A Long Time Coming — Zoë Sharp’s FOX HUNTER: Charlie Fox book 12

Zoë Sharp

I freely admit that there were times when I truly thought I was never going to finish the latest Charlie Fox book. Number 12 in the series, FOX HUNTER seems to have taken me longer to write than anything since the very first novel about Charlie, way back when.

(US print/ebook edition)

The extended gestation period has had nothing to do with character fatigue, though. I’m still as interested in the nuances of Charlie’s psyche as I was when I started out. More so, if anything. She’s become far more complicated as a person than she was, and although she’s rather more practised when it comes to taking a life, the conflict it causes her internally is just as strong — if not stronger.

Yes, the locations for this story were trickier to realise than the books that went before it. While I’ve been to the Middle East, going into present-day Iraq was always going to be a dubious proposition. Getting across a flavour of the places, without making it into a travel guide, is always a fine balance. As with all research you put into a novel, I was aiming for realistic rather than real.

Sometimes I think you spend more time describing the locations you know less well, just to try to ensure you’ve got them right. On the other hand, it’s also difficult to give a first impression of somewhere you know intimately. If a stranger was visiting your home town for the first time, for instance, how would they come away feeling about it? What would be the thing that struck them most?

In FOX HUNTER, I had to take care with my descriptions of Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan, in an effort to make them distinct without overdoing it. I’m thankful, yet again, for my years as a photographer, working almost entirely on location rather than in a studio, which makes you look at places in a different way.

(UK print/ebook edition — coming Sept) 

On top of that, of course, was trying to overlay how Charlie would view her surroundings. She’s worked in close protection for long enough to always be looking for the next threat, and here there were plenty. I read widely, mainly memoirs of people who’d worked in those countries as outsiders rather than written by locals.

The actual storyline of FOX HUNTER follows on directly from the previous book, ABSENCE OF LIGHT. Sean Meyer is missing, last seen crossing the border from Kuwait into southern Iraq. The next thing Charlie knows, the body of one of the men who ruined her army career turns up dead:

‘The dead man had not gone quietly … There was a time when I would have given everything I owned to be the one responsible for that.’

Charlie Fox will never forget the men who put a brutal end to her military career, but she vowed a long time ago she would not go looking for them.

Now she doesn’t have a choice.

Her boss and former lover, Sean Meyer, is missing in Iraq where one of those men was working as a private security contractor. When the man’s butchered body is discovered, Charlie fears that Sean may be pursuing a twisted vendetta on her behalf.

Sean’s partner in their exclusive New York close-protection agency needs this dealt with—fast and quiet—before everything they’ve worked for is in ruins. He sends Charlie to the Middle East with very specific instructions:

Find Sean Meyer and stop him. By whatever means necessary.

At one time Charlie thought she knew Sean better than she knew herself, but it seems he’s turned into a violent stranger. As the trail grows more bloody, Charlie realises that unless she can get to Sean first, the hunter may soon become the hunted.

I worried that this novel might contain too much of Charlie’s past for new readers, although I’ve tried to explain the role the recurring characters play, again without overdoing. The further on in a series you get, the more you either have to explain the back story, or ignore it entirely and have each book stand alone with no reference to the others. And if you want the protagonist to grow and learn from their experiences, you can’t escape having progression, and therefore history.

(US audio edition)

I hope I’ve created a couple of engaging and entertaining new characters in FOX HUNTER, such as slightly jaded CIA operative Aubrey Hamilton, and private military contractor Luisa Dawson. I’ve also brought back characters from much earlier novels in the series, like Ian Garton-Jones — owner of Streetwise Security from RIOT ACT — and Balkan gangsters Gregor and Ivan Venko from HARD KNOCKS.

FOX HUNTER also marks the appearance on stage for the first time of characters mentioned but never seen — Charlie’s former army comrades, Donalson and Hackett, and Commanding Officer, Colonel Parris. This involved going back through quite a few of the earlier books to see what snippets of information I’d included about each of them.

In fact, the more I think about it, I’m surprised it didn’t take me longer to finish writing this one …

Especially when there were delicate subjects I had to tiptoe around, from ISIS to honour killings. I admit that when FOX HUNTER came out in the US this week, I was holding my breath on its reception. The first reviews have been good:

“Gritty, hard-hitting, all-around outstanding crime fiction.” Booklist (starred review)

“Nonstop action and an intricate plot weave together to create another thrill ride for fans of Sharp's heroine.” Kirkus

And emails so far from readers are enthusiastic. The only trouble is, they already want to know when they can expect the next one.

Note to self: Must Write Faster …

This week’s Word of the Week is insidious, meaning evil by stealth, as oppose to invidious, which is a more open kind of nastiness.

  

The trouble with ISIS

Stan - Thursday

From the islands of Hawaii in Sujata's blog yesterday, to a frightening Middle East today.

My guest this week is Yusuf Toropov, whose first novel JIHADI: A LOVE STORY made it to the quarter finals of Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award.  Publishers Weekly commented: 

Smart and searing ... a deeply felt conviction of morally fraught choices that result in devastating outcomes.

And searing it is, raising questions that should always be raised, but often aren't; highlighting issues that are frequently kept hidden.  Not a light read, but an intense and important one, particularly in these unsettled times in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Yusuf is an American Muslim writer. He's the author or co-author of a number of nonfiction books covering a wide range of topics under the name Brandon Toropov, including Shakespeare for Beginners, The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Religions, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Popes and Papacy, and The Encyclopedia of Cold War Politics. His full-length play An Undivided Heart was selected for a workshop production at the National Playwrights Conference, and his one-act play The Job Search was produced off-Broadway. 

He currently lives in Northern Ireland.

JIHADI: A LOVE STORY is available in e-book form in the UK and the USA from Orenda Books and will be released in the UK next week and in the USA in May in paperback.

Please welcome Yusuf Toropov to Murder is Everywhere.

_________________________

There is an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” 

I am a Muslim wondering how best to live in such times, and I know I’m not the only one. Case in point: It’s now a commonplace event for Muslims to be asked one, two, or all three of the following questions, online or in person, by total strangers:

• ·       #1: You’re a Muslim. Doesn’t that mean you agree with what ISIS is doing?
• ·       #2: ISIS is only doing what the Koran says, right?
• ·       #3: Why the hell haven’t you done something to stop ISIS and people like them?

These are, I concede, fascinating and important queries, and rest assured I will answer them here, but first may I explain (because I suspect you may have been curious) why Muslims sometimes wince when they hear such things?

Listen.

It is 1927. In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan – a murderous institution descended from the slave patrols that dealt out racially-motivated mayhem and terror in the South before the Civil War – is experiencing a major resurgence. Klan membership explodes among devout Protestant churchgoers, north and south, who are lethally disposed not only toward blacks, but also toward Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.  Lots of Klan members quote the Bible with authority. They kill people. They set off bombs. They burn crosses. They hold night rallies. Among their number are mayors, sheriffs, and congressmen. The numbers are sketchy, and they will always remain sketchy, but the research will eventually suggest that, in a country with a population of a little over 100 million people, an estimated nine million people belong to the KKK.

The KKK pushing Catholics out of America. By Rev. Branford Clarke in Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty by Bishop Alma Bridwell White (Zarephath, NJ: 1926)

Now. Please suppose for a moment that you are an American Christian of that period, someone who loathes the Klan and wants nothing to do with it. And then suppose a total stranger walks up to you at a party and asks:

• ·       #1: You’re a Christian. Doesn’t that mean you agree with what the Klan is doing?
• ·       #2: The Klan is only doing what the Bible says, right?
• ·       #3: Why the hell haven’t you done something to stop the Klan and people like them?

Admit it. You might just wince in such a situation. Not because you want to dodge these questions. But because you feel insulted.

And also, perhaps, because you know it’s just possible that somewhere, senior KKK people are smiling at your predicament. In fact, now that you think about it, you know damn well these KKK leaders want you to live in a world where there is THE KLAN, and there is EVERYONE ELSE. 

They want you to have to choose between those two groups. Not only that, they want you to do some PR work on their behalf when you’re approached by that stranger at the party. They want you to feel insulted. They want you emotional. They want you to overreact. They want the exchange to start awkward and end awkward. They want that stranger to start wondering about your motives.

The trouble with ISIS is that they’re basically hoping for the same things.

So let’s say you and I are online. And let’s say we’ve never met. Let’s say you notice my name, and you ask me what occurs to me as a weird question, one of the three I’ve listed at the top of this article.

I need your help. I have been down this road before. I suspect I will walk down this road again. So. I don’t want to overreact. Since we find ourselves walking this road together, let me say up front what is true for me: that I am not crazy about you introducing yourself by asking me that. But you know what? If that’s what happens, it’s what happens. I am walking with you now in the possibility of making this discussion authentic, not awkward. Here, then, are my best short answers to the questions I hear most about ISIS.

• #1: No. I promise. Just no. I don't believe in what ISIS is doing.  Can I tell you why?
• #2: They’d like you to believe that they are following the Koran. But no, they're not. Can I explain why I say that?
• 3: Actually, you know what? I have done something to stop ISIS and people like them. I wrote a novel. 

Now that we’ve got that tricky opening exchange out of the way, we’ve got a conversation. 

Coexistence is all about conversation. Now you and I can move on to a topic that ISIS or the Klan (which is, by the way, alive and well) would rather we avoid: What we might happen to have in common.

Like the weather. Or the interesting times we live in. Or our mutual curiosity about the best ways to lift a curse.

Nice to meet you. I look forward to continuing the conversation with you at http://bit.ly/ToropovBlog.

A New Plot Point.

Jeff—Saturday

I think I’m becoming even more Greek in my thinking. Why?  Because conspiracy theories are the life’s blood of the blame game in Greece, and I’m just about convinced there’s a vast one out there armed against me.  Armed in the sense of land-mining my path toward completing my new book and exploding my plot points into realities faster than I can write them.

All of which is driving me toward searching out “far-fetched” scenarios, ones that may not come to pass for at least a year—after the new book comes out.

But, then again, who knows what shape our world will be in by then?  Rhetoric will be white hot in the US because of our Presidential election, and Congressional inaction even more so for the same reason.  Most significant, though, will be how the world has come around to dealing with its rapidly metastasizing terrorist cancers.

The horrors in Paris of a week ago Friday seem to have galvanized thought into action. But we’ve seen that before, and seen, too, how governments can quickly waste such a unifying opportunity through myopic self-interest and capitulating to internal political pressures.

That is precisely how our enemies have come to rely upon us to behave, while they stay focused their long view game for achieving their global goals.  For example, I hear a lot of commentators saying these days that ISIS is a gang, recruiting members the same as do US street gangs by making the marginalized in their neighborhoods feel they are part of something that will embrace and protect them. But for ISIS that neighborhood is the worldwide social media network.

It makes sense, but the question is what is the world going to do about it? Simply determining the root cause of a problem does not mean it will be resolved.  Not by a long shot.  Someone has to step up and do something about it.

And while on the subject of “doing something about it,” since the whole world has apparently long known that ISIS finances much of its operations via its “tanker pipeline” trucking across Syria into Iraq and Turkey, why did it take until now (the Russians) to make those tankers and ISIS’s other oil assets a primary target of air strikes?

There are a lot of questions out there to be answered.  And, hopefully, lessons learned.

Sensibly, none of the questions appear to be blaming Greece for whatever part transit across its borders may have played in terrorists reaching Paris.  No sane thinking person could have missed that possibility when Europe left a bankrupt country to fend virtually for itself managing a historically unprecedented flood of migrants to its shores.

My guess is Greece is about to get a lot more assistance on that score.  In the week before 11/13, a lot of tough talk came out of Europe accompanying demands upon Greece to adopt Europe’s strict terms as a condition for securing promised bailout funds for itself and recapitalizing its banks. This week European resistance evaporated, and Greece and its banks will get their money.  Sadly, it looks like it took the horrors of Paris and Beirut to remind Europe of just how important it is to have a stabile Greece in its very shaky Mediterranean basin neighborhood.

But that’s another plot point.

—Jeff