Recently, I asked a spy thriller author if he ever steeped himself in the exploits, ruminations, recriminations, and heroism of the (mostly) men regularly featured on military podcasts. To my mind, in the hands of a good interviewer, there is no better military oral history happening today.
Aside from informing Joe American Podcast Listener about these many hard-to-bear stories, these podcasts help point authors to previously unconsidered storylines, rabbit holes for further research, and insights into character attributes.
Collections of these authentic moments, some as small as a turn of phrase or a dumb joke, put a foundation of bone and sinew on a thinly defined character and turn him into a memorable one. Think Rob Tacoma in Ben Coes's Dewey Andreas series.
My interviewee told me he didn't avail himself of those stories, but then again, this guy can fill shelves of books with his own personal military stories, so it's understandable why he wouldn't need to.
For those who haven't attempted to save the Lone Survivor Navy SEAL on a mountain in Afghanistan to tap into as a personal story, however, these podcast stories are gold.
And it's gratifying when there's confirmation that these stories are important and useful to people who tell stories for a living.
A brand new set of spy thriller authors, Karen and Bill Brodsky, who co-write under the pen name K.B. Brodsky, name-checked podcasters in the acknowledgements section of their debut novel Beyond Honor. This husband-and-wife team has allowed the likes of Jocko Willink, Jack Carr, Shawn Ryan, and the voices of the Cleared Hot, Black Rifle Coffee, and GBRS Group podcasts to add flavor and authenticity to their storytelling.
And Beyond Honor is quite a story.
The life of their chief protagonist, Kevin Rhodes, a CIA paramilitary operative who came up as an Alaskan hunting guide, is unalterably changed by special operators who hire Rhodes's dad's company for a hunting trip. Dad's best guide is his teenage kid, Kevin, who can pilot a plane and spot big game hundreds of yards away.
The pros are impressed by the kid's skills and urge him to serve in the military, and within a mere few years, Rhodes is part of an elite CIA special operations force.
Rhodes's gung-ho, however, turns to bitter anger after his team confronts a deadly attack. He becomes an unguided missile in search of retribution.
The Brodskys bring online a parallel storyline involving a CIA analyst who detects a deep state plot against the president.
Eventually, the two protagonists, Rhodes and analyst Whitney Skylerm, find themselves on parallel tracks of the same mission — he, on a solo mission to save a CIA unofficial cover operative who's somewhere in Siberia, and she, who has put together a Russian plot to gain complete mastery over the president of the United States.
The Brodskys take a page out of the Russia! Russia! Russia! information operation we now know was run by the intelligence community (IC) and the leftist media.
There's so much more when Russia House, CIA, and the Puzzle Palace get involved.
The duo uses the trope and seamlessly weaves a story about Vladimir Putin's official banking laundromat — the "Alta Bank" — with the twin story of Skyler, who discovers the connection goes straight to the Oval Office.
In between, both protagonists must confront the choice between their default factory settings of loyalty to country and being willing to do the right thing, and working outside of convention.
Former special operator and blockbuster author, Jack Carr, writes that "Beyond Honor carries the DNA of the great old-school espionage novels fused with the action of the modern thriller. It reminds me why I fell in love with the genre."
Mark Greaney, author of the Gray Man series, says, "Pitting U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies against each other in ways that would make Jason Matthew's Red Sparrow and Nelson DeMille's The Charm School proud."
It's a terrific first novel. It's not flawless. Some professional spooks take issue with the duo's nomenclature, but I'll bet you won't spot the issues.
The Brodskys' second novel in the series is written and at the publisher. Don't be misled; there is a whopper of a cliffhanger that will make you salivate for the next installment. A third is in the works — if Beyond Honor delivers on the bottom line. So, readers, you know what to do.
How do two people, much less two people who are married, write one thriller together? That's just the most obvious question I asked them on a recent Adult in the Room Podcast interview, but there's so much more to these two.
The Brodskys are terrific people and terrific novelists.
Watch our interview.
