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Facing Threats
Source Code follows a CIA counterterrorism director who finds evidence that contradicts the official account surrounding a downed American helicopter in Afghanistan and starts following the trail of secrets. What interests you most about the way small pieces of evidence can influence major intelligence investigations?
Modern tradecraft of the CIA and NSA surpasses my imagination. When the agencies are allied with Five Eyes and Mossad, these cyber sleuths can find a needle in a haystack. Tracing the origin of the unexploded Stinger missile posed a similar challenge, following a convoluted trail of clues. Some unexpected outcomes support an interesting story.
As the seventh installment in your series, how does Source Code build on the larger themes and experiences established in the earlier books?
All of my thriller novels have a common theme: facing threats. Each novel presents a different adversity, involving many of the same characters. They take you to places you’ve never been to manage the challenge. Hopefully, the reader will find themselves rooting for the characters in my novels. They develop with age, as do my storytelling skills. Historical background provides plenty of ideas to develop the larger theme. Real life is stranger than fiction. You can’t make this stuff up.
How does the novel explore the tension between protecting national security and ensuring that government agencies remain accountable for their actions?
Protecting national security should have guardrails. However, rogue characters will pursue nefarious outcomes as depicted in Source Code. Unfortunately, accountability is a non sequitur.
How does your approach to writing political and military thrillers compare with authors such as Tom Clancy, particularly in the use of technical detail and institutional realism?
I’d be honored to be compared to Tom Clancy, as one review suggested. Not anyone I know, but I appreciated the comment. But, to be honest, I’ve copied Clancy’s attention to technical details, as have other successful writers. Tom Clancy was in his own league. Currently, his style has inspired some of the outstanding authors in the thriller genre. Brad Thor, Mark Greaney, and Jack Carr come to mind.
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Three thousand miles away, Libya is tearing itself apart. A civil war is raging. Weapons are moving through channels that don’t officially exist, and the money behind them runs straight to a consulate in Benghazi that has less than two months left standing. Then a hostage crisis erupts in the tribal badlands of Pakistan, and the Haqqani network turns up in a place it has no business being. Three continents, three catastrophes, and a director at Langley who has stopped believing in coincidence.
Biff Roberts has spent his career at the CIA taking the official version of events at face value. But this time the official version collapses in the same three places, and nobody with the authority to ask why seems interested in asking.
Paired with a trusted operative inside Mossad, he starts pulling a thread that ties a downed helicopter to a burning consulate to a hostage nobody was supposed to find alive. What it leads back to isn’t a foreign enemy. It’s an agency he swore to protect.
Built from declassified reports, open source intelligence, and the questions the official record never bothered to answer, Source Code does a deep dive into these events. This the seventh installment in the series and the story conspiracy theorists have been chasing for over a decade, told the way it actually could have happened.
Some cover-ups don’t stay buried. This one didn’t.
Multiple Vulnerabilities
It’s Not Going to Happen follows three people living seemingly unrelated lives who find themselves in an international conspiracy where the most dangerous weapon may be the power to steal free will. What inspired you to bring together entertainment, international espionage, and biotechnology?
Making reality entertaining is my inspiration. In general, people do not absorb factual data very well. However, blend the science, history, and geopolitical facts with an entertaining story, and eureka. Thus, my tagline: sometimes the truth can only be told in fiction.
My goal is to write in a unique or original style about a real science/technology issue that has a major impact on everyone where facts are covered up, intentionally ignored in the public limelight, or easily overlooked because of the technical complexity.
A significant number of thriller authors incorporate some facet of science or technology where it is fairly obvious they don’t understand it (along with history and geopolitics). In a balancing act for the intellectually curious, I attempt to provide a certain amount of explanatory detail wrapped into the dialogue and plotline itself. There is plenty of action for those who only want to know what time it is and not how a watch works.
While the publishing marketplace (and writers’ workshops) pushes formulaic plotlines and frequent cookie-cutter characters geared toward the “cozy reader,” I tend to have faith in readers enjoying a bit more literary complexity to unravel the world we live in with talented, yet ordinary characters doing realistic things with extraordinary outcomes – with a pinch of poetic license to move the plot.
Sorry for the backdrop…and back to the question. Intelligence, clandestine, and covert operations require “access.” No industry or profession is immune, including the entertainment industry. My intent was to have the major characters with stories that would braid together with a type of synchronicity in a character-driven plot.
I had Julieta, a Kansas ranch girl, in my head who would somehow cross that line into celebrity status and discover that her seemingly innocuous everyday choices would add up and uncover multiple talents. Great talents often arise when confronted with unanticipated circumstances.
I also had Otto, “Little Otter,” developing in my head. A kid from an environment that could lead to several different paths, ending up with extraordinary outcomes given his choices and the influence of those around him, good and bad.
The last thing I wanted was the overused, former Navy SEAL, Delta Force, trained CIA assassin. Thus, Julieta and Otto are real persons with their own story to tell.
The developing science/technology issue was nanotechnology and pharmacology – nanobots or nanoids, and, yes, they are real. Santino, the brilliant, young Spanish scientist, had noble objectives (as many of us do or once did), yet was corrupted by higher powers, and a lingering question of whether he had different choices to make. And Andrea arises out of real geopolitical facts.
The major characters often serve as a type of contrast to the minor characters.
It became evident (at least in my head) that each of these main characters was a compendium of “choices,” perceptions, and the influence of those around them. Even the minor characters are their own composite of choices – some choices are made, some are unavoidable, and many lie in that grey area somewhere in between, much like a quantum particle in superposition until it’s measured…Oops, sorry, there I go with the science again. You can read more about quantum reality and consciousness in my novel, Deceit of the Mind – Quantum Evolution, and the race for Space and AI.
I also wanted the reader’s emotions wrapped into the story and not simply following as an outside observer. Thus, the plotline is filled with a potpourri of situations that can stir up emotions, good and bad, where the reader will find themselves inputting their own emotional psyche – and readers differ significantly on the same scenes.
The concept of a non-existent genre started to take hold as a “philosophical thriller” of sorts, with the caveat to never take myself too seriously and always find the entertainment value even with a bad situation.
Thus, always with a primary intent of creating entertainment value for the reader, what better backdrop than the entertainment industry itself?
How do the personal histories of your three protagonists shape their vulnerabilities, ambitions, and relationships with others?
I love the question! I use continuing characters, and thank you for recognizing that I do not have a single protagonist, such as Jill Uphill, former assassin, in book 12.
My plotlines are “character-driven.” I also try to rely on the character dialogue telling as much of the story as possible, as opposed to author narration. Ya know, how real life happens, since most of us don’t have a narrator or herald following us 24/7 to fill in the gaps. Each character has their own dialogue quirks to allow the reader to develop their own videotape of the scene and see/hear the characters in their heads.
Choices – “they may seem arbitrary, but they are not random.” Two kids in a tough neighborhood – one is an unintentional hero, and one is in prison. Two kids with no financial barriers, even in the same family, who develop starkly different dispositions on life. Noble humanitarian use of talents and ambition that can be turned on their heads. As a person makes choices, even with some choices forced upon them, what makes them vulnerable for their next decision?
Each character has multiple vulnerabilities, and the pattern of choices somewhat unconsciously adds up to pursue or even alter ambitions. Altering ambitions is not the problem. It’s the direction those ambitions turn. In each direction, those accumulated patterns of choices spill over in making choices about with whom they develop relationships. They test and question trust – we all do. Often, we simply label it our “gut reaction.” We often justify bad choices or simply ignore them – it is what it is, I really didn’t have a choice, I was dealt a bad hand. Recognition of good choices often takes time and ongoing evaluation, or even after-the-fact glances at the consequences, then moving forward.
In essence, the major and minor characters are an evolution of their own choices, despite a feeling of having no choice. Is that an excuse or a reason? What happens when the ability to choose or critical thinking are taken away – either by personal or cultural vulnerabilities, or technology?
Life happens. Telling ourselves it’s not going to happen is sometimes a path to a goal, a declaration to control the future, or sometimes a challenge to the inevitable, and many times a result or consequence of multiple actions leading to an unpredictable yet unavoidable outcome.
As in life, the separate histories of the main characters have that unpredictable probability of synchronicity that eventually naturally braid together. Julieta points out, if humanity is fundamentally flawed, “we can’t fix a defective design, but we can change the oil and air up the tires to keep it running more smoothly.”
There is no one better to save us from ourselves than ordinary people surreptitiously colliding with their talents to do extraordinary things.
The novel raises questions about how much of our lives we truly control. What does the concept of free will mean within the story?
Again, the question itself is exciting from my point of view. As I said, at some point I realized I was writing a philosophical thriller. There are several concepts or terms I intentionally did not use in the novel. The term “free will” is not there, yet logically many or most readers focus on the term to describe the story. My intent is for the reader to discover their own philosophical sense of choice (the term “destiny” is also not in the book).
Greater philosophical minds have spent centuries trying to unravel what became known as existentialism, choice, and free will – (and no, “existential threat” is not part of existential philosophy and was an invented term popularized by politicians in about 2009, with an after-the-fact nebulous definition).
The bottom line is that philosophically defining “free will” can be analogous to a dog chasing its tail in circles. Some would say free will does not really exist. Some would contend that free will is an essential part of consciousness – being human. I simply tried to set the table for the reader to decide.
The characters are confronted by choices at least from the day they were born. An infant presumably has many choices made for them. However, is crying a deliberate choice? “Remember, a child is not born afraid of the dark.” As we grow, the spectrum of deliberate choice certainly broadens. Choices made by others impact the characters, where the turning points become the deliberate responses (choices) to those events and the consequences that follow. Classically, does an individual choose to run away from danger or run towards it? Each character brings their own background of choices (good and bad) along with physical, emotional, and intellectual talents, sometimes acquired without specific purpose, but guide them in reacting to the circumstances and relationships they confront.
Ultimately, if our deliberate choices are limited or influenced by the external circumstances (choices), what happens when our ability to make deliberate choices or use critical thinking is taken away? Often this is seen as exercising free will. Many experts claim that collective cognitive dissonance and illusory truths have already surpassed critical thinking.
And then, the science and technology that is knocking at our doorstep.
How did you approach incorporating original music into Julieta’s storyline, and what inspired you to make her songs available to readers?
This was an incredibly fun part of writing the novel, and I wanted to make it a fun experience for the readers.
I’ve been writing lyrics and songs since high school. There were some close calls to moving in that direction…but my own choices and circumstances moved in another direction without regrets.
At some point in writing the story, I wanted to give it some “life.” I stopped writing the novel and started writing the lyrics, revamping a prior song written for a female singer, “Here I Am,” and scribbling out a new one with the book’s title. As Faulkner and others have said, poetry is the most difficult form of writing, and many novelists are simply failed poets. Lyrics, like poems, require a greater level of precision.
I am fortunate to have a very talented daughter-in-law who laid down my somewhat complex music and her vocals. While no AI is used in my writing, without 50 grand to hire studio musicians and also arrange for a stadium concert, I succumbed to using an AI program.
The songs are produced to fit the scenes in the novel as a type of fun, interactive bonus to the reader – to hear Julieta live!
Copyrighted? Yes, but completely FREE to listen to at YouTube.com/@KansasHank.
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The entertainment industry collides with deadly intelligence operations.
Sometimes the brightest stars hide the darkest secrets.
Three lives that seem to run on separate tracks — a Kansas ranch girl’s sudden fame, a Spanish scientist’s breakthrough, a foster kid’s last chance — begin, one path at a time, to braid into a single international conspiracy. Julieta is thrust from a modeling agency lobby into Hollywood’s spotlight, and into the covert intelligence network hiding behind it. Santino’s biologic nanotechnology could heal the human body — or be weaponized to control it. Otto, “Little Otter,” a mixed-race firehouse drop-off foster kid, is fighting for a future he’s not sure he’s allowed to have.
From black-web data drops in Atlanta to a Valencia laboratory hiding secrets even its own benefactors can’t fully comprehend, It’s Not Going to Happen moves across continents and loyalties comparable to Crichton and Daniel Silva — with the sly, intelligent, cinematic edge of Carl Hiaasen.
Inside this novel:
A nanotechnology breakthrough with the power to heal — or weaponize
A handler’s protection that looks a lot like control
A geopolitical race for technology no government wants the world to see
Courtroom stakes that blur the line between justice and reasonable doubt
Unlikely heroes against improbable odds and unpredictable fates, with a hint of romance
This is not a single chase down one road. It’s three roads that were always headed for the same place — and the reward is in watching them connect. If you love smart, original thrillers that ask you to think as hard as the characters do, this one’s built for you.
Call it a philosophical thriller — one built around a simple, unsettling question: how much of what happens to us is really our choice?
Henry Cox, author of the award-winning thrillers in the Deceit Series and Amazon #1 Bestseller, brings his diverse background and four decades of trial-law experience, with a lawyer’s eye for detail, to a story that refuses to move in a straight line. At first glance the pieces seldom appear to fit — original, unpredictable, and sophisticated, built to keep you thinking long after the last page.
Bonus: The author’s original songs, sung by Julieta, can be found with the links in the novel.
It’s not going to happen . . . or is it?
Notice: occasional strong language, violence, and sexual situations
Don’t miss the rest of Cox’s award-winning Deceit Series.
It’s Not Going to Happen
Henry R. Cox’s It’s Not Going to Happen is an expansive thriller that brings the entertainment industry, international espionage, and speculative biotechnology into a shared world of influence and deception. Its intersecting stories follow Julieta Winfield, a Kansas ranch girl whose talents carry her into acting and music; Otto Perdue, a former foster child with a strong instinct to intervene when someone’s in danger; and Santino Castillo, a Spanish researcher pursuing extraordinary medical possibilities through biologic nanotechnology. Their experiences give the novel a broad social range, from working households and hospital offices to film sets and secluded laboratories. Across these settings, Cox examines how ambition, vulnerability, and access to power shape the decisions people make.
I think the novel’s strongest emotional foundation lies in the histories its characters carry into adulthood. Family guidance, bereavement, financial insecurity, and the desire for recognition all have continuing consequences. Early in the book, Julieta’s mother observes, “People have their own stories.” That simple statement provides a useful lens for the cast, whose outward confidence frequently rests on private grief or uncertainty. Julieta’s practical intelligence and irreverent humor give her scenes energy, while Otto’s loyalty and discomfort with expressing affection make his quieter exchanges particularly engaging. The relationships surrounding them provide welcome warmth alongside the intrigue. Cox is especially attentive to mentorship, showing how encouragement and protection can coexist with expectations that become increasingly difficult to question.
The book’s central scientific premise gives its concerns about personal agency a disturbing physical dimension. Research intended to improve health opens questions about the control of emotions, perception, and behavior, extending the mother’s advice to “Be aware of your choices.” Cox develops these possibilities through substantial conversations about neuroscience, data, and electromagnetic signaling. The explanations make the imagined technology central to the story’s ethical concerns, although their length sometimes slows the narrative. His descriptive approach is similarly detailed: architecture, clothing, equipment, and travel routes receive close attention. The Spanish settings are particularly vivid, with their distinctive buildings and public spaces contributing to the atmosphere and choreography of the action. Readers who enjoy technical discussion and a strong sense of location will find plenty to absorb.
Cox balances this explanatory style with sudden confrontations, physical ingenuity, romantic exchanges, and a persistent interest in the distance between public image and private identity. The action often has a cinematic quality, supported by precise accounts of movement and improvised responses to danger. Its larger turns ask readers to accept considerable coincidence and exceptional abilities, making a willingness to embrace heightened thriller conventions valuable. The graphic treatment of violence and emphatic political commentary give the novel a forceful tone. The book connects those larger concerns to recognizable human needs: belonging, security, affection, and the freedom to decide for oneself. It’s an ambitious, eventful read whose distinctive appeal comes from the interplay of personal relationships, scientific possibility, and the management of appearances.
Pages: 375 | ASIN : B0HJ78DVF4
He Was a Gentleman
Hunting the Red Fox is part historical adventure, part crime caper, and part love story about a man who eventually discovers that growing up may require something harder than escaping danger. Did Perry begin as a single idea, or did his many identities as a soldier, golfer, thief, and storyteller develop gradually?
I decided early on that I wanted the story to revolve around a fictional character during the 1950’s who was first and foremost a gentleman in the traditional, grandest manner in which that term used to exist. I also wanted him at his core to be one of the “strong, silent types” as they used to be called. I wanted a guy who was recognized by others as a “man’s man” and “ladies’ man,” in a non-piggish sort of way, without a hint of ego or self-promotion. Above all, Perry had to be likeable.
Also, I wanted in the character of Perry someone who was very good or above average at virtually everything he did without being the best at anything. At the same time, I didn’t want everything he did to necessarily be good. I wanted him fundamentally to be principled and seek to do the good and right thing even if that was not technically the legal course of action. In other words, I wanted the internal struggle between the moral or right thing to do and the legal thing to do. The last thing I wanted Perry to be was someone who was flawless. Quite the contrary as it turns out.
Lastly, I wanted a character who seemed by circumstances mostly out of his control to plausibly meet the most bewildering array of real folks or pop up in the oddest of places throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s.
That is the broad concept I had of Perry Barnes the man in my mind before I wrote a word. The rest of what Perry was to become was a mystery to me at the onset and yet to be determined. It was my feeling that if I just started to type my imagination would take over my fingers and Perry was going to naturally develop, change and morph as he aged and matured, just like the rest of us.
There was never a grand storyline sketched out in advance before I began writing. My brain doesn’t really work that way. The characters, story, relationships, timeline, etc. just pop into my head as I type. It’s not really a conscious thing with me. The process is really quite simple. I sit down at a computer and merely attempt to type as fast as I can in an attempt to describe the movie that is playing in my mind. My fingers often have a difficult time keeping up with what I see in my head in picture form.
Perry often tries to justify his thefts by telling himself he is helping people. What does that reveal about his moral compass?
I would proffer that his moral compass is not any different than most of us. It’s just a matter of degrees as to how far each of us is willing to go before we cross a line too far. For example, I would posit that virtually all of us have, at one time or more in our lives lied to someone (which occurs on a daily basis even if it’s only “a little white lie”), took something of value that wasn’t ours, drank when we were underage, exceeded the speed limit (frequently for some), taken an illicit drug, moved a resting golf ball against the rules, participated in the illegal sex trade, beat, bludgeon, shoot, knife or worse someone who is attacking a loved one, watched pornography, committed adultery or worst of all, became a politician.
I would further say that some seemingly good folks are guilty of doing more than one of the things listed above at the same time. In the case of the politician the numbers can get a little staggering.
I’m not condoning Perry robbing a few folks’ ala Robinhood style of jewelry so he could justifiably (as he saw it) provide compensation to someone else’s employees who he reasoned had been very wronged. I leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions based on their own moral compass.
What attracted you to setting Perry’s adventures across so many different periods of twentieth-century history?
Perspective is an interesting phenomenon. Your question suggests that there are a lot of different time periods in Hunting the Red Fox and I would suggest there were just enough, as there would be for any 82 year who has led an eventful life.
Aside from that I think the answer is fairly simple. The story demanded it. The four relevant time periods in the novel and the reasons for each are as follows:
- Current day – 82-year-old Perry is recalling his life with would be writer Roger Mace.
- 1930’s and early 1940’s mostly – This was entirely to disclose information about Perry’s childhood and to provide background information and explain how Perry was forced to grow up so fast
- The 1940’s and World War II – I wanted Perry to be a minor jewel thief for the reasons already stated. The only place I could think of where someone could be taught a variety of unusual, disagreeable and downright illegal skills in abundance such as sabotage, espionage, silent killing, safe cracking, lock picking and, because it was useful, how to steal anything was to put Perry back into a WWII Special Operations Unit.
- The 1950’s – Most of the story takes place in this decade. The reason for the 1950’s was simple and threefold. First, the 1950’s is generally thought by many to this day as a “Golden Age” of post-war economic boom, family values, simpler times, great cars and the birth of rock and roll.
Second, Perry needed to acquire a vast number of high level and diverse skills mentioned above in order to become a uniquely capable jewel thief. The best place I could think of to place him in order to obtain those skills was as a trained World War II clandestine saboteur. The 1950’s was close enough to WWII to be a plausible training ground.
Perry became a touring golf professional during the 50’s which still has a nostalgic patina associated with it. This is not a book about golf, per se. Golf, touring professional golf in this case, is the vehicle which makes most of the events and chance meetings between Perry and all the other characters, real and/or fictional, plausible. Most of the people Perry meets and exotic parties and places he attends happen because he is a touring professional. There is only a smattering of detail with respect to the actual golf played by Perry.
After all the war stories, diamonds, famous names, and close calls, what do you see as the real heart of Hunting the Red Fox?
At the core, Hunting the Red Fox is a feel-good novel that the book reviewers have noted for its masterful storytelling along with vibrant dialogue, clever, witty, often irreverent humor, and pacing of the narrative, which provide marvelous vignettes of redemption, situational intrigue, steamy romance, and honest decency throughout.
After conversations with many people who have read the novel, I have come to find that once someone sits down with a copy it not long before the reader is put in a frame of mind to grab a cocktail, sit a spell in a favorite over-sized armchair and eagerly anticipate turning the next page with a hopeful delight as to what may be coming while slightly regretting the page they just left behind.
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All the while he is befriended by the most bewildering array of characters, some real, some not, who add marvelous vignettes of clever humor, situational intrigue, and steamy romance as he earnestly pursues the one goal he covets most: finding true love, martial companionship and family.
Echoes of the Veil
Echoes of the Veil, by James Hurst, is a military techno-thriller that starts close to home and steadily widens its field of fire. Major Aaron “Reaper” Wiggins returns to his family in Tennessee carrying the physical and emotional residue of years in special operations, only to be pulled into a chemical attack involving a sabotaged freight train, a covert cleanup team, and a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the initial disaster. From there, the novel moves through contaminated terrain, a fortified port facility, cyberwarfare, an open-ocean insertion, and finally the cramped interior of a stealth submarine. What holds all of that together is the book’s interest in problems that have to be solved under pressure. Aaron and his team are constantly dealing with limited ammunition, failing equipment, toxic environments, surveillance systems, locked compartments, physical injuries, and a clock that rarely gives them enough time.
The novel also gives its action some weight through Aaron’s relationship with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Emily. Aaron can command a team in a crisis almost instinctively, but being fully present with his family is harder for him, and the book understands that tension. His recurring back injury is more than a convenient vulnerability, too. It connects his current mission to the years of damage that came before it and reminds us that competence has a cost. The members of his old team, including Ocelot, Chewy, Spazz, Doc, and the others, bring another kind of warmth to the story. Their humor, shorthand, and trust feel earned through shared history. They know when to joke, when to shut up, and when somebody needs help without asking for it. That camaraderie keeps the extensive tactical material connected to actual people.
Readers of Tom Clancy, particularly The Hunt for Red October, will recognize the fascination with systems, procedures, military hardware, and the dangerous possibilities hidden inside complicated technology. Echoes of the Veil has that same pleasure in understanding how things work, but its viewpoint stays much closer to the operators physically crawling through those systems. A server room can become a battlefield, a ventilation system can become a weapon, and a submarine hatch can create an entire tactical problem. The book is especially compelling when technology and old-fashioned fieldcraft collide. Digital surveillance is countered with analog thinking, cyber tools have to be backed up by people willing to crawl through sewage or swim through black water, and sophisticated plans repeatedly come down to somebody making a smart decision with whatever happens to be within reach. That gives the technical detail a purpose beyond showing off research.
What I enjoyed most about Echoes of the Veil is how committed it is to its particular kind of thriller. The procedural detail is dense, the threats are carefully engineered, and action scenes often unfold as a chain of small tactical decisions. A few late sequences revisit information or tactical moments from overlapping perspectives, which adds density to an already detailed final act, but the payoff is a climax where earlier skills, injuries, relationships, and technical details all matter. Li Wei also works well as an antagonist because he thinks in systems just as Aaron does, making their conflict feel like competing methods of problem-solving as much as a physical fight. The epilogue closes the immediate mission while opening the story onto something larger, leaving Aaron with a more complicated understanding of what protecting his family actually means. Echoes of the Veil feels like a tactical thriller with a family pulse, built around capable people trying to stay human while moving through situations that demand almost everything they have.
Pages: 293 | ASIN : B0HCW4CF8S
Hunting the Red Fox
Hunting the Red Fox by W. Kenneth Tyler, Jr. is the kind of novel that feels like sitting down with a gifted, slightly mischievous older man who casually mentions that he once stole a 200-carat diamond, fought behind enemy lines during World War II, played professional golf with legends, knew Hollywood stars, and spent a good portion of his younger years charming women and breaking rules. Roger Mace, an aspiring writer looking for extraordinary stories from ordinary people, meets eighty-two-year-old Perry Barnes on a golf trip and quickly discovers that Perry could fill a book by himself. From there, Perry takes Roger through a life shaped by Depression-era Savannah, the violent loss of his father, petty crime, specialized Army training, wartime missions, professional golf, jewel theft, romance, and eventually the hunt for a criminal known as the Red Fox. Tyler wisely gives Roger a skeptical voice throughout, so the reader gets to share his recurring thought: can one man really have lived all of this? That tension between disbelief and fascination becomes part of the fun.
Perry is what holds the sprawling story together. He’s charming, vain, observant, funny, reckless, sentimental, and far more complicated than his polished gentleman routine initially suggests. His childhood talent for reading people, gambling on golf, and stealing eventually combines with military training in languages, sabotage, infiltration, and survival, creating a man whose legal and illegal talents are almost impossible to separate. That becomes especially entertaining when Perry returns to jewel theft in the 1950s, convincing himself he’s behaving like Robin Hood by stealing from wealthy people who mistreat their employees and secretly directing the proceeds to those workers. The thefts aren’t simply side adventures. They reveal something essential about Perry. He craves the intellectual puzzle and adrenaline almost as much as he wants to believe he’s doing the right thing. Tyler also has a fondness for detail, whether he’s describing a golf hole, a mansion, a military operation, a piece of jewelry, or a complicated theft. That gives the novel the texture of a long story told over drinks, where one memory leads naturally into another and the storyteller enjoys the telling nearly as much as the listener enjoys hearing it.
There’s something of Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump in the novel’s approach to history. Like Groom, Tyler sends a fictional man wandering through real twentieth-century America and lets him brush shoulders with people readers already know. Perry encounters figures such as Winston Churchill, Howard Hughes, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and some of professional golf’s biggest names, and he treats those encounters with an amusing casualness. Where Groom gives Forrest innocence and happenstance, Tyler gives Perry calculation, swagger, appetites, and a con man’s eye for opportunity. That makes Hunting the Red Fox feel part historical adventure, part crime caper, part golf novel, and part exaggerated fireside memoir. The later arrival of Sophia Toscana gives all of those threads a satisfying place to meet. She’s a talented jewelry detective pursuing the Red Fox, while Perry is a former jewel thief who can understand the criminal precisely because he thinks like one. Their investigation turns the final portion of the book into a genuine cat-and-mouse story, culminating in the theft of the Mecklenburg Diamond, Perry’s confrontation with Clarence Desmond, and a dangerous showdown that finally forces Perry to decide what he values more than excitement.
What stayed with me most, though, wasn’t the diamond or even the Red Fox. It was the way Perry’s entire story gradually becomes an argument about growing up. At the beginning, he tells Roger that returning the Mecklenburg Diamond marked the end of his life as a thief and con man because love and family had finally become more important to him. The rest of the novel spends hundreds of pages showing how difficult it was for him to reach that conclusion. Sophia matters because she presents Perry with something none of his adventures can provide: a reason to stop roaming. Even then, he nearly ruins it by falling back into old habits and running away from commitment. The final revelation that Sophia became Mrs. Barnes, that they built a family and founded a successful detective agency together, gives the book a warm and fitting payoff. Perry doesn’t simply abandon his unusual talents. He finally figures out where to put them. That makes Hunting the Red Fox a big, talkative, frequently funny life story about a man who spends decades mastering how to escape almost anything before realizing that the best part of his life begins when he finally finds something he doesn’t want to escape from.
Pages: 300 | ASIN : B0F1FW1KKQ
Rogue Vengeance
Charles Stewart’s Rogue Vengeance is a muscular military thriller about loyalty under fire, the cost of service, and the long shadow cast when governments use warriors and then try to discard them. Colt Hawkins is trying to build a future with Liberty Starr on the Sabre T Ranch, but peace barely has time to take root before a wedding becomes a battlefield; Jesse remains trapped in a brutal Chinese prison, and Task Force 24 is pulled back into a widening conflict that stretches from Montana to Madrid, Hainan Island, and Taiwan. The novel moves with the urgency of an operation already in motion, blending domestic trauma, covert rescue planning, political betrayal, and geopolitical escalation into one restless story about people who keep answering the call even when the call has taken too much from them.
What stayed with me most was the emotional weight beneath all the tactical movement. The opening contrast between Jesse’s suffering in captivity and Colt’s quiet hope at the Raven’s Nest sets the tone beautifully: this is a book interested in bodies under pressure, but also in what people build when they’re desperate to believe they can still have a life. Stewart lets readers feel the tenderness, and that makes the violence feel less like a spectacle and more like a violation. At its best, the novel understands that survival isn’t clean or triumphant. It’s sore, frightened, stubborn, and sometimes quietly beautiful.
The writing has a hard-edged cadence that suits the material. Stewart favors clipped sentences, procedural detail, and scene cuts that mimic surveillance feeds or tactical briefings, and that gives the novel a cinematic, forward-driving rhythm. I found the operational details convincing and immersive, especially when the book follows intelligence gathering, safe houses, cell structures, and rescue planning. At times, though, the sheer density of names, agencies, acronyms, and moving parts can crowd the emotional space. The story occasionally explains when it could trust the moment to breathe. Still, there’s an authenticity in the worldview that’s difficult to fake. The ideas are clear and strongly felt: duty doesn’t end just because politics shifts, loyalty is heavier than policy, and the people who protect a nation are often least protected by it. I didn’t always need every briefing, but I believed deeply in the ache behind them.
I found Rogue Vengeance intense, heartfelt, and deeply invested in the bonds between warriors, families, and the country they serve. It’s a large, ambitious thriller with a bruised heart, one that works best when its action is anchored in grief, devotion, and the fragile possibility of home. The ending opens the door to an even larger conflict, but it also reinforces the novel’s central truth: Colt and his team may be wounded, but they’re not finished. I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy military thrillers with detailed operations, sprawling geopolitical stakes, and a strong emotional core, especially those who like stories about brotherhood, sacrifice, and the private costs behind public missions.
Pages: 429 | ASIN : B0GFXJYSQ2
Rogue Vengeance
Rogue Vengeance, by Charles A. Stewart, is a military espionage thriller about betrayal, loyalty, and the heavy cost of service. The story follows Colt Hawkins, Liberty Starr, Jesse, and a network of CIA and special operations figures as personal lives collide with international violence. What begins around a wedding and a fragile hope for peace quickly turns into a larger conflict involving China, covert missions, political pressure, revenge, and survival. It’s an action-heavy thriller, but underneath the gunfire and strategy, it’s also about people trying to hold onto love, purpose, and identity after trauma.
The pacing in this story is fantastic. Stewart writes in short, sharp bursts that often feel like quick camera cuts. One scene is intimate and warm, with family gathered around a ranch house or Colt trying to imagine a quieter future, and then the next scene drops into surveillance, ambush planning, or prison brutality. That contrast works well for the genre. It keeps the pressure high. The book feels almost built for the screen, with clean scene breaks, direct action, and a strong sense of movement. I did sometimes want a little more breathing room, especially when the cast widened and the operational details stacked up. But I also understood the choice. This is a thriller that wants the reader alert, not settled.
I was most drawn to the emotional spine of the book. Colt isn’t just another tough operator who can take a bullet and keep moving. He is a man being asked, again and again, how much of himself he can give before there’s nothing left. The scenes with Liberty give the story its heart, and they make the violence matter more because there is something real at stake beyond mission success. Jesse’s captivity adds another layer, showing endurance in a quieter but no less brutal form. Stewart’s ideas are clear: duty can save people, but it can also consume them; loyalty is noble, but it can become a chain; and governments often treat sacrifice like a renewable resource. That’s where the book feels most grounded to me.
I would recommend Rogue Vengeance to readers who enjoy military thrillers, CIA action stories, and revenge-driven espionage novels with a large cast and a strong patriotic edge. Fans of high-stakes operations, tactical detail, and stories about brotherhood under pressure will probably appreciate it most. Readers looking for a fast, emotional, mission-focused thriller with both firepower and heart should find plenty to enjoy here.
Pages: 429 | ASIN : B0GFXJYSQ2
