The high cost of real-life espionage (not what you might think)
Howdy! Lars here - friendly neighborhood spy thriller author, at your service.
Many of my Sam Jameson thrillers feature CIA agents behaving badly. This is a little bit unfair, because most CIA agents play by the rules and serve their country with a great deal of dedication.
But not all of them do. And it doesn't take but a few rogue actors to make a giant mess of things.
And sometimes, serving your nation with dedication and honor...
Means doing some pretty terrible things.
I have an acquaintance whom we'll call Mark.
He spent 20 years as a CIA case officer. His job was to insinuate himself into communities (usually in trouble spots around the globe) and gain the trust of people who belonged to organizations and governments that we considered hostile to the US.
Mark's job was then to lie, cheat, steal, bribe, entrap, and otherwise coerce these people into betraying their communities, families, religions, and causes.
In the process, many of these people - they're called "joes" or "assets" or "moles" or "shoes" or "patsies" or any of a dozen other monikers - were completely alienated from their families and societies. They led tortured lives, often lying to everyone they loved and cared for.
Mark made them many promises that he couldn't keep and many more that he never intended to keep. A number of Mark's assets were tortured or killed.
All of the deception and manipulation and death took its toll on Mark.
He did awful things to people under the auspices of what he truly felt was a greater good, but two decades of this kind of life left him with an enormous amount of guilt and self-loathing. It hollowed him out, left his relationships in tatters, and also left him with the supremely antisocial habit of manipulating everyone in his life.
I experienced this firsthand as we briefly explored a joint business venture together. It was for a very worthy cause and I think it would have been extremely rewarding, but I walked away for a very simple reason: I didn't want to be another one of Mark's joes, left in the dust when my acquaintance was no longer convenient for him.
Anyway, this isn't an indictment of Mark's character. And even if it were, I certainly wouldn't have much standing to judge anyone else. After all, I used to drop bombs on people in the service of what I believed at the time was a greater good.
If that isn't antisocial, I don't know what the hell is.
I told you about my experience with Mark to give you an insider's look into what makes me tick as an author. It's been my experience that in many ways, the good guys are often worse than the bad guys.
And despite the way we form cardboard caricatures of the "bad guys" in our minds, they are human beings who have hopes and dreams and families and a point of view worth understanding.
Maybe we won't agree with the other side, but I think it's always worthwhile to at least try to understand it.
More often than not, the "bad guys" are pursuing values that we hold dear ourselves -- family, faith, patriotism, freedom, and self-determination to name a few. Are we courageous enough to admit the possibility that "Good" and "Evil" might merely be matters of perspective?
I try to tell stories that paint a realistic picture of how hard it is to know what's good and right and noble in a complicated world. Sure, I write fiction with the primary goal of entertaining you, but I also aspire to communicate something real: the simple idea that nobody has yet (verifiably) cornered the market on truth, and nobody has all the answers.
Man, I just got deep on you, didn't I? It's all right - I feel like we can trust each other. :)
Anyway... that's all for now.
If you're approaching the end of the book you're reading right now, we have a couple of specials on tap for you over at our bookstore. Hope you enjoy them!
All my best,
Lars
"Have you lost your mind?"
That's what my wife said when I told her about these specials.
She's not even a little bit happy -- "Our daughter starts COLLEGE soon, or have you forgotten?" -- but I think you'll really like the deals we've put together for you.
Some people like having this kind of nonsense delivered to their inbox on the regular. I don't know why. But I'd be happy to add you to the list if you're so inclined. (You'll get early-bird specials on new releases and occasional deals and discounts, too).
Sam Jameson Books 1 & 2
Special double-volume edition containing Books 1 and 2 in the Sam Jameson series. This is the story that kicked everything off for me, and it still blows my mind that over a million people have read (and hopefully enjoyed) the story. It's Sam in her prime, and I hope you love her as much as I do :).
Quinn Book 1
Man, I loved writing this book. I think that probably shows through when you read it, too. I think I can usually tell by the way a sentence reads if an author is wearing a smile as they write it. A reader named James said that MONARCH is "maybe the best thriller I've ever read." I hope you enjoy it, too.
Sam Jameson Book 3
This is my least favorite of my books. It has... issues. But I've had many readers tell me it's their favorite in the whole catalog (there's no accounting for taste, evidently). Improbably, it actually became a #1 bestseller. If you really want to read it, it's available in every format except audio.
Sam Jameson Books 4 & 5
"The end of the world began in New Jersey," is how Meltdown starts. Sorry if you're from that state, but I think we can all agree that it's an appropriate place for the end to begin. I had a ton of fun playing around with this topic, and I really enjoyed getting Sam and Brock out of the trouble I stuck them in. I think you'll like this double-volume special edition.
Peter Kittredge Book 1
This one ended up as one of those noir psychological thrillers that have become all the rage. I wasn't smart enough to have planned it that way. I actually didn't set out to write a noir psychological thriller. It just seemed like I followed Peter Kittredge to someplace dark, cynical, and entertaining as hell. I hope you love it!
Sam Jameson Book 6
I wrote Fallout right after Descent, during a time when I had a long commute to the cement box that held my cubicle. I dictated a good portion of the manuscript into my laptop, which sat open on the passenger seat... except during hard braking, which led to my requiring a new laptop. FALLOUT tackles some thorny questions in what people say is a very interesting story. Let's hope they're right.
Sam Jameson Book 7
This story has a gigantic twist at the end, and it shapes a good bit of the rest of the series so far. I've lost count of how many emails I've received since I published BLOWBACK from people asking when and how I'm going to resolve it. There's also a surprise appearance made by an old favorite, and you won't believe how different he is now.
Sam Jameson Book 8
BURN is the first story I wrote in Sam's voice, and I absolutely loved the way it seemed to come alive from this new vantage. There's another mega-twist in this one that has left a lot of jaws in the fly-catching position. I can't tell you any more, because I don't want to spoil the surprise!
Sam Jameson Book 9
This story picks up just two weeks after the end of BURN, and Sam is still a long way away from okay. People say it's an intense ride, and a handful of folks wrote to me within hours of the book's release to tell me they finished it in one sitting, loved it, and when the hell is the next one coming out? I hope you enjoy it just as much.
Sam Jameson Book 10
This book solves one of the biggest riddles in the entire series. It provides the answer to the question I've been asked hundreds of times, which is.... something that I can't even tell you, because if you're reading this description before you read the earlier books, it might ruin the surprise. Suffice it to say that if you're a Sam Jameson series fan, this is one you won't want to skip.
