“People need to be reminded more than they need instruction.”
-Samuel Johnson

The Faithless Elector stories shine a glaring light on complacency by homing in on people working frantically to preserve and protect the weakest, most vulnerable aspects of our democracy–the Electoral College, legislative oversight, an independent judiciary.

Samuel Johnson’s quote, above, might also extend to vigilance in politics. [He didn’t get everything right about politics, by the way, nor the Americas for that matter: see Taxation No Tyranny (1775)].  

Like housework, politics is never finished; and it is precisely when things seem to be going reasonably well that we let our collective guard down, stop paying attention.

Faithless Elector, which debuted in March, 2016, is a taut thriller about stealing the presidential election.  Its central premise concerns the latent weaknesses and possibility for abuse inherent in the Electoral College system.  The precise machinations envisioned in the book have not come to pass (thankfully!), but the larger issues raised by the story remain.  Those same weaknesses remain latent and prone to mischief…and there are others, as we are seeing almost daily.

Faithless Elector, and the second book in the series, Dark Network (on sale Oct. 20!) were never narrowly about political parties or merely the weakness(es) of the Electoral College; but rather, the precarious vulnerability of our democracy and its potential impotency in the face of decisive, ruthless, well-heeled interests.

“Governments are instituted among Men,” the Declaration of Independence reads, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.  The Faithless Elector series stares unblinking at the forces arrayed to thwart and negate that consent. Taken together, they are the stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

I’m gratified that readers (see Amazon reviews) and independent reviewers have picked up on these broader themes of political accountability and personal responsibility, of the necessity for “ordinary” people to participate in the life of their nation.

To take just three examples:

• Book Viral Review: “Taut and well-paced, but for readers reading between the lines it also works on a moral level.” (emphasis mine)

• “The pleasure of Faithless Elector lies not just its smooth evocative prose, but in the author’s justified confidence that good writing can make chases through recognizable locales sufficiently exciting without a Navy SEAL or a terrorist plot.” Review, Plattsburgh Press-Republican

• Publishers Weekly Review: “A fast-moving topical thriller…Surprising twists…add up to a highly suspenseful read.”

“We shall find such men, we shall find them in every country. We shall not need to bribe them. They will come of their own accord. Ambition and delusion, party squabbles and self-seeking arrogance will drive them.”

I don’t write with headlines in mind. There are no winking, sneaky caricatures of real people in my books. The stories I write are themselves gripping and bleak enough, and fiction can get at truths the headlines don’t have time for. Through narrative, stories and character fiction reveals truth.

The books I write are not about Trump per se. He is a symptom, or better, a marker pointing to a deeper, deadly disease. The books are pacy thrillers.  I’ve chosen that medium to write about what afflicts us, striving to make sense and, as Oliver Sachs would have it, “to write–intelligently, creatively, evocatively–about what it’s like living in the world at this time.”

In between preparations for my book launch for the second Imogen Trager novel, Dark Network, I’ve been working on the third book, called Consent of the Governed (coming summer 2018). This third book focuses on the broader dark network conspiracy and how the conspirators came to be. I began sketching the third book’s outlines when I sat down to write Dark Network in April of 2016.

Those outlines—about nihilist, nativist, totalitarian forces dividing and subverting democracy—were in place long before the November election. As I began to write Consent in February of this year, they were even more in evidence, though I naively worried my conspiracy would seem a little over the top.

To write the book, and for my own insight, I’ve been reading the “playbooks” and tactics of totalitarians, like the Nazi’s, the Stasi, Stalin; and they are chillingly informative. These are not nightstand reading. And once again, as events in the real world, from Breitbart to Brexit, to Charlottesville, to wherever the serpent raises its head next outstrip what I have on the page, the truth behind the headlines, the how-and-why, nevertheless remains crucial. People have died. There may be more.

The most chilling work I’ve come across in my research is Hermann Rauschning’s Hitler Speaks: The Voice of Destruction, from which the quote above comes. Currently, I have it as my epigram for the book, along with Prussian Field Marshall, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder’s “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” To be fair, von Moltke was writing in the mid-Nineteenth Century, and he was speaking specifically about battle, and the need to give decision-making authority to officers in the field during battle.

Taken together, however, the two quotes are my touchstone for who these conspirators are—opportunists. They sow mistrust, hatred, division and anarchy, and draw in the effective, opportunistic nihilists. It’s very like what we’re seeing today. The key is not that there’s some grand vision.  It’s a smash-and-grab, a nihilistic plunge into a species of anarchy in which self-dealing authority can consistently divide and rule.

Rauschning was an “early adopter” of Nazism who became disillusioned with it. But being in at the beginning—and then being dismissed—gave him a unique perspective. And it’s one that can be instructive now.

It’s crucial to remember that Hitler never won a majority. He was Chancellor of a coalition government. He came to power by stealth, political maneuvering, naïve collusion and outright murder. The Reichstag fire in February of 1933, was a terrorist act perpetrated by his own men, but successfully blamed on leftists. The furor over the destruction of the parliament assembly building allowed Hitler and the Nazi’s to seize full control. He used that control to cow the press, destroy the labor unions and stoke anti-Semitism. And despite the rhetoric (now and then) the power grab wasn’t for the volk. It was for whoever could grab the most and hold on to it.

They’ve been around forever, sometimes on ascendance, sometimes in decline, but always there. We would do well to remember that they don’t always come in such blatant, disgusting pageantry.

I highly recommend:
The Last Days of Adolph Hitler, Hugh Trevor-Roper
ISBN 978-0-330-49060-3

-and-

Hitler Speaks, A Series of Political Conversations with Adolph Hitler on his Real Aims, Hermann Rauschning (called The Voice of Destruction in Britain)
ISBN 978-1-162-93491-4

James McCrone is the author of the suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, and Dark Network (on sale Oct. 20). Publishers Weekly calls Faithless Elector a “fast-moving topical thriller.”  Its “surprising twists add up to a highly suspenseful read.”  Kirkus Reviews says it’s “a gripping and intelligently executed political drama.”

The sequel, Dark Network, is coming in October 20, 2017.

Faithless Elector, by James McCrone is available NOW through Amazon.
If you live in Philadelphia, pick up your copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center.  Support independent bookstores!  They support authors.

I took advantage of a visit to metro DC  for a friend’s 50th birthday celebration (and many more, Joel!) to do some location scouting for my upcoming novel, Dark Network, (available October 20!) the second Imogen Trager novel and follow up to Faithless Elector

Lansburgh Park

I’m not from DC, and I’ve never lived there, but my wife and I have good friends there, and we visit often.  Nevertheless, siting places for clandestine meetings, udon noodles and murder was a problem.

The first half of Faithless Elector was situated primarily in Seattle, which I know well, having lived there for over 20 years.  Though I now live in Philadelphia, I have intimate knowledge of the University of Washington campus, the Pike Place Market and the Arboretum.  For the first book, I used Google Streetview to refresh my memory of a place, or to calculate distances.  It worked pretty well.

But for the meetings and mayhem in Dark Network, I was forced to rely almost entirely on Google Streetview to find, establish and describe the locations.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked when I was finally able to do research on the ground.

Rock Creek Park

There were six sites I used in and around DC that I found using Streetview.  I was able to get to four of them. While visiting them suggested some tweaks and local color I hadn’t contemplated before, I did not have to abandon any of them.

The parking lot in Bethesda, MD, (yes, I know–another parking garage!) is as spooky as I thought/hoped it would be.  The ‘drops’ my conspirators use in Rock Creek and Lansburgh Parks work very well.  At no point, fortunately, did I get to a site and think “Oh, no! There’s a security camera right there.”  Even better, I was able to confirm that there was a camera right where I wanted it…which I had first seen on Streeview.

In fact, one area near the DC Armory is even better than I had hoped!

Dark Network is available for sale October 20, 2017.

When it’s finally out, I’ll be very interested to hear from DC-area readers about whether the sites I’ve chosen ‘work’ for them.

James McCrone is the author of the suspense-thrillers, Faithless Elector, and Dark Network. Publishers Weekly calls Faithless Elector a “fast-moving topical thriller.”  Its “surprising twists add up to a highly suspenseful read.”
Dark Network, is on-sale October 20.

Faithless Elector, by James McCrone is available through Amazon.
If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center.  Follow this blog, and like James’s FB page.