Brad Taylor

Brad Taylor's new thriller is Ring of Fire, the latest in his Pike Logan series. From the author's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Ring of Fire?

A: Actually, it's hard to pin Ring of Fire down to one single idea. The leak of the Panama Papers intrigued me on a strategic level, as well as the redacted pages from the official congressional inquiry into 9/11 about Saudi Arabian complicity.

Beyond that, I'd seen a few intel alerts about ISIS using "toy" drones for attacks, and then that the 15th anniversary for 9/11 had serious threats in play. Luckily, none of them came to pass, but the book itself had many, many different attack points that coalesced.

I wanted to do a traditional intelligence hunt, showing how hard it is to separate the wheat from the chaff when trying to prevent such attacks, and had a myriad of different points to provide inspiration. I always try to weave current, real-world problems into my writing, and...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue