Right Out of Today's Headlines—Overture to Disaster

The last book in my Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy, Overture to Disaster, is now available for the Kindle. It comes out at a time when it sounds almost like something out of today's headlines. Chemical weapons...nerve gas...a plot to release it on a large crowd.

The second book in the trilogy, The Poksu Conspiracy, involved nuclear weapons. I decided to go to the other end of the weapons of mass destruction inventory for the final story, C/B or chemical and biological weapons. I did considerable research on the development of nerve gases and their use. The largest chemical attack on record occurred in the Kurdish section of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. It was carried out by Saddam Hussein's air force on March 16, 1988 and killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people.

I found the Soviet Union had a plant that produced C/B weapons at Kharkov in the Ukrainian Republic. This was also location of the army's 48th Division. I opened the book on a collective farm north of the Black Sea where a battalion of motorized rifle troops were bivouacked. A few artillery shells loaded with nerve gas and canisters of neurotoxins had been brought in for a demonstration of how to handle and dispose of highly toxic agents.

Rogue members of the KGB steal some of the C/B weapons and touch of an explosion to destroy all evidence of their crime, including the soldiers charged with storing the nerve agents. This plot thread continues a few years later in Minsk, Belarus, where the brother of a captain killed in the explosion is an investigator for the city prosecutor.

A parallel plot thread starts in Washington at the time of the weapons theft. It involves an Air Force Special Operations helicopter mission to penetrate deep into the Iranian mountains and bring out a defecting official. The pilot is unfairly charged with an oversight that results in the mission's failure.

The plots come together in Mexico when Chief Investigator Yuri Shumakov connects with retired Col. Warren (Roddy) Rodman. There is lots of action throughout the book, plenty of tension as things move one way and then the other. A complicating factor during the last half is the role of a shadowy organization called the Foreign Affairs Roundtable. Headed by international bankers and cartel capitalists, the leaders are out to control the world economy. Their support of dissidents in the old Soviet Union leads to the final cataclysmic confrontation.

It's Freebie Time Again

Starting at midnight tonight, Pacific Standard Time, my fourth Greg McKenzie mystery, The Marathon Murders, will be free to download for the Kindle until midnight Wednesday, February 27. You'll find it at this link.

Some people glance at the name and think the story involves marathon runners. A good look at the cover should take care of that. It shows a skeleton seated behind the wheel of a Marathon touring car from the early twentieth century. The book involves a 90-year-old cold case, the murder of the assistant treasurer of Marathon Motor Works, a company that built a popular line of automobiles in Nashville from 1910 to 1914.

Actually, the company took its name from an event at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. Its car models were given such names as Runner and Winner. An industrious entrepreneur bought the rundown, long-vacant plant and office buildings a few years ago and restored them to provide space for artists, photographers, musicians, and other small businesses. That's where I got the idea for my mystery.

In The Marathon Murders, a construction worker finds some old company records from 1914 hidden behind paneling in the wall of a former office. The envelope includes the name of the assistant treasurer, Sydney Liggett, and a note indicating he planned to turn it over to the District Attorney. The job foreman finds Liggett's grandson, age 84, in a local nursing home. He promises to bring over the papers, then disappears.

McKenzie Investigations, run by senior sleuths Greg (retired OSI agent) and Jill McKenzie, are hired to find the missing papers. What they encounter is a string of murders committed to keep the secret of the 1914 documents hidden. The chase takes them to a small rural county near Nashville where things get pretty tense.

The book gave me the opportunity to highlight the work of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which provides a vital investigative arm to law enforcement agencies outside the major cities. Midwest Book Review said: "This fourth installment of the Greg McKenzie Mysteries is proof positive the series remains strong and fresh and is a major contender in the mystery venue." If you're new to the Greg McKenzie series, this is an opportunity for a free look. Just click the link above (after midnight).

Deadly Illusions Is Free for the Kindle

When I set up my tent at an outdoor festival, I can count on a few people to gaze about the array of covers and ask, "Which one do you like best?" My stock answer isn't really an answer at all. It's a statement. "That's like asking which one of my kids do I like best?" That would be partly true, partly a cop-out. It's true I don't have a favorite, but I view some a bit more fondly than others. One in this category is Deadly Illusions. Trouble is, this is the least expensive of my books at $12.95. Like all of my mysteries, though, it's only $2.99 for the Kindle.

And today, December 26, through Saturday, December 29, Deadly Illusions will be free to download from the Kindle Store here.

This is the third book in my Greg McKenzie Mystery Series. I particularly enjoyed writing it since it involved Greg and Jill opening McKenzie Investigations and launching their careers as PI's. The  response from reviewers was encouraging.

Spinetingler Magazine wrote:

"Campbell's engaging style and masterful plotting makes for a fast-paced, thrilling read. His sharp wit left this reader laughing out loud at times, yet the steadily building suspense made for a white-knuckle, edge-of-the seat ride."

Midwest Book Review had this to say:

"Greg McKenzie is a senior investigator who relies on his experience to compensate for the brawn he might have engaged in the past. His wife, Jill, is an accomplished pilot, cook, and is the perfect partner for her husband. Campbell juxtaposes her correction of Greg's "blue language" and her obvious spirituality with her determination when the going gets rough and she has to use some of the private investigator skills that most people would shrink from. All in all, DEADLY ILLUSIONS is another winner in the Chester D. Campbell literary cabinet. Campbell obviously has many stories to share, and he continues to write fabulous mysteries."

In the book, Molly Saint hires new PI's Greg and Jill McKenzie to check into her husband's background, then disappears. It starts them on a tangled trail of deceit. Complicating matters further, Greg gets drawn into a troubling police investigation stemming from the assassination of the Federal Reserve Board chairman at a Nashville hotel. The case resurrects old problems with a Murder Squad detective and his colleages among Nashville's finest. The deeper the McKenzies dig, the more deadly illusions they face. After threats, break-ins, and another murder, the charade ends in a shocking showdown.

I enjoyed writing Jill's character, and the readers appear to approve, as witness the comments of Midwest Book Review's Shelley Glodowski above. Jill does something quite unexpected in this story, but I won't say anymore as I don't want to spoil it for you.

One dilemma mystery writers face is the necessity to continually ramp up the tension by putting your protagonist in progressively more dire situations. If you aren't careful, they wind up facing impossible odds. In this book, Greg and his homicide detective friend find themselves defenseless, confronted by a remorseless killer.

What happens? Read the book. 

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.