Tag: Sam Teagarden

A Few More Quick Questions with Gray Basnight

Not only do I really appreciate Basnight’s taking the time to do this, but Lisa Weiss, the publicist who got me this book has been very helpful and encouraging. I wanted to thank her, too. This is one of the best sets of Answers I’ve received to my Questions, I hope you enjoy it, too.

The last time we did a Q&A, you said you were finishing a sequel to Flight of the Fox, I assume it was this, what was it about Sam Teagarden that made you want to write a sequel about him (an idea that Sam himself jokes about)? Is there a third book for the professor?

There are two reasons Sam Teagarden puts in this reappearance in Madness of the Q.  The first was reader feedback.  In fact, this sequel is dedicated to those readers who wanted another roller coaster ride with my mathematics professor, who’s dubbed by the media as the “American Prometheus.”

The second reason is the Q Document.  The inspiration for the story came several years ago while listening to a Great Courses audio lecture about the New Testament.  When the professor casually mentioned something called the Quelle Document (German for “Source”) as being a theorized long missing source for parts of Matthew and Luke, I pegged onto it as a potential “what if” fictional scenario.  What if The Quelle Document were discovered in our time.  And an even bigger “what if’ — what if the document said something from the founding days of Christianity that certain groups didn’t want it to say, and what if it said something that certain opposing groups did want it to say?  Well, my guess is that all hell would break loose.  So, in Madness of the Q, it does – fictionally, of course!

As for a third book, we shall see.  If there’s sufficient demand from readers and/or the publisher, I’ll certainly consider it.  I do have a nascent idea.  All I will say is, I like Puerto Rico and perhaps there’s a reason for Teagarden to end up there.  It’s a wonderful and adventurous island filled with good people, good food, and plenty of potential for a fictional thriller.

What kind of research went into this book? What’s the one thing you learned and, try as you might, you just couldn’t bring into the book?

Once I learned about the Q Document, I began reading up on the theory that it might actually have existed but was lost, and may someday be found.  Not all biblical scholars agree, of course.  But those who believe that it is an extant missing source for two of the Synoptic Gospels are both faith based and secular based, which intrigued me.

I also re-read a wonderful book first published in 1841 and still in print today.  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay is occasionally called the first pop-psych book to explore crowd think.  It dovetailed nicely with my “all hell breaks loose” theme, so I wove it into the title and quoted Mackay as the epigraph:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds;
it will be seen that they go mad in herds,
while they recover their senses slowly,
and one by one.

As for what was left on the cutting room floor, I felt a need to have Teagarden’s spouse Cynthia, be more of a partner.  They met in Flight of the Fox and she became an important ally in many ways.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t join him in the sequel because he’s on a solo run through Israel and Europe and there was no way around that.  Thus, I invented imaginary conversations between the two to help him get through the roughest days, and justified the technique as a product of his stress.  Thus far, most reader feedback has been positive with this approach.

I think most of us readers can guess some of these, but would you talk about the challenges in featuring someone of Teagarden’s age in a thriller (particularly those you didn’t expect)?

You mean the fact that he’s older than the average thriller protagonist?  Yes, indeed.  He turned 50 in Flight of the Fox which makes him 56 in Madness of the Q.  

The principal challenge is to convince the reader that someone of that age is still sufficiently vigorous to take on dark forces.  This is important to me.  The older I get, the more convinced I am of an age bias built into American culture and our collective way of thinking (to which I was admittedly guilty of in my younger years).

Sam is however highly qualified for the job in both thrillers.  His first gig out of college was a desk job at the CIA as an entry-level code analyst.  It was so boring he quit after one year.  He then became a mathematics professor who is highly skilled in the art of encryption and decryption.

Aside from his age, Teagarden does not have a black belt and knows very little about firearms.  So, both his age and his lack of fighting skills may challenge a reader’s expectation of the formulaic run-for-your-life character.

I intentionally made all these choices to construct a character far less Jason Bourne and more of an Everyman.  If readers are unbothered by his age, I’ve succeeded.  If readers who are a little bothered by his age but stick with the narrative because the momentum carries them to its conclusion, I’ve still succeeded.

There’s a time jump between the two books, putting this one into our near future. How fun was it speculating about 2025 tech—and how hard was it not to go too crazy with it?

It was great fun.  I have no desire to be a sci-fi writer, so there was no difficulty in not getting carried away.  But I really enjoy casting into the near-term future and imagining where foreseeable technology is going based on where it has been.

For example, God Glasses.  In the story, God Glasses allow a type of Superman x-ray vision.  That may not happen anytime soon, but we already have the technology for video cameras to be built into eyeglass frames.

Another is public pop-ups.  Web based pop-up ads annoy me, umm, a whole lot.  It happens because neither the advertiser nor the website proprietor cares about the irritation factor – and for plenty of people, it’s an exasperating reality but one they mostly just accept.  Given that, let’s get ready for the same to happen in public.  In the novel, Sam Teagarden and his wife have researched airfare to the Bahamas.  Later, when he’s on a public sidewalk, the wi-fi gear attached to a giant billboard reads the credit card in his wallet and suddenly Sam’s image and name appear on the billboard as the advertiser stalks his movements in the effort to sell him a trip to the Bahamas.  If this ever happens in reality, pro-privacy forces will naturally object.  I’m certain, however, they’ll lose that fight because the vast majority of people will find it really cool to see their mug on a billboard, even if only for a few seconds.

Let’s play “Online Bookstore Algorithm” (a game I’ve recently invented). What are 3-5 books whose readers may like Madness of the Q?

Well, I’m going to share the books mentioned by several of the early reviewers, and the ones that inspired me to try my hand at thrillers:

  • Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series
  • Dan Brown’s Langdon series
  • Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca, by Ken Follett
  • Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco 

And I’d be remiss for not giving a humble plug to the prequel:

  • Flight of the Fox, by Gray Basnight (that’s me!)

What’s next for Gray Basnight? Any progress on that YA novel you mentioned before?

Thank you so much for asking about my YA!  I love it and remain committed to its commercial prospects.  Authoritative persons have recently advised me that it likely fits more neatly into Middle Grade, which means substantial rewriting, including the need to adjust the age of Junior Benét, the central character – a schoolgirl with a genius IQ who gets caught up in a dangerous adventure in New York City.

Presently I’m working on a crime novel, though I’m not sure how to classify it with more specificity.  It’s drawn from my appreciation of both Quentin Tarantino and Elmore Leonard and my love for the classic Sergio Leone movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  When finished, it will likely have emphatic elements of humor and romance.  And, by the way, it too is set about five years into the future.

Thanks for your time — and thanks for some more time with Sam Teagarden, I really enjoyed it, and hope you have plenty of success with it.

Thank you so much for this Q&A.  Great questions and lots of fun to spend time with you again.


Madness of the Q by Gray Basnight Left Me Ambivalent (I didn’t dislike it, but…)

I’ve got a Q&A with Gray Basnight coming up later this morning—come back to check it out. I haven’t read it yet (didn’t want it to impact what I wrote), but trust that it’ll be interesting in light of what I say below.

Madness of the Q

Madness of the Q

by Gray Basnight
Series: Sam Teagarden, #2

eARC, 368 pg.
Down & Out Books, 2020

Read: November 23-30, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

What’s Madness of the Q About?

Simply put, it’s the further adventures of professor Sam Teagarden following his uncovering of a large conspiracy within the FBI in 2018’s Flight of the Fox. In the six years since then, a slight mythology has built up around him—he’s got a reputation as one who’ll bring the truth to the world—when all he wants to do is teach math and spend time with his wife.

But it’s his reputation that brings him into the middle of this particular situation. One group wants someone like him to bring information to the forefront of the world, no matter the cost. Another group is afraid of people like him and targets him for assassination before he even knows that there’s something to be exposed to the world. But the FBI catches wind about this before the assassin makes an attempt and saves his life. They also would like him to be involved in a current case, his reputation alone should make things calmer.

What’s the case? Well, the previously theoretical “Q” document (a theoretical source—along with the Gospel of Mark—for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke) has possibly been discovered. Not only that, but there’s a lot of speculation that something big has been discovered in the text itself that wasn’t used by Matthew or Luke and may shake the foundation of religious groups around the world.

It’s been some time since the document was discovered, but now it’s been translated and decoded. The contents are set to be revealed to the world, and on the verge of that, there’s been a rash of mass suicides throughout the world by Christian-ish groups.

Teagarden’s barely gotten involved when his group in Israel are attacked and he goes on the run, trying to get safely to Germany in time for the conference that will feature the unveiling of this document that may be Q.

Will he make it? Will he be able to bring the truths hidden for millennia to light? Are there truths contained at all? These questions and more are dealt with alongside the thrill-ride.

Yeah, that’s a little longer than I usually spend on these sections, but it’s that kind of plot.

What Parts Really Worked for Me?

There’s a lot about this book to commend—for starters, the way that it talks about the “legend” around Teagarden following the events of Flight of the Fox. It felt very real, very authentic—he’s a folk hero to some and a folk villain to others.

Also, there’s the tech from 2025—there’s just a lot of little touches to make the world feel slightly advanced—and slightly annoying. Authentically so, I should add. There are some cool moves forward in technology, and they come with costs to things like privacy. There’s a great temptation to ignore everything else about the book and do a deep dive on this stuff—missing the forest for a few trees, but Basnight did a good enough job with these trees that it’d be fun.

The best part of this book is watching Teagarden at work—instead of making his way down the Eastern seaboard in the States, he’s making his way north from Israel through Italy to Germany. An older math professor, not in the best of health, is just fun to watch in this kind of role. There are a handful of times when it’s not him running, it’s Teagarden going toe-to-toe with someone set on doing him harm, too. I loved them all, his approach (and the way Basnight depicts this approach) are some of the most entertaining passages I’ve read in thrillers this year.

What Didn’t Work For Me?

Everything to do with the Q document and the reactions of various Christian groups, cults, and others to it. I’d have to get into details that are both spoilerific and too detailed for a post like this to adequately describe my problems. But I don’t see a cult caring about the results of textual examination from something found in an archeological dig from Israel. I’m not that sure that a Pentecostal Snake Handling group is going to care that much, either. Nor do I see other Christian groups being driven to suicide because of the initial results of a translation from a very disputed text.

I know people who engage in Biblical textual criticism, and I’ve read a little bit on the serious end of popular works on the subject, and I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work this way. It’s not the kind of field where a bombshell discovery is going to come to light and the entire discipline is instantly changed. It’s going to be debated, dissected, wrangled with, and then maybe, things will shift*. I get that it’s fiction, but I just couldn’t swallow any of this as hard as I tried.

* This assumes that something like Basnight’s Q Document actually exists (or that the actual Q exists and says something like his)

The Big Theme

The one part of the religious aspect of the book that appealed to me was the discussion of faith, of devotion, of commitment on the part of both the religious and the anti-religious (the non-religious among humanity didn’t really factor into things, this was a pro vs. con kind of thing). There’s a group at work in this novel with the aim of eliminating all religion, all theism, throughout the world—and they are devout. Seriously devout. Contrasting these “true believers” with ardent religious people is striking, and deserves some thought. It reminded me of the article “Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians” from The Atlantic a couple of years ago, but coming at it from a different angle.

So, what did I think about Madness of the Q as a Whole?

I’m really not sure what to say here. I thought about this a lot while I read it, and have thought about it a lot since I finished—both the details and the themes. And I’m still not sure. I dug the thriller aspects of it, the tech, the character of Sam Teagarden and when the book leaned into those aspects, I was happy. When the foundation—Q and the groups wanting to use the document for their own ends (or those despairing what they thought it might way)—was the focus, I had a hard time pushing on.

I liked (and gave 4 Stars to) the previous Sam Teagarden book. I would absolutely read a third novel featuring him (but I might hesitate if it seems to be in a Robert Langdon-ish vein again). But I just don’t know what to say about this one. It’s going to stay with me longer than books I’ve been very positive about this year—it’s definitely stayed with me longer than books I didn’t like this year. But I’m not sure I can give it a recommendation or a pan. I don’t like just giving a shrug when trying to say what I think about a book, but I think that’s where I am.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my honest opinion and this post.

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Flight of the Fox by Gray Basnight: An Unlikely Hero. A Credible Threat. A Story You Hope Is Fiction

Flight of the FoxFlight of the Fox

by Gray Basnight
Series: Sam Teagarden, #1

Kindle Edition, 404 pg.
Down & Out Books, 2018
Read: January 10 – 11, 2019

Kill a man’s dog, break a man’s rules.

No, this isn’t a John Wick tribute/knock-off. Not at all. Just another tale about a guy with his priorities right.

A grief-stricken, new widower finally snapped after the death of his dog (no doubt his emotional instability aided by the pain killers he took following the car accident that killed his wife), makes a ranting, angry, delusional phone call to the police, saying something about guns and shooting before killing a neighborhood resident and then running from the police. Authorities consider him potentially armed and dangerous.

Or at least that’s what the authorities want you to think.

In reality, Samuel Teagarden is a math professor who was attacked for reasons that he doesn’t understand by drones at his home. Teagarden makes a panicked call to the police for help but escapes, although his aged dog dies — as does someone from the neighborhood. He has no idea what’s going on (as the book opens), but he knows that someone is trying to kill him. As you can imagine, this is a pretty good motivation to move as quickly as you can — which isn’t easy, because the car accident that took his wife from him left him with two broken knees.

That’s right, he’s 49, he’s a math teacher and he’s running around on two mostly-healed broken knees — you can practically see Tom Cruise or a Hemsworth lining up to get cast as him in the movie, right?

But why would someone want to kill him? Well, back before he got his doctorate, he was an entry-level code analyst for the CIA and he’s dabbled in the field since — and someone had sent him encoded correspondence from the earth twentieth century. Neither Teagarden or the sender realized how sensitive it was and that there were very powerful people in a “three-letter” agency who didn’t want anyone decoding the correspondence, much less knowing it existed.

So, Teagarden has to evade whoever is trying to kill him and the police who think he killed someone — while trying to decrypt this stack of code and figure out who is out for him. He has his wits, a little bit of cash and a little luck on his side, the other side has resources, drones, surveillance equipment, trained assassins and a federal budget backing them.

Sounds like the ingredients of a heckuva thriller right? It is. It’s also one of those that I could utterly ruin for prospective readers by saying just a little more — so I’m going to resist the temptation to give anything but that bird’s eye view.

I can’t tell you how or exactly when the book got its hook set in me – which is a good sign, I prefer not to know how I’m being manipulated. But I can say I was a little skeptical initially, but I remember something forced me to stop reading, and I was annoyed by it, and when I checked, it the progress meter was at 14%. That’s not long at all for me to get as hooked as I was.

Now, all of us have read/watched a thriller where 3 out of the 4 people the protagonist has met in the last month have some necessary knowledge and/or connection that the protagonist needs to survive and/or meet their goal. Flight of the Fox is the same way — Teagarden meets just the right people, catches all the right breaks, and so on — but unlike typical protagonists, he notices this. He doesn’t take it for granted, he sees it happening and it affects him. This is a little touch, but its these little things that shows Basnight’s skill and uniqueness in the field.

Teagarden is a great character — he’s fallible, he’s human, but he’s also creative, smart and resourceful. He has to be to survive this situation. The assassin after him from the beginning is cold, efficient and deadly — you never have any doubt about that. His colleagues and employer are also the kind of people you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. There are a couple of fantastic characters in these pages and the rest are pretty good, too.

The story is the obligatory roller coaster — it’s fun, fast with a lot of twists and turns. You also spend a little time sure that you’re in a free fall only to realize that everything’s been under firm control the entire time. It’s realistic enough to make you a little worried about drones flying overhead and to wonder just how reality-based the correspondence is — but it never sacrifices the sense of a fun (and fictional . . . I hope) story for the reader. I heartily recommend it.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel in exchange for this post and my honest opinion.

—–

4 Stars

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