Legacy of a Silent Man follows a professional assassin who, after twenty years, is forced into retirement and has to learn how to live an ordinary life, but his past isn’t ready for him to retire just yet. What first inspired the idea of the Silent Man program?

I was curious about the moral ambiguity of an assassin. It’s a career choice wholly at odds with normal society. Can someone who’s spent their entire life robbing others of their lives be reclaimed? Perhaps there’s no hope for mercenaries who’ll kill anyone, for any reason, in exchange for money. But for the character in this book, who was an employee of the Federal government, performing sanctioned kills, it was a job that needed doing. Maybe a man like that can put his past behind him, even though it would be a journey; he’d struggle and be tempted to fall back on his training and his old, violent ways. I could picture the trouble he’d have, and I wanted to see what that journey would look like.

One of the novel’s central ideas is that people can build a new identity after leaving behind the lives they once knew. Why did that theme appeal to you?

Being forced to retire at the relatively young age of 46, Kamden Clark was forcibly thrown into a new life he wasn’t prepared for. Despite the uncertainty, he didn’t shy away from the challenge. He purchased a house in the suburbs, bought his dream car, and did his best to acclimate. His social interactions are clumsy. His problem-solving skills lean aggressive. He has a lot of learning to do. It’s the difficult nature of the transformation that appealed to me.

The novel includes extensive details about weapons, tactics, technology, and training. How much research went into those elements?

More than any other book I’ve written, I had to frequently pause to research technical aspects or weapon details. Kamden Clark was a professional assassin, and it wouldn’t do to have him using the wrong equipment. I generally do research in advance and take notes. But, occasionally, I’ll be right in the middle of a chapter and realize I’m not sure what type of gun I’d need to accomplish a certain task. So I had to stop writing and go looking.

Do you envision Kamden’s story continuing in future books?

Absolutely. In fact, one of the not-fully resolved elements in the book relates to the assassin who was trying to kill Kamden. The interplay between the Chameleon and Kamden was fun to write, and it suggests their story isn’t over. I’m thinking about teaming them up in the next book. Two of the most dangerous assassins in the world working together? That would be a crazy amount of firepower to throw at a problem. I’d like to see what would become of that deadly partnership.

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