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The Possibilities Are Endless
Solitaire follows a journalist and a ghostlike operator as they dive headfirst into the murder investigation of the deputy mayor and uncover layers of city corruption. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Having served as a New York City Police Officer for twenty years, and later as a New York City mayoral candidate in 2020, I’ve had a unique view from both sides of the system: the complex, often polarizing world of law enforcement in the nation’s largest city, and the backroom deals and money-driven machinery of big-city politics. In Solitaire, those two worlds collide, as they often do in real life. Our struggling cities are searching for someone who can rise above the corruption and chaos, and that’s where Solitaire comes in.
How close do you think fiction like this comes to real-world possibilities?
In the rapidly expanding world of AI, I think the possibilities are endless—and not all of them are good. The idea of a system that can not only predict outcomes, but potentially shape or control them, no longer feels far-fetched. That possibility was one of the driving forces behind Solitaire.
The story moves at a fast, cinematic pace—how do you maintain momentum without losing depth?
For me, every chapter has to move the story forward. Whether it’s an action sequence or a quiet conversation between two characters, the reader has to understand what is driving the people on the page. If the characters’ motivations stay clear, the momentum stays strong because the reader remains invested in what happens next.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on the follow-up to Solitaire. Sloane’s story is far from over, and Book Two raises the stakes significantly. I’m targeting a 2027 release, and I think readers will be very excited about where the story goes next.
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A private surveillance empire.
A ghost in the darkness.
When a Times Square shooting leaves a deputy mayor dead, the FBI investigation leads to KATSAI- an AI intelligence network that enhances public safety while also deciding outcomes, prosecutions and elections.
KATSAI decides who rises, and who disappears.
Once an investigative journalist becomes a target, Agents Devi and West are cut off by both New York City and Washington, DC political machines. Their only ally is a man who doesn’t exist- Solitaire, a covert operative
hunted across the globe with a personal stake in burning KATSAI to the ground.
If Solitaire fails and KATSAI survives, ballots are just theatre.
The flash drive decides.
Getting the Twist Right
Terminus centers around an aging intelligence officer tasked with impersonating another agent in order to trace a rogue numbers station. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
John Post, my protagonist, originally appeared in a short story I wrote for the Promptly Written Podcast. He was never meant to appear again, but he popped up in a couple more short stories despite this, and then I eventually had the compulsion to give him the full-length treatment. I wanted to do something pulpy, a story with some of the Ian Fleming tropes, but with John Le Carre’s cynicism. Something vintage like those old Signet paperbacks (as evoked by the Terminus cover art) that someone might read on a weekend excursion. I needed a plot, of course. I don’t recall why I chose to incorporate numbers stations, other than they intrigued me. But during WWII, Fleming was known for daring, unorthodox intelligence operations that he and his cohorts came up with, and so I brought him into chapter two of the story with an undercover cameo as “James Secretan” (an early, unused character name before Fleming landed on James Bond). Secretan’s risky plan to get Post to impersonate another agent whose likeness he shares seemed like just the sort of thing Fleming would’ve come up with. The Soviet parapsychology programs were real things at the time, and I thought their inclusion would add some really nice intrigue.
What is the most challenging aspect of writing a thriller? The most rewarding?
The most challenging aspect might be the research involved. Thrillers often hinge on technical knowledge of a particular craft or profession. For Terminus, I had to do a lot of reading about the Cold War in the 60’s, West Berlin, the early days of the CIA, etc. The time period and locations of the book are times and places I didn’t experience, and so I had to rely on others’ accounts. Fortunately, there is a lot of material documenting this era of history. I even went so far as to get menu items right, as taken from photographs of an old Cafe Schloss Marquardt menu, for example. There’s very little that I invented, aside from the plot, of course. And I mean very little. I endeavoured to accurately replicate the West Berlin clubs, architecture, and OSS/CIA details to the best of my ability. Any inaccuracies I made were not for lack of effort/intent.
The most rewarding aspect of a thriller is getting the twist right. Every thriller (at least conventional thrillers) needs to have a twist of some kind, and I think (hope!) I got it right with Terminus.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Part of John Post’s problems stem from the fact that he’s the old guard. I very much feel I’m the old guard in my personal life, especially at work. I kind of riffed on the feeling of pending obsolescence that one gets despite having been successful in the past, despite having a good track record. At some point, things begin to change quicker than you can adapt to them, and you wonder whether you’ve still got what it takes. You also tend to get more jaded the older you get, and I think Post is less than enchanted with the CIA and his role with them. Add to all of that Post’s fear of loss, particularly that of relational loss, and you’ve got an uneasy mix of negative emotion. But the main theme of the novel is one of trust. “Trust is a luxury” is a phrase that gets bandied about in the narrative, and it comes to represent the main idea of the novel. Even with what constitutes his strongest allies, Post wonders whether he isn’t ultimately expendable to them–and if not expendable, then at least his demise is worth risking.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I recently started writing the fourth book in my Reeve series, titled The Reeve, the Veil, and the Rifle. I refer to it as a Gothic Western series, though I suppose it might be billed as Weird West. Essentially, it’s a Low Fantasy genre mashup of Batman, a Western, and Alternate History with some philosophical underpinnings. There will be five books when it’s all said and done.
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Solitaire
Solitaire is a political thriller with a strong espionage pulse, and it opens by dropping us straight into a public shooting in Times Square that turns a mayoral campaign into a conspiracy story about surveillance, synthetic identities, and power hiding behind official systems. At the center are Grace Delgado, a relentless New York journalist, and Michael Sloane, a ghostlike operator tied to the Ace of Spades and a trail of old secrets, as they circle the murder of Deputy Mayor Robert Caldwell and the shadow network called KATSAI. What starts as a city corruption story grows into something broader and darker, with fake donors, weaponized tech, and a private apparatus trying to bend politics into obedience.
I really enjoyed the book’s momentum. Author Bill Pepitone writes like someone who knows how institutions sound from the inside, and that gives the novel a kind of hard floor under its feet. The scenes in City Hall, the FBI office, and the street-level New York moments have a lived-in feel that kept me leaning forward. I also liked that the book doesn’t pretend its people are clean heroes. Grace is stubborn, emotional, and smart in a way that gets her into trouble. Sloane is built like myth, but the book keeps trying to press bruises under the myth, especially in the quieter moments when his control slips. The dialogue can sometimes feel like everyone has a comeback in the chamber, but even then, the energy carries it.
I found the author’s choices around KATSAI and the fake donor machinery especially interesting because the book isn’t just chasing thrills for their own sake. It’s clearly interested in what happens when surveillance stops being a tool and starts becoming a nervous system for power. That idea lands. The novel’s best move, for me, is that it keeps tying giant systems back to private fear: Caldwell hiding a drive behind a picture frame, Shaw collapsing under pressure, Grace realizing too late that information itself can act like a flare in the dark. There is a pulp sheen to some of it, sure, and Sloane sometimes feels almost too competent, but that is also part of the book’s genre DNA. This is an espionage thriller fiction that wants to be sleek, tense, and a little larger than life, while still keeping one foot in recognizable political rot.
I came away feeling that Solitaire knows exactly what shelf it wants to sit on. It’s the kind of book I would recommend to readers who like conspiracy-driven thrillers, cat-and-mouse espionage, and stories where modern tech and old-fashioned power games collide in the same room. If you enjoy fast, cinematic fiction with a political edge, a wounded central duo, and a hero who moves through the world like a rumor with a passport, this will be very much your thing.
Pages: 259 | ISBN : 9781105802713
The Trident Code
Miguel R. Balfour’s The Trident Code is a military conspiracy thriller (with a definite dark, myth-tinged edge) that kicks off the SEAL Cypher Series. It follows John Klade, a former SEAL turned private investigator, whose routine surveillance work in Los Angeles gets interrupted by a strange trident-and-serpent symbol that keeps showing up like a fingerprint you cannot wash off. When a former teammate is murdered and the same mark appears at the scene, Klade is pulled into a widening hunt that stretches from the streets to old operations, coded messages, and finally toward a looming offshore threat tied to something called “Leviathan.”
The opening chapters have that noir-ish, boots-on-asphalt feel, with details that land in a very physical way, like the city is sticky on your skin and every alley has a memory. Klade reads as competent without being invincible, and I liked that he’s not written as a walking slogan. He’s wary, tired, methodical. The story also knows how to escalate without rushing: a chalk mark becomes a pattern, the pattern becomes a warning, then suddenly it is personal in the worst possible way.
Balfour also makes an interesting author choice by blending modern special-ops paranoia with something older and stranger. Once Annabelle Johansson enters the story and the symbol starts pointing to maritime myths and long-buried operations, the book widens from “who’s stalking the team?” to “what did they wake up?” I was going back and forth on that shift, in a good way. Part of me wanted the clean logic of a pure spy thriller. Another part of me enjoyed the unease, because it fits the book’s central idea: some secrets are not just classified, they feel hungry. And when the plot pushes out onto the water and toward the Brotherhood’s ship, the Leviathan, the tension turns claustrophobic in a new setting. Steel decks, ritual vibes, and the sense that the ocean itself is keeping score.
By the end, I felt like I’d read the opening movement of a larger series story rather than a neatly tied bow, and I mean that as a heads-up more than a complaint. The last stretch leans into momentum and dread, and the closing image of heading into open water, with hope showing up like a fragile, stubborn light, really worked for me. I’d recommend The Trident Code most to readers who like fast, cinematic thrillers with military DNA, team history, and a conspiracy that turns almost mythic at the edges. If you’re happiest when a book feels like a cross between a covert-ops chase and a shadowy cult mystery, this one is written for you.
Pages: 386 | ASIN : B0G1L3JDYN
Cuban Sliders
Cuban Sliders is a spy-fi mystery that drops Max Calder back into the shadows of 1951, where a Soviet scientist dies in Havana in a way that screams “impossible,” and the trail points to a rum distillery in Cárdenas hiding Project Oracle V4, a new incarnation of the Mirror tech everyone thought had been stamped out. Max and Alicia Rayes move through Havana and the Grenadines chasing leads, rescuing people the Soviets cannot afford to lose, and trying to get close enough to the machine to kill it without letting it rewrite the rules of the world. Meanwhile, Angleton and Lucy Howard circle the edges of the operation with their own motives, and the book keeps tightening one big question: what happens when power stops arguing and starts narrowing your ability to choose?
What I liked right away is the voice. It’s first-person noir without feeling like a costume, and Bentley is good at giving you the sensory hooks that make the danger feel physical, not abstract. Kingstown’s waterfront “smelled of fish, rum, and diesel,” Basil’s bar hums with calypso and cigarette smoke, and those details do real work because they keep pulling the story back down to street level. The chapter titles have that pulpy snap, too, like the book wants you to keep turning pages even when the ideas get heavy. Sometimes the machinery and briefings threaten to crowd the room, but the writing usually finds its way back to people and place before it goes stale.
The author’s big swing is making the Mirror less about flashy time travel and more about the slow, creepy management of uncertainty. The concept of “Decision Locking” is unsettling because it isn’t mind control in the cartoon sense. It’s closer to a hallway where all the doors quietly vanish except one. That idea lands best when it brushes up against history, like the suggestion that what’s really stolen is dissent, not just secrets or even sovereignty. There are also a few scenes that stick with me because they show the theme instead of explaining it, like Mustique feeling calm and almost immune to the Mirror’s pulse, right up until it “flicker[s]” and the surf hits the sand twice. And by the end, the book makes a choice I respected: it doesn’t pretend everything is cleanly solved.
I’d recommend Cuban Sliders most to readers who like Cold War espionage with a science-fiction twist, especially if you enjoy a film-noir mood and you’re up for a thriller that wants to leave you a little uneasy, not just entertained. If you like spy fiction that asks moral questions while still delivering infiltration, double motives, and that smoky feeling of history sliding into place, this one will hit.
Pages: 411 | ASIN : B0GJQHPCB7
The Organization: Operative Nova
The Organization: Operative Nova is a spy thriller told in three mission arcs, following Nova Dunn as she graduates from training into fieldwork for a shadow agency that audits and intervenes where official channels cannot. Her first assignment is a dinner sting on a high-level government insider, Phillip Gregory Thomas, where she is ordered to assess any personal connection before deciding whether to kill him. That night becomes a test of discipline, because Thomas is tied to the operation that cost Nova her father, and Nova’s choice to follow protocol sets bigger pieces in motion. From there, the book widens into a human trafficking investigation under an FBI cover, and later a tightening endgame involving a Russian-linked network, a brutal adversary named Bull, a kidnapping that turns personal, and a late emotional reveal that reframes what Nova thought she’d already lost.
What I liked right away is how the author, Daniel C. Davis, leans into the nuts-and-bolts rhythm of tradecraft without making it feel like homework. The “name, ID, code” cadence has a steadying effect, like a metronome that keeps the story taut even when Nova’s emotions are trying to sprint ahead of her training. And when the book wants to slow down, it earns the pause with sensory clarity. A restaurant scene doesn’t just exist as a backdrop, it smells like seared meat and polished wood, and you can almost hear the clink of glass as Nova watches a man talk himself into deeper and deeper trouble. I also appreciated the mission structure. It makes the pacing clean, but it still leaves room for character beats that land because they come after pressure, not before it.
The ideas underneath the action are what stuck with me after I closed it. This is a book about competence, yes, but it’s also about restraint. Nova’s first mission is basically a moral stress test dressed up as an operational one, and the story keeps returning to that question: what does it cost to follow orders when your anger has a point. The trafficking arc gets especially heavy, and I’m glad the book treats it as ugly and urgent rather than as a sleek plot device. There’s a moment where the timeline tightens around a “shipment,” and the writing makes the risk feel immediate in a simple, stomach-dropping way. Then the later chapters pivot into something more intimate and raw, with Nova learning truths that don’t come with clean relief. The “Dear Jon” section, in particular, reads like the story finally letting Nova stop performing toughness for two minutes, and it hit me harder than some of the violence did.
Operative Nova sits firmly in the modern espionage thriller lane, closer in feel to The Bourne Identity than to slower, quieter spy fiction, but with a more emotional throughline than you might expect from a mission-of-the-week setup. If you enjoy fast, procedural scenes, morally messy assignments, and a lead who is both highly capable and visibly haunted, you’ll likely tear through it. I’d recommend it most to readers who want their spy thrillers sharp and propulsive, but who also appreciate when the story pauses long enough to let consequences bruise.
Pages: 231 | ASIN : B0GKQDFZ7N
Avenue for an Assassin
Avenue for an Assassin is a political thriller set in the tense years after World War II. It follows Jonas Shaw, an ex-detective and former protector of Winston Churchill, as he is pulled into a shadowy plot that begins with a mysterious shooting on a rural French road. From that moment, the story widens into a web of money couriers, Soviet operatives, Resistance veterans, and a looming operation that threatens to destabilize nations. The book blends espionage, murder, and international maneuvering, and it moves with all the confidence of a classic suspense novel.
Author Steve Haberman writes with a steady hand. His pacing is unhurried in a way that works well because the world he builds is thick with history and personal ghosts. Jonas, especially, carries that weight. I found myself liking him for his rough honesty and the way he constantly wrestles with past mistakes. Sometimes the plot dips into long explanations, but I didn’t mind because it is intriguing and immersive from the first few chapters.
What struck me most was the author’s choice to weave major historical power players into a thriller that still feels intimate. The Soviet angle, the old Resistance networks, the sense that Europe is still picking up its broken pieces, these textures give the book more depth than I first expected. Natasha, the operative driven by the shadow of her father, is unsettling and fascinating all at once. Haberman doesn’t romanticize espionage; he shows it as shabby apartments, bad meals, coded newspaper ads, and people who are just trying to survive the next move on a dangerous chessboard. Sometimes the scenes feel almost cinematic; other times they feel like the quiet hum of a city at midnight, when the wrong knock on the door can derail everything.
By the end, I felt Avenue for an Assassin more than delivered everything a good thriller should: tension, atmosphere, flawed people trying their best, and a mystery that slowly sharpens into something frighteningly believable. If you enjoy historical thrillers, Cold War setups, or stories where everyday streets hide dangerous secrets, this one will be right up your alley. It’s a great pick for readers who like their suspense grounded and their characters complicated, and who don’t mind taking the long way around as the story unfolds.
Pages: 221 | ASIN : B0GF9C3454
Stealing Stealth
Stealing Stealth is a Cold War spy thriller about a master thief and a burned-but-still-burning CIA case officer who get pulled into a fight over the future of stealth technology. We meet Gabrielle Hyde in 1975 Toronto, dropping into a dusty old government office from a ventilation shaft to steal classified files while half the law-enforcement world hunts her. At the same time, John Olson, a young CIA case officer with something to prove, becomes obsessed with catching her and then with stopping a legendary Soviet operator, Sasha Morozov, from getting his hands on America’s experimental stealth aircraft research, the kind of “perfect first-strike weapon” that could tip the whole Cold War. Their paths cross, collide, and eventually twist together as they race from rooftops and embassies to African markets and the secretive Skunk Works facility, trying to plug leaks, uncover a mole, and keep a fragile nuclear treaty from falling apart.
Reading it, I felt like I was sitting in a dark theater watching one of those big, old-school spy movies. The writing leans into atmosphere: the musty FBI outpost, the humid chaos of Mogadishu’s markets, the cold wind high over Toronto when Olson literally throws himself between rooftops after Hyde. Scenes play out in clean, visual language that made it easy for me to track the action without getting lost in technical detail. I liked how the book switches perspectives between Gabrielle, Olson, and even Morozov, so I never felt like I was stuck on just one side of the board. The pacing feels very much like a modern spy thriller: bursts of intense action, then quieter conversations where people argue about loyalty, politics, and what it costs to do this kind of work. There are moments where the briefing-room talk about treaties and stealth programs slows things down a bit, but most of the time it adds weight instead of drag, reminding me this is not just about a cool gadget in a metal case, it is about who gets to shape the world.
What stuck with me most were the choices the characters are forced to make. Olson is haunted by a failed operation in Somalia and the death of his partner; that guilt colors everything he does after, especially when he is ordered to stand down and decides to ignore it. Gabrielle is fun to watch because she is both playful and ruthless, a thief who talks about capability as a kind of moral authority and treats sexism in the agencies as another lock to pick. The book lets her be brilliant without sanding off her sharp edges, and I appreciated that. Morozov could have been a cartoon villain, but instead, we see his grief for his granddaughter and the way he is forced back into being “the Demon” when she is taken and ransomed for the stealth data. It does not excuse what he does, but it makes him more human and more unsettling. I also liked the thread about institutions versus individuals: the CIA, FBI, and political leadership spend as much energy protecting careers and narratives as they do protecting the country, and Olson and Hyde are constantly working around their own side as much as they are fighting the enemy.
Stealing Stealth is a solid, character-driven spy thriller with a techno edge, the kind of book you pick up for the rooftop chases and Cold War tension and stay for the messy loyalties and bruised hearts underneath. If you like stories in the vein of Cold War espionage, enjoy the mix of spies, thieves, and experimental weapons, and you appreciate a capable female lead who is always three moves ahead, this book will likely hit the spot for you.
Pages: 474 | ASIN : B0FSL2KVB8
