Author Brad Thor on Death Threats from Islamic Extremists

Interview with Jonathan Lowe

Brad Thor is not averse to taking risks. He does so with his latest thriller THE LAST PATRIOT, about a Homeland Security operative named Scot Harvath, who goes on the hunt for a secret final revelation made by the Prophet Mohammed just before his assassination. This revelation, if disclosed, will end radical Islam's violence against non-believers without another bullet or bomb required. Naturally, there are those intent on never leaking this secret, and who are prepared to kill in order to prevent that. In this fictional thriller, and in the tradition of Robert Ludlum, the target includes Harvath, who is also a former Navy SEAL. But in real life, one might ask if the target might include author Brad Thor himself, as a former Homeland Security operative. I asked Thor about this, just before his July book tour. JONATHAN LOWE: Your new novel is part covert ops political thriller and part "DaVinci Code" mystery. How did it click for you to combine the two? BRAD THOR: My thrillers have always centered around covert/black ops and the domestic political landscape. They are subjects I love to write about. Through my writing, I have gotten to know lots of the players in these two arenas. The more time I spend shadowing them and seeing what their lives are like, the more I fall in love with this subject matter and the more I want to write about it. LOWE: Do you have any fears of becoming the next exiled Salman Rushdie for postulating such a volatile story line? THOR: What a lot of people don't know about me is that I have spent the last 20 years of my life learning about Islam. It is a fascinating subject, especially in how it promotes violence. What's also fascinating is that whenever early copies of the Qur'an are discovered in Muslim nations, they are quickly secreted away. Researchers who have attempted to study them have wound up dying in very mysterious "accidents." Now I have come out with a thriller that suggests the Qur'an is missing a very key text and I am being threatened with death. My book is fiction, but it is based on a handful of fascinating facts and the death threats only seem to support my theory that Islam is hiding a very big secret. Am I afraid of becoming the next Salman Rushdie? Honestly, I don't relish the idea. Rushdie at one point had a $5 million bounty on his head and supposedly hundreds of Muslim assassins had traveled to London to kill him. Will I change what I have written or somehow recant and beg forgiveness for what is contained within The Last Patriot? Absolutely not. In fact, I find the hypocrisy here fascinating: Islam is a religion of peace and if you say that it isn't, we'll kill you. LOWE: What kind of research was involved in writing The Last Patriot? THOR: The idea for this novel was born in part from an Atlantic Monthly cover article by Toby Lester entitled "What is the Koran?" I had discovered the piece, several years after its January 1999 publication, while doing research on another novel and had tucked it away for future use. Then I came across an article written by Gerard W. Gawalt, formerly of the Library of Congress, entitled "America and the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe." I started wondering if there was a way I could combine the historical relevance of the Quran and Thomas Jefferson's experience with the Barbary pirates to create a thriller that would be relevant today. LOWE: Jefferson and Islam. There's a connection? THOR: Yes. Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to go to war against radical Islam. The problems Jefferson and America faced over two hundred years ago are incredibly similar to what we as a nation face today and there is much to be learned from them. LOWE: You once had a show on public TV called Traveling Lite. Obviously you're not doing that anymore. THOR: Traveling has provided me with incredible adventures like running with the bulls "French Style" in the Camargue, paragliding over Geneva, Switzerland, and caving in Austria. Even now, as research, I visit as many of the places I write about as possible. I also read untold numbers of books on the subjects I explore in my novels. I am constantly challenging myself to make my stories as accurate and true-to-life as possible. LOWE: I wrote a short story whose fictional premise was that someone in the Bush administration suggested bombing Mecca. Then I learned that someone actually had suggested it. Have you had any surprises in your research that affected plotting? THOR: I have surprises like this happen to me all the time. There are certain suggestions and possibilities that just make sense. They key is in beating other writers to it. As I wrapped up the first draft of my manuscript, I received a call from my editor. She had just read a story in The Wall Street Journal about a mysterious archive of ancient Qur'anic texts in Germany that was believed to have been destroyed in 1944. It contained 450 rolls of films that supposedly chronicled the evolution of the Qur'an – the Muslim holy book which all Muslims believe was revealed complete, perfect, and inviolate to Islam's founder Mohammed in the 7th century. The archive, and its subsequent study, had only been handled by three men. The first died in a strange climbing accident in 1933. The second died in a mysterious plane crash in 1941. The third man, wanting to be rid of the entire collection, pretended it had been destroyed and never spoke of it for over sixty years. He died recently at age 93. It seems there is much here worth investigating, and for which men are still willing, even in the case of The Last Patriot, to kill to keep secret. LOWE: You have an amazing website, and there's an enhanced CD on the audio book version of The Last Patriot with a trailer for the book. Any thoughts on the technology of marketing books? Trailers are a relatively new phenomenon, and also make sense for audio books, which are now like audio movies. The one bright spot in publishing these days, with many new players entering the field. For example, I'd never even heard your reader Armand Schultz before. THOR: Thank you. I have worked hard to recreate the experience of my novels on the site and my web design team deserves much of the credit. The idea of doing a trailer for The Last Patriot really appealed to me. Trailers are one of my favorite things about watching movies. A trailer can make or break a film and I thought that it would be very interesting to try to market a book in the same fashion. I wrote the script, chose the narrator and then worked with my design team on the soundtrack and images. Creating a trailer on the web with flash animation is a lot different than creating a film trailer as we had to create most of our images from scratch and we always had to keep in mind perspective by placing objects in the foreground, mid-ground and background. It took a long time, but I am very proud of the results. I also agree that audio books are a bright spot in publishing. It is good to see the industry embracing new ways of doing things. About Armand Schultz, I think he's fantastic. He's a Broadway-trained actor and really understands my characters, so he's able to craft different voices and vocal mannerisms for all of them. LOWE: What's next for you? THOR: I am currently at work on my 2009 thriller, which I am very excited about, and am getting ready to take July off to tour for The Last Patriot. There has been some speculation that because of the death threats over The Last Patriot that my tour is going to be cancelled. That is not true. The tour is going ahead as planned, although the Canadian leg has indeed been cancelled. If, though, I get a Salman Rushdie-sized bounty placed on my head, then we'll have to reconsider everything. But as I said, I don't relish the thought and honestly hope that doesn't happen. If it does, then so be it. My right to write whatever I want is equaled by a right just as powerful - the right not to read it. Jonathan Lowe can be found blogging at burjreview.blogspot.com. His author website is JustSayNoWay.com.