Three FAQs

What do you want to ask your favorite authors?

Here’s what I get asked the most:

Q:  What did you do in the CIA?

A:  I’m not an engineer, but spent much of my 30-year career in technical collection and operations. I was involved in early trials of “machine translation” before there was Google translate, ran a counterintelligence surveillance platform, and led a joint NSA team to assess the value of signal intercepts. In the last half of my career I worked counterdrug targets. (Sorry for all the jargon, I have to use approved language.)

Q:  Have you been to Mexico?

A:  We lived in Mexico and Central America for a number of years. Especially in Mexico, I felt at home because of my Italian upbringing. So much was the same, from the emphasis on family and food to the seasons of the Catholic Church. I really dove into the culture.

Q:  Where do your ideas come from?

A:  The Detective Emilia Cruz series is inspired by current events. This edition of the Miami Herald features an article about a gang killing random taxi drivers in an extortion scheme. In NARCO NOIR a driver is murdered this way. Emilia goes undercover to find the killer. I kept the newspaper for years before finally using the story.

BTW, I started writing fiction to tell the story of Mexico’s class system. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots is huge yet mostly unchallenged.

The result was political thriller THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY. (FYI-If you’ve read the book, recall the Richie Rich incident in the bank. That really happened to me.)

Do you have a question? Reply to this email and I’ll answer it in the next newsletter!

#excerpt

COVERT ACTION by David Bruns and J.R. Olson

Clear your schedule! Coming at you fast and low is a top-notch espionage military thriller with an eye-opening lessons in how China projects power around the world today.

Don Riley is the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) at the CIA, in charge of all HUMINT operations. The DO is also the entity tasked with covert operations, which means that the role of the US government is not “apparent or acknowledged publicly.” Covert operations are only authorized by a Presidential Finding, which outlines scope and purpose. (true)

Don’s eye is on the former Soviet “stans” in Central Asia where China is completing a railroad as part of the huge infrastructure project known as the Belt and Road initiative.

The project is rocked by terror attacks, supposedly from a home-grown group. In Beijing, a military hero is tapped for a new assignment: Get the railroad finished on time or else.

Meanwhile, the new Russian president is shut out of economic exchanges with Central Asian leaders, one of Don’s officers is combing the region for a missing US contractor, and a charismatic doctor is becoming the face of a new Central Asia cultural unity movement.

Basically, he’s the Ghandi of the stans, boosted by a female journalist who sees a big story as well as a potential love interest.

Believing the doctor can be an effective counterweight to Chinese influence, a Presidential Finding establishes a covert operation to support him. The job falls to Don, who finds it almost too easy . . . 

There are many moving parts and a full score of characters. But you never get confused because Bruns and Olson have a knack of telling a character’s backstory in a very short amount of literary real estate and making it unforgettable, too. The prose is crisp, fast-moving and despite the complexity, the storyline is easy to follow.

COVERT ACTION is Book 5 in the Command and Control series by Bruns and Olson but reads like a standalone.

Highly recommended.

P.S. I’m starting to think that Bruns and Olson are a bellwether of sorts. Their fiction is a harbinger of real developments in the military/espionage/global conflict space. 

For example, they described smart drones on the battlefield before those infernal devices became news stories. Now they give us China’s influential construction projects in not-so-sexy parts of the world. Expect to see Belt and Road issues in the news starting . . . soon.

Thank you for spending your time with me.

Keep healthy, stay in touch, and happy reading!

 All the best, 

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