New Books Network – Episode Summary

Episode: Interview with Michael Kardos, Fun City Heist (Severn House, 2025)
Date: December 2, 2025
Host: G.P. Gottlieb
Guest: Michael Kardos

Main Theme and Purpose

This episode of the New Books Network, hosted by G.P. Gottlieb, delves into Michael Kardos’s new novel, Fun City Heist. The book follows Mo, a washed-up, forty-something drummer who’s lured into reuniting his old band for one last “gig”—the real motive being a high-stakes robbery orchestrated by the band’s dying lead singer. Together, Kardos and Gottlieb discuss the novel’s origins in Jersey Shore nostalgia, its colorful characters, the musician’s life, and what happens when faded dreams resurface. The conversation pulls back the curtain on the allure and disappointment of modest success, the particularities of place, and the enduring pull of music and friendship.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Jersey Shore Setting: Memory and Fiction

• Kardos grew up near the Jersey Shore and worked summers at a beachfront amusement park, experiences that inspired the book’s setting in the fictional “Quartz Beach, Ocean County.”
  • Kardos: “It was a very particular setting at a very particular time. ... For whatever reason, I don’t know why, this one just kind of stuck.” (02:23–03:03)
• The Shore is depicted more as a local, suburban town that happened to have a beach, not a tourist hotspot.
  • Kardos: “They didn’t really think of themselves much as a tourist place. It was very much sort of a local place that happened to have a beach.” (05:13)

Mo as the Protagonist: Musician, Drifter, and Dreamer

• Mo is an aging drummer who, after a modestly successful stint with his band “Sunshine Apocalypse,” ends up renting chairs on the beach for minimum wage.
  • Gottlieb: “What’s going on with him, aside from, as he says, poor quote, I found a way to sit on the beach and get paid for it?” (06:21)
• Kardos reflects on the liminality of being just-successful-enough, and how it can leave a person stuck between identities and ambitions.
  • Kardos: “He achieved just enough success to really be kind of stuck. … I always wondered, what happened … if you had some, you know, by any measure, some success, okay, but now … what do you do with the rest of your life?” (06:48–09:40)

The Band Life: Fact and Fiction

• Kardos draws upon personal experience, describing nights playing in empty clubs and reflecting on how fleeting and financially insecure modest musical success can be.
  • Kardos: “We played mostly in the 90s… you end up playing for the soundman and the bartenders who aren’t even paying attention..." (08:04)
• The tension between possible stardom and ordinary life runs through the novel and its band of characters.

Mo's Musicality & Perfect Pitch

• Mo possesses perfect pitch, a trait rare in drummers, which colors the way he perceives his environment—finding music everywhere.
  • Gottlieb: “A drummer with perfect pitch is like a blue whale who can count cards.” (11:43)
  • Kardos: “Perfect pitch is a strange thing ... I have perfect pitch ... It varies, but I think Mo has it pretty good.” (12:06)
• Discussion about the quirks and challenges of perfect pitch, including how certain sounds can be a curse, not a blessing.
  • Gottlieb: “You can’t sit through a mediocre performance where the players are slightly off pitch.” (12:49)

The Heist Plot & Band Reunion

• The inciting event: Johnny Clay, Mo’s frontman and childhood friend, returns asking the band to help him pull off a robbery. The pretense: Johnny is dying and needs treatment money.
  • Kardos: “Mo and Johnny are… like brothers ... they know how to manipulate each other ... Johnny’s the front man ... he knows how to run the show.” (13:20)
• The reunion triggers both nostalgia and new conflicts, but musically, “it comes back,” even after decades apart.
  • Kardos: “If I were to get back together now with guys I played with 25 years ago... it wouldn’t take more than a couple practices to sound pretty okay.” (18:14)

Mo’s Daughter, Janice: Parenthood and Change

• Janice, the daughter Mo hardly knows, unexpectedly enters his life, pushing him toward responsibility he has long avoided.
  • Kardos: “For the first time in his life, he has this, this girl, his daughter, who he actually has to get to know as a person and take on some kind of a parental role which he is unfit for and, but has increasing interest in...” (14:29)

Character Flaws and Growth

• Mo begins the novel as self-centered and passive, but undergoes growth, evolving from “schlub to mensch.”
  • Kardos: “He's not an evil guy. He's not a mean guy. I think he's good-hearted ... In a way, Mo ... is, at least in the first chunk of the novel, not especially reflective.” (15:43)

Moral Questions Behind the Heist

• Discussion about why Mo agrees to participate in this morally questionable venture.
  • Kardos: “He hems and haws a little at first. … Johnny gives him a pretty compelling reason ... it's a way to get the band back together and that’s worth something.” (17:22)

The Role of Music in Kardos’s Writing

• Musical themes and musician characters recur in Kardos’s fiction. Even in non-musical books, music seeps in.
  • Kardos: “It’s helpful at least to have something I know about, you know, and something I don’t have to go reaching for.” (20:08)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On his setting:
  • “It’s like the Jersey Shore in my brain...” — Michael Kardos (03:53)
• On success and stasis:
  • “He achieved just enough success to really be kind of stuck.” — Michael Kardos (06:48)
• On musical quirks:
  • “A drummer with perfect pitch is like a blue whale who can count cards.” — G.P. Gottlieb (11:43)
• On perfect pitch as curse:
  • “You can’t sit through a mediocre performance where the players are slightly off pitch.” — G.P. Gottlieb (12:49)
• On friendship:
  • “They know what gets under each other’s skin. They know how to manipulate each other.” — Michael Kardos (13:20)
• On character change:
  • “If we were to chart his path over the course of the book, I think we can go from schlub to mensch.” — Michael Kardos (15:43)

Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:20–02:09 | Introduction and book premise | | 02:09–05:29 | Setting inspiration: Jersey Shore and “Quartz Beach” | | 06:21–07:37 | Protagonist Mo’s circumstance and inner story | | 07:37–09:52 | The band’s faded glory; Kardos’s real experiences | | 11:33–12:49 | Mo’s perfect pitch; funny musicality observations | | 13:02–14:20 | Johnny Clay, the “frontman” and Mo’s relationship | | 14:20–15:26 | Janice, Mo’s daughter and the surprise parental role | | 15:26–16:50 | Mo’s egocentrism, character analysis, and growth | | 17:22–18:07 | Moral stakes: why Mo agrees to the heist | | 18:07–19:00 | The band reunion—plausibility and musical memory | | 19:20–21:14 | Kardos’s future projects and music in his fiction |

Closing Thoughts

The episode paints Fun City Heist as a wise, witty heist novel—with a heart—rooted in the culture and landscapes of coastal New Jersey, and in the relatable dilemmas of faded dreams, second chances, and the unromantic reality of aging. Kardos brings warmth, dry humor, and genuine affection to his characters and their hazards, making this interview an engaging, insightful listen, especially for anyone who’s ever loved a song, a seedy club, or a wild idea.