Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? A theme that keeps coming up in my books lately is the conflict between honor and loyalty. My epic Duty, Honor, Country: A Novel of West Point & The Civil War really touched on that, focusing on the way West Pointers fought on both sides in the Civil War. But in Chasing the Lost I focus on it at a personal level. Would you rather have an honorable friend or a loyal one? When can either turn into a liability?
How much of the book is realistic? More than people might realize. My background in Special Forces showed me a side of the world most people don’t experience. Often we cloak the seriousness in humor, such as the movie RED, but there has been a war going on in the world of covert operations ever since World War II.
Have you included a lot of your life experiences, even friends, in the plot? Yes. I took what I knew of covert operations as a former Green Beret and used that. I change some thing to protect classified information, but much of the action and all of the gear is real.
How important do you think villains are in a story? In this book it’s critical, but I can’t say much, because what appears to be isn’t.
Do you have to travel much concerning your book(s)? I tend to set books in places I’ve already been or lived in. I lived on Hilton Head Island for four years, so setting Chasing the Lost in the low country was easy. Chasing the Ghost is set in Boulder, CO and I lived there for four years also.
Can we expect any more books from you in the future? Definitely. Nightstalkers 2: The Book of Truths is coming out on 30 July. It’s a very wicked story dealing with nuclear weapons and how dangerous they are. I put a lot of facts in the book, such as the fact we’ve officially “lost” 11 nuclear weapons. And Jimmy Carter sent out the launch codes with his laundry one time. And that the Air Force once set the launch code to 00000000 in order to bypass those pansies in the White House.
Are you reading any interesting books at the moment? I just finished Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life and my head almost exploded. I’ve begun re-reading it because it’s worth a re-read.
What are some of the best tools available today for writers, especially those just starting out? There’s so much information out there now on the Internet. It’s certainly different than when I started out. The big thing is to understand everyone’s situation is different, thus there is no one “right” solution or path. Everyone is in a different situation.
NY Times Bestselling Author, former Green Beret and West Point Graduate, Bob Mayer.
“A pulsing technothriller. A nailbiter in the best tradition of adventure fiction.” Publishers Weekly ref Bob Mayer
Horace Chase arrives on Hilton Head Island to pay his last respects at the Intracoastal Waterway where his late mother’s ashes were spread and to inspect the home his mother left him in her will. He’s been recently forced into retirement, his divorce is officially final, and now he’s standing in the middle of the front yard of his ‘new’ house where a tree has crashed right through the center of it.
What could possibly go wrong?
Within six hours of arriving on Hilton Head, Chase is exchanging gunfire with men who’ve kidnapped a young boy and tried to grab the boy’s mother, Sarah Briggs. Soon he’s waist deep in an extortion plot to funnel a hundred million dollars of Superbowl on-line gambling money into an offshore bank account or else the boy dies.
Dave Riley has long retired from the military and living peacefully on sleepy Dafuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. Sort of. Actually he’s bored, feeling old, and just a bit cranky running his deceased uncle’s small-time bookie operation.
Horace Chase, meet Dave Riley. Riley-Chase.
Chase and Riley assemble a team of misfits and eccentrics as they take on the powerful Russian mob in the lawless tidal lands of the Low Country to get the boy back.
Meet Erin: Chase’s long-ago summer fling, now a veterinarian and not interested in men any more, at least that way. But her suturing skills and her knowledge of the island bring assets the team needs. Especially after Chase’s first visit with the Russian requires a bit of the former.
Meet Gator: an ex-Ranger, iron-pumping, fire-breathing hulk of a redneck, with a soft spot in his heart for Erin, and steroids burning in his muscles to hurt people. As long as Riley and Chase point him in the right direction, the rest of the populace should be all right.
Meet Kono: a Gullah, descendant of the free slaves who fled to the barrier islands in the 19th century and developed their own culture. He nurses his own pain and secrets, but heeds Chase’s call to renew their childhood friendship. Especially when he learns the target is the Russians.
It adds up to a fiery confrontation to rescue the young boy, and settle some old scores.
But Riley and Chase need to remember a basic tenet from their days in covert operations: Nothing is ever as it appears.
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Genre – Thriller
Rating – PG
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Website http://www.bobmayer.org/
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