.
Author Interview - Andre Hardy
Author I draw inspiration from:
James Lee Burke - Pegasus Descending. It's number 15 in the Dave Robicheaux series. I've read the entire series save mabye one or two, but this one is my favorite. It has that Burke signature prose – atmospheric, sophisticated, incredibly beautiful turns of phrase that feel like Miles Davis' jazz. His beautiful styling overlaid on Robicheaux's trauma, the novels themes of guilt, redemption and the dark underworld of crime and power, give it a kind dissonance that I love. Beautiful and tragically violent at once. I borrowed heavily James Lee Burke.
Author Interview - Andre Hardy | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
While I love the energy of coffee shops when I write/create reading is the polar opposite. I crave uninterrupted solitude and comfort. I have a dedicated reading space in my office with giant, comfy chair.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Mouse Alexander, Easy Rawlins side-kick in the Walter Mosley hard-boiled series. Man-oh-man, would that be fun! We'd talk about Central Ave in 1940's Los Angeles – the Dunbar Hotel, Club Alabam where Billie Holiday, T-Bone Walker, Josephine Baker, Herb Jeffries, Art Pepper, Anita O'Day and Dorothy Dandridge took the stage.
I would ask him how fast he would have shot Raymond Chandler's Moose Malloy in Farewell My Lovely – had he been sipping bourbon in Florian's, the second story Central Ave when the bully showed up looking for his ex Velma.
Author Interview - Andre Hardy | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I never set out to be an author. Tear The City Down is the end result of my love of words and sentences, and the power of story. I still remember – somewhere around the 4th or 5th grade – reading Edgar Allen Poe's A Tell Tale Heart for the first time. That feeling of being INSIDE the story, as if it were happening to me.
I suspect every good writer starts as a reader, right? And one day the right sentence or phrase ignites a flame to write, to emulate. In the same way hearing John Coltrane for the first time, watching Michael Michael Jackson or standing in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, reading Walter Mosely's Devil In A Blue Dress that moment for me. A story populated with characters I recognized, it opened to door to idea that maybe I could write something just a cool. If nothing else, I could try. Once I got started I couldn't stop.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Hands down I'm a hardback guy. I love the smell, the feel in my hands. There is nothing I dislike, but/and they do take up a lot of space, and having just moved from LA to Charlotte, they make for heavy boxes!
Paperback is second to hardback - excluding the mass market version, which I don't like. The size, tight margins, and small font feel as if it is restricting an experience that should be expansive.
I love ebooks for travel. One iPad versus two or three books as typically read two at time. The free ebook samples have been clutch as well. They allow me to explore and find fantastic books i would have otherwise missed.
The last book I read:
On a recent visit to Hachette, they let me raid the ARC library. I walked away with a nice stack that included Colin Kaepernick's memoir, Perilous Fight, Record Lows, a debut by C.J. Green that I just started and love. I also grabbed The Blue Flame, George Pelecanos's upcoming Derek Strange novel. I've read every book in the Strange series, and this one is classic Pelecanos. Rooted in working-class Washington, D.C. it is another masterpiece of pop culture and music, creating the kind of vibrant urban landscape few writers can match. The Blue Flame moved me. Derek Strange has aged and Pelecanos uses music to evoke such a powerful sense of longing. A kind of nostalgia that is part of growing old.
Author Interview - Andre Hardy | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
Hands down it's computer. First off, if I used pen & paper I'd need a military code breaker to make sense of my messy handwriting. Secondarily, it seems like twice the amount of work.
Of course, I've heard about pen & papers effect on the writing process. How it forces writers to slow down and increases creativity. That may be true. But for me, the creation (scene) emerges in my mind as if it were a dream. I use the keyboard to transcribe what I see.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Easy Rawlins from the Walter Mosley hard-boiled series. Not as a best friend, though. He's more like a wise old uncle. Easy is arguably the first fully realized Black male character in crime fiction. His self-determination and agency during the Jim Crow era are a masterclass in not just surviving, but building generational wealth through a real estate empire despite oppressive systems. I can imagine sitting on the porch in rocking chairs as he gives me practical advice.
Author Interview - Andre Hardy | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
In 1984, I was the 4th pick of the Philadelphia Eagles in the 5th round of the NFL Draft. That was my first dream career, something I'd imagined since I was a little boy.
To put that in perspective, a high school player has just a 0.025% chance of ever making the NFL, and lasting into the draft to be selected in the 5th round narrows those odds to roughly 0.007% of all players.
Publishing a novel was my second dream career.
The standalone odds of an author breaking out of the slush pile to land a major Big-5 publishing deal are only 0.1%.But combining the two? Out of the thousands of men drafted in NFL history, only one ever gone on to publish a major crime thriller.
I didn't just get to live out one dream, I managed to catch lighting twice.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
My favorite decade in fashion history is the 1970s, especially urban Black style. It had a kind of fearless range that I love. I was into big-big Afros (the bigger the better), bell bottoms, platform shoes. What always stands out to me is the colors. Oranges and reds with mustard. Emerald with camel. Royal blue with chocolate brown on wide lapels, silk shirts.
Suede, leather, velvet. For me, 70s urban style is still the most expressive, musical fashion language we’ve ever had.
Place I’d most like to travel:
Shanghai has been on my mind more and more, especially with the way China is moving through technology. From the outside looking in, it feels like they’ve built a global powerhouse of innovation—pushing out consumer tech at a fraction of U.S costs especially in spaces like electric vehicles.
What I want to feel is less about the headlines and more about the lived experience of it. How AI, smart city infrastructure, and robotics actually fold into everyday life when it’s fully integrated into the fabric of a city. Not as concepts, but as something you move through without thinking twice.
Shanghai seems like one of those places where that future is already operational.
My signature drink:
I haven't had a soft drink in (no exaggeration) 30+ years. My daily drink is good clean water. I'll spike it electrolytes now and then. My adult beverage of choice is rye. Neat. No mix. No ice. Burbon is a close second. My beer of choice is Russian Imperal Stout which can be hard to find. In a pinch, I'll drink IPAs.
Favorite artist:
John Coltrane is my runaway favorite. Miles Davis would be a close second.
Coltrane's body of work is characterized by eras as his music evolved. I love all of it staring with his early work in mid 1950s in Miles Davis' band and his later work with Thelonius Monk. But my favorite is whats call his Classic Quartet era (around 1962–1965) with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones. The sound is tight, explosive, spiritual without trying to announce itself as spiritual.
Coltrane isn’t just my favorite musician. He’s one of the few artists where the work feels like it’s still moving, still alive, still ahead of us.
Number one on my bucket list:
Number one on my bucket list is doing all four tennis majors in the same season—back to back. Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open—one after another, the full arc.
Not as isolated events, but as a continuous run through different worlds: hard court to clay to grass and back to hard. Different continents, different energy, different tempo in each city.
It feel like a book lives somewhere inside the expereince.
Find more from the author:
https://www.instagram.com/andrehardybooks/
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https://www.tiktok.com/@andrehardysr
About Andre Hardy:
Andre Hardy
Andre Hardy is a Charlotte–based crime novelist, former NFL running back, and a member of the International Thriller Writers. His work explores power, loyalty, and the hidden systems that decide who rises, who falls, and who gets erased.
A recipient of the prestigious Barbara Peters/Poisoned Pen Scholarship, Hardy brings a seasoned, hard-boiled perspective to the genre. Before he began writing fiction, he lived inside worlds where performance is public, pressure is constant, and failure is unforgiving. That experience now shapes the moral weight and psychological intensity of his storytelling. His novels move through the same terrain as classic American noir, where money, influence, and fear operate behind polished façades, and where every choice carries a cost.
Hardy’s debut novel, Tear the City Down, will be published in September 2026 by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It introduces Coltrane, a fixer trying to leave a life built on leverage and secrets—a world where clean exits are rare, truth is dangerous, and power never forgets.
He lives in Charlotte and is currently at work on the next Coltrane novel.
