Source: Aneirin Flynn design and graphics
A Conspiracy Thriller to take your mind off your troubles
End of Lies, the third book in the Countless Lies trilogy, is free for one day only, Monday, November 23 on Amazon in eBook form. After Sunday, the price reverts to $3.99. Fans of physical books can buy the paperback edition on Amazon for $13.99. Download it at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N1CRH5Y/. (You don’t need a Kindle to read the book: Amazon has a free Kindle reader app that works on your tablet, laptop, PC or phone.)
I’m running the one-day promotion in response to a Dark Cure: A Covid Thriller reader’s comment. She wrote that she really liked Dark Cure, but did I have any other books that didn’t deal with a dread disease at the same time there was a pandemic going on? I took Meg’s request to heart and wrote back to extol the virtues of End of Lies. The book’s set in the summer of 2016 in the US, with a contentious presidential election building in the background. Long-thought-dead Bob Nolan has his hands full as he tracks Russia’s interference in the campaign in parallel with the deep state’s ongoing efforts to undermine America’s democracy. In short, even though End of Lies is all fiction, it has a contemporary feel to it. The action is fast and furious, and the plotlines less complex than its predecessors in the Lies trio, Sea of Lies and Pack of Lies.
With all the bad craziness in the world, hunkering down with a good book and your favorite beverage sounds like the thing to do. After you lock-up your freebie End of Lies, have a look at Dark Cure: A Covid Thriller: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M6F2G5D/.
Happy reading!
Bradley West, Singapore, November 21, 2021
The Bradley West Bourbon Interview (reprinted from March 2019)
True Lies Blog sat down in early March with Mr. West (L) and Basil Hayden (R) and recorded their conversation.
What is End of Lies like?
The book features Raiders of the Lost Ark-type pacing with a high body count and plenty of current affairs topics. Complicated personalities populate the book, and the action takes place in parallel in three geographies. Don’t pick up EOL expecting a conventional linear thriller with a superstar hero dominating the villains. Bob Nolan is a desk man who, late in life, has added pistol marksmanship and good physical conditioning to his cryptanalyst and hacking skillsets. Travis Ryder is a partially disabled former SEAL with an alcohol problem. Sam Hecker is a DEA senior manager with near zero tradecraft and a secret to hide. These are folks you invite to your home for grilled steaks and wine, not people who jump out of helicopters or rappel down buildings. EOL features characters readers can identify with and say, “Hey, that could have happened to me.”
End of Lies is the third book in Countless Lies, yet you recommend that new readers to the series start here. Why’s that?
End of Lies is shorter and less complicated than predecessors Sea of Lies and Pack of Lies. Mind you, EOL runs to 113,000 words, and readers still have to pay attention, but it’s nothing on SOL’s up to six parallel plotlines and three-dozen characters captured in 194,000 words, or POL’s four plotlines and two-dozen characters spread over 141,000 words. With that in mind, it may be easier to read the books in reverse despite a smattering of spoilers.
The same characters populate each book, and while a couple of them die in End of Lies, I don’t think that makes POL or SOL any less suspenseful. If you like the Countless Lies-style of conspiracy espionage fiction, by the time you get to Sea of Lies the length will be more a blessing than a curse. You can even buy all three eBooks on Amazon in one go for under twelve dollars at Amazon “Countless Lies” Trilogy
What actually happens in End of Lies?
Bob Nolan’s family is in the crosshairs, first pursued by former FSB director and long-term nemesis Chumakov, next by the new Medellín Cartel and finally from right-wing cabal calling itself “Higher Love” (see The Secret Team, March 1, 2019). Nolan, Hecker and Ryder simultaneously must defeat these adversaries while protecting their own families and safeguarding Nolan’s wife and two adult children.
In the first two books in the Countless Lies series, Nolan put country and duty ahead of family. End of Lies takes place over two weeks in August 2016, more than two years after Sea of Lies (March 2014) and Pack of Lies (April 2014). Nolan’s changed—for one thing, he’s legally dead—and End of Lies opens with Nolan hot on the cyber trail of “Mr. Love,” the anonymous leader of a treasonous secret society. The president directs Nolan’s Project Abyss team to investigate Russia’s interference in the forthcoming 2016 election. Nolan’s world goes sideways shortly later and the book takes off.
Sea of Lies and Pack of Lies dealt with MH370 and other mysteries and conspiracies in Burma, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, China and Australia versus End of Lies which takes place 95% in the US. Was this by accident or design?
A little bit of both. I wrote EOL in 2018 when the Mueller investigation was ramping up and Russia’s role in the 2016 election was less-well understood than today. I also wanted to include a bit on MH17’s downing as Russia received a free pass from the United Nations for reasons I don’t understand. As for geography, many US-based thriller readers are more familiar reading home-grown stories. I thought Pack of Lies would appeal to lovers of exotic locations such as Balochistan and Sri Lanka, but one reviewer wrote, “West writes convincingly about places you don’t want to visit.” That comment stuck with me and helped steer the third book to North America.
The back flap blurb mentions Russia and the 2016 election, a North Korea nuke and a coup while Nolan’s crew tries to free his kidnapped family. There’s a lot going on.
End of Lies overlays fiction on top of actual or plausible scenarios such as Russia’s efforts to undermine US democracy and the damage a nuclear electromagnetic pulse bomb could do to America’s power grid. There are tidbits on the downing of MH17, and the function and location of the CIA’s cold war weapons repository, the infamous Midwest Depot located inside Camp Stanley in San Antonio. Then there are two wholly fictional storylines, the first the Mr. Love-Higher Love cabal and the planned installation of a dictator presiding over an American empire, and the rebirth of the Medellín Cartel. There’s plenty for Countless Lies series conspiracy junkies to sink their teeth into without losing sight of the more traditional central plot thread, a man out to protect his family. I guess EOL is just a twenty-first-century Western at its heart.
If you like End of Lies, there are two more blockbusters in the series
Source: Aneirin Flynn design and graphics
Buy all three together on Amazon at Amazon “Countless Lies” Trilogy
.