Dear Goldsboro Crime Collective reader,
I’m delighted that you will be receiving my new thriller Octagon as your GCC pick for May, particularly as it’s a Goldsboro special edition with fantastic map-design edges.
Octagon is an international spy-action thriller that pits a former intelligence officer and an ex-special forces soldier against an unknown enemy in a race across Europe to stop a terrifying mass casualty attack.
Above all, I wanted to tell a story that, in the words of Ian Fleming, simply kept people turning the pages. But beyond entertaining readers I also – like another of my writing heroes, Robert Ludlum – wanted the book to feel authentic. And that meant a lot of research.
In terms of place, I set Octagon in locations I have travelled to – if not the precise spot, then at least the same city or region. In that sense, the book was decades in the making! So, if you’re interested to see where any part of it unfolds – down to the exact building, street, or forest track – plug the GPS coordinates at the start of each chapter into any mapping app and have a look for yourself.
Octagon’s subject matter features some extreme political and philosophical ideas which, unfortunately, are also quite real, and required some unpleasant background reading on my part. As abhorrent as such views are, I hope that if we can understand them slightly better and recognise the circumstances in which vulnerable people can be manipulated into becoming extremists, we may at least be a step closer to reducing the problem.
The other challenging element in writing Octagon was getting my main characters’ professions right. Stella is a former SIS officer who now runs her own private intelligence company. Tommy is an ex-SAS operator who makes a living on ‘The Circuit’, doing private security jobs. Hoss is a technical investigator with a set of specialist tools to obtain and analyse information. But these are not everyday professions.
In researching them, I was fortunate to have come across several real spooks and special forces soldiers during my time serving as a diplomat in conflict zones. These people all played a part in creating Stella and Tommy, from their speech to their clothes and habits, and several of those friends helped me specifically with Octagon. Hoss’s work is informed by Mark, a researcher with government security experience who remains at the cutting edge today, and every technique Hoss uses exists in the real world at the time of writing.
Hopefully that glimpse under the bonnet of Octagon will whet your appetite to get stuck in, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. I’m currently finishing off a sequel (no spoilers…), so if you like what you read, there will be more to come next year!
With very best wishes,
C. J. Merritt
