Something Special the Next Few Days

Through next week you can get a 446-page thriller novel for only 99 cents. The ebook version, that is. Beware the Jabberwock, the first in my post Cold War political thriller trilogy, is on sale in the Kindle store at this link.

The story is told from the viewpoints of both the good guys and the bad guys. Start out sitting in on a highly secret meeting in Vienna between two former Cold War enemies where the plot is hatched. Then see two guys in action who will become the primary movers of the story.

Add into the mix a close-up of the disparate team of international characters brought together to train for a unique operation that proves the ultimate challenge to the good guys.

In his review of the book,  best-selling author Tim Hallinan says of the author (that's me), "Here he's working in the global intelligence thriller territory of Ludlum and Trevanian, but (I'm happy to say) with more character development." That's what I worked to achieve. You'll get to know all the characters on a quite personal level.

Reviewer Lee Boyland notes that most of the story's characters are introduced in the first 26 pages (actually it's more like 38 in the paperback edition), but  you'll get to know them all quite well by the time you reach the end. One who doesn't make her appearance until a bit later is Lorelei Quinn, the daughter of veteran CIA officer Cameron Quinn. As the story develops, the becomes the chief ally of Burke Hill, the ex-FBI agent who is the main protagonist.

The book is a long one so  you're sure to get your 99-cents worth. If you buy one, I'd appreciate getting a review on Amazon. That's what draws readers to the book. I hope you enjoy it.

The Story Behind the Story

The background to my second Post Cold War political thriller, The Poksu Conspiracy, goes back sixty years. That was when my Knoxville Air National Guard unit was activated. A few months later I found myself , a young lieutenant, assigned to Fifth Air Force Headquarters in Seoul. When I returned from the war zone in 1953, I married the girl who would become mother of my four children. Back home, I also read several books on Korea and learned how the country had arrived at the situation it faced when the North invaded the South in 1950.

Thirty years later, my younger son, as an Army lieutenant, was stationed at the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) along the North Korean border. He married a Korean girl before returning to the States. By the mid-eighties he was back in the Far East, stationed on Okinawa with Army Special Forces. His team was targeted on Thailand, where they helped train Thai special forces. His second son was born on Okinawa. When his tour ended in 1987, he had a month's leave coming. He invited his mother and me to join him and his wife on a month-long tour of the region. That trip contributed many ideas I've used in my Post Cold War political thrillers.

We started that rambling tour of 1987 in Seoul, which bore no resemblance to the city I remembered  from the spring of 1952. Instead of buildings left in shambles by artillery barrages and streets largely devoid of traffic other than military, I found modern high-rise structures everywhere and wide boulevards clogged with vehicles. Though she had been married for several years and now had two small boys, my daughter-in-law wanted a proper wedding ceremony as a memento to replace the civil vows they took back during my son's DMZ tour. We attended the traditional Korean ceremony at a wedding house in Inchon, her hometown and Seoul's seaport neighbor. A similar event takes place in the book.

When I began my fiction-writing career a couple of years later with my first political thriller, Beware the Jabberwock, I used ideas for Hong Kong scenes based on the final leg of that 1987 tour. Recalling our experience in Seoul, plus memories from the Korean War days, I started work on Book 2 with an idea about what could happen in those turbulent days of the early nineties.

I decided to use a Korean homicide detective as a major character in the story. I corresponded with a staff member at the American Embassy who sent me brochures detailing the organization and structure of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Bureau, plus lots of other useful information.

The Poksu Conspiracy is probably the most thoroughly researched book I've written. I read countless books and magazines on Korea, plus such subjects as nuclear weapons. Most of the historical information in the story is factual, including South Korea's early work on gaining a nuclear capability. I came across one intriguing fact, that Japan's efforts to create an atomic bomb during World War II took place in Korea. Another factual subject I included dealt with operations of a Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army division headed by Kim Il-sung in the late 1930s.

I visited many of the locations in Seoul mentioned in the book during my 1987 trip. Our travels through the Far East also took us to Thailand, including Bangkok and Chiangmai. The main character in the book, Burke Hill, travels to Chiangmai in search of one of the Poksu guerrillas from World War II. He stays in the Top North Guest House, an interesting motel we spent a few nights in. He also goes to a couple of unique sites we visited, including the Night Bazaar and a mountainside Buddhist temple called Wat Prathat Doi Suthep.

For a book sixty years in the making, I'm happy it's finally out there for people to read. It has been twenty-one years since I wrote the original manuscript, but the story is still basically the same. You'll find it in the Kinde Store at Poksu Conspiracy.

Cast of Characters

I'm winding up revision of my second book in the Post Cold War thriller trilogy, The Poksu Conspiracy. As you might guess from the name, most of the action takes place in Korea, both South and North. The time is fall and early winter of 1993, when the world was trying to sort out the effects of the Cold War's demise. The U.S. economy was in the doldrums following the first Gulf War. South Korea continued to make significant progress in the export markets while its political leadership remained in the hands of the generals. Unification with the North and a lessening of foreign (read U.S.) influence was the rallying cry.

The Poksu Conspiracy is an adventurous tale of what might have happened based on historical events and past actions of American leaders. Early in the story, an audacious plot results in the deaths of North Korean Dictator Kim Il Sung, his son and heir apparent, and much of the communist leadership. Had that part of the story been true, the world would be a lot better off. But I digress.

The book could be called half thriller and half Korean police procedural. One of the main characters is Homicide Detective Yun Yu-sop with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Bureau. The story follows his efforts to solve a series of murders he believes are an attempt to silence leading voices who favor continued Korean-U.S. cooperation.

The story is quite complex, making the book a long one, running 160,000 words. Since much of it takes place in Korea, many of the characters have Korean names. And there are lots of them. As a result, it will likely be difficult for readers to keep up with everybody. Why don't you cut some of them out, my wife asked? Well, they all play a significant role in the story.

I went though the manuscript and counted 74 named characters, and that doesn't include a couple who are named only as murder victims. I decided to make a Cast of Characters, which would name only those who appear in more than one chapter. I figure those who appear in no more than a couple of contiguous scenes shouldn't be a problem. That cut the total down to 48.

Now I'm left with the decision of how to list the characters.  Should it be done as in a theatrical playlist, naming the characters as they appear in the story? Or should I simply put them in alphabetical order? Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Beware the Jabberwock Has a Cover

Here's the long-awaited cover for the first book in my Post Cold War trilogy featuring ill-starred former FBI agent Burke Hill. Beware the Jabberwock will be out soon as an ebook. Here's the plot blurb:


As the Cold War sputters to a close and the Soviet Union disintegrates, international telephone intercepts trigger a CIA investigation into the nebulous codeword "Jabberwock." Burke Hill, whose tarnished FBI career ended years earlier after dismissal by a surly J. Edgar Hoover, is recruited to help an old CIA buddy, Cameron Quinn, whose superiors doubt Jabberwock's dangerous potential. When an accident stops Quinn in Hong Kong, the CIA brass warns Hill to drop the investigation. Knowing Quinn's fears about the operation, Hill and Quinn's daughter, Lorelei, continue the chase. Rogue elements on both sides of the old Iron Curtain work to stop them, along with a relentless Federal bureaucracy. As the clock ticks down on Jabberwork, Burke and Lori realize they alone are the only hope of stopping a plot to assassinate the American and Russian presidents.


An international thriller,  Beware the Jabberwock starts out in Vienna, then switches to the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, after that Washington, D.C. The characters take us to a beach on Cyprus, to Tel Aviv, Israel and Hong Kong before swirling about the eastern half of the U.S. from New Orleans to Niagara Falls. Much of it takes place on an island off the Gulf Coast of Florida.


It's a tale about what people accustomed to having power will do to cling to it when circumstances threaten their hold. Sometimes they form unholy alliances in an attempt to maintain the status quo. That's what Burke Hill and Lorelei Quinn encounter when the end of the Cold War threatens to leave groups of old enemies out in the cold.


The life-threatening spiral accelerates after Burke and Lori attempt to prove Cam Quinn was not drunk when his rental car crashed on a dark night in Hong Kong. You'll have a chance to read the whole exciting story shortly when Beware the Jabberwock appears as an ebook for the Kindle.