Kenneth Eade - Expressing Everyday Outrage in Thrillers

Kenneth Eade - Expressing Everyday Outrage in Thrillers
author of the day

Before he started writing bestselling political thrillers, author Kenneth Eade practised law for 30 years. During this time, he saw everything that was wrong with the system and today, whenever Eade sees injustice, he feels inspired to write about it. Eade has been described as one of the strongest thriller writers on the scene, and we are happy to have him as our Author of the Day. In this interview, we chat about politics, how Eade's law experience shaped his books and why he loves to explore controversial topics.

Please give our readers a short introduction to what Paladine is about

Paladine is the story of Robert Garcia, a special forces operative who is tapped out of the military to become the leader of a death squad.  Robert is a trained killer.  It is the only thing he knows how to do.  He tries to retire from the only life he has ever known, tries to remain anonymous, but is brought back into the spotlight when he comes to the aid of a fellow soldier who is being wrongfully court-martialed.  He finds himself in the right place at the right time, where he ends up killing a terrorist and saving many lives.  Social media hails him as a hero and gives him the name, "Paladine."  Robert is not a hero.  He is an anti-hero, one of the bad guys, but since his targets happen to be terrorists, people root him on and he finds gainful employment in doing what he does best --killing people.

Why do you enjoy doing political thrillers?

Writing political thrillers gives me an outlet to express the outrage that I see all around me every day.  People don't realize just how much the government manipulates them and steps on their rights, but thanks to the Internet, and whistle blowers like Wikileaks, all the information is there.  With my first novel, "An Involuntary Spy," I sought to expose the revolving door between government and private industry.  Nobody realizes that the chemical companies control the regulatory agencies that are supposed to keep them in check.  It is the classic story of the wolf guarding the hen house.  The chemical companies' lobby installs their outgoing executives in high positions at the FDA, the USDA, and the EPA and when those officials leave the government, they go back to high paying jobs in the private sector.  As a result, we have high levels of cancer-causing pesticides in our food, lack of biological diversity in seed, and the chemical companies are well on the way to controlling the world's food supply.  This is the way it works with all government regulation, unfortunately.

The next subject I tackled, in my first legal thriller was bank fraud in the case of "Predatory Kill."  It was simply outrageous to me how the big banks were able to create high risk mortgage backed securities which failed and almost triggered a complete economic collapse, and then were given no interest loans by new dollars from the government to supposedly "aid the economy."  What happened was the banks just got bigger, investors lost their investments, and consumers lost their houses to foreclosure.

Every time I see an injustice like this in current events, it inspires me to write a story about it.  My next legal thriller, "A Patriot's Act" was about a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Iraq, who is at the wrong place at the wrong time and is sold by bounty hunters to the U.S. Military and shipped to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, where he is tortured to death and the death is covered up.  This was a current event when I wrote it, before the exposure of the CIA black operations torture centers, and now seems to be coming back to the forefront with a president elect who thinks waterboarding is not good enough and who wants to "fill up" Guantanamo with "bad dudes."  The trouble is where are we going to get those "bad dudes"?  It saddens me to see that the United States, which should be a beacon for human rights, can talk about it and condemn other countries, but commits some of the worse abuses of all. We should be an example for the world to follow, not be ashamed of.

The next political topic I tackled was police brutality in "Unreasonable Force."  This book came out right before Sandra Bland died in a jail cell after a traffic stop gone wrong.  It is the story of a black man who is detained by police for a minor traffic incident.  Since he is a lawyer, he knows what his rights are and will not have them be violated when the police officer pushes him too far.  When it all goes sour, and the police officer's partner is accidentally shot, he is tried for murder.

In "The Spy Files" my lawyer protagonist defends a journalist accused of disseminating classified material he received "mistakenly" from the FBI pursuant to a Freedom of Information request.  The twist comes when the lawyer is prosecuted for having possession of the classified information under the Espionage Act.

In "Beyond All Recognition" which is about a captain who is court-martialed for following orders of his superiors, I examine the issue of perception management, which is how the government pays millions every year to certain public relations companies to control the news and compel people to support them in their various foreign invasions, which result in unnecessary deaths of our military men and women and civilians, as well as the creation of millions of refugees and, as we can see in the Middle East, it has created a vacuum into which terrorists have secured territory and declared their own caliphate.

You practised law for 30 years before becoming an author. How much does this experience impact your work?

In the past 30 years, I have represented people in both civil and criminal cases.  I have seen the way the government and the legal system works, what happens in criminal investigations and court trials, and I know what is wrong with it.  I also can express it to people in my stories in a way that they can understand it and it doesn't seem so foreign to them.  That is an asset and it is very rewarding for me to hear that people actually not only enjoy my stories, but they get something important out of them other than just a day or two of entertainment.

Vigilante justice is quite a controversial topic, with many for and against it. Why did you decide to write about it?

I'm not looking for easy paths to follow.  Controversial and complex topics are always more interesting to explore.  I wanted to write in this genre, but I don't believe that vigilante justice is any more effective or just than our president's "targeted killing" program with assassin drones.  As we have seen with the exposure of the CIA black ops sites, there is an underworld undercurrent in our government, a branch that operates outside of the legal boundaries of international law and does things the government needs to do, like assassinating people.  If these agents (called illegals) are caught, the government will deny responsibility, knowledge and authority.  What happens to these people after they leave the system when all they know how to do is kill and it comes so naturally to them?  That is the subject I wanted to explore with the Paladine series.  They are out there, and people need to work for a living, right?  By no means do I condone this.  In fact, the epigraph for "Paladine" is a Robert Kennedy quote which reads, "Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law.  And when the law loses, freedom languishes."  I am just recognizing the reality of the way things are, as I do with all my stories.

Many of your books are bestsellers and you have won multiple awards. Was there a single defining moment or event where you suddenly thought, 'Now I'm an Author' as in—this is now my career?"

I still can't believe that I have a new career after the law.  But, as my writing "hobby" started to take up more of my time,  I realized that I could advocate for more justice with a larger audience of readers than I could with a few people in a courtroom.  Not only that, I have always thought of myself as a writer.  I just never have never recognized the opportunity before the self-publishing phenomenon.

What inspired the character of Robert Garcia? How was this anti-hero conceived in your mind?

I can't take credit for Robert.  He is the conception of a friend of mine, First Sergeant George Gonzalez (U.S. Army Retired).  George saw people like Robert when he was in the service.  He inspired me to write "Beyond All Recognition" and that is where we first are introduced to Robert.  George likes to say that he conceived of Robert, but I brought him to life.  Therefore, you can call him a collaboration.  I like to run my draft chapters by George for comment as I am working on them.  

Social Media features quite prominently in this book. Why did you pick this approach?

As we can see, especially in the latest presidential campaign, social media has taken a forefront in how we (especially Millennials) get our news and entertainment.  It is a revolution in the way that people interact with each other.  It is a kind of virtual reality within a real world.  The best way to expose Robert's character to the world was to have it captured on video and blasted out to millions of people in the Twittersphere.  

Say Paladine gets a movie adaptation. Which actor would you like to see as Robert Garcia?

That would be the realization of a dream for me.  Robert is a "dark knight."  I'm not sure if we know the actor who could best play him yet, but I know he is out there.

Your books contain a lot of plot twists. Do you plan them out ahead of time, or do they "just happen"?

I plan out the plot of my book in advance, but each chapter takes on a life of its own, so some of the plot twists happen when I do the chapter.  If you have ever seen, "Throw Momma From the Train," the first scene of it is where Billy Crystal, who plays an author character, has writer's block and the only thing he can write is: "The night was..."  I do have these types of crises and when I do, I take my dog out for a walk and work out in the fresh air what happens.  A lot of plot twists have come to me this way.  I ask myself, "Okay, what will happen next?"  I know I need turns and twists and I think about my character and what situation he or she is in and try to make it more difficult for the character to get out of it.

Paladine is a book that is hard to put down. How do you keep your readers hooked throughout the book?

Paladine is a non-stop adrenaline rush.  It is constantly moving, and I get inside the character's head.  I also try to make my books as real as possible, so it's easier for readers to suspend reality.  The original character as George Gonzalez conceived him had no conscience, kind of like David Archer's "Nero Wolfe."  But I wanted to give Robert a little touch of humanity, a scrap remnant of the man he could have been.  So I threw in a stray dog and a little romance to give him a human touch.  That and the fact that he is getting rid of terrorists keeps people rooting for the bad guy.

Tell us a bit about your writing habits. Do you write during the day/evening? Pen or computer? Do you stick to a certain word count per day?

My thoughts come quicker than I can write them down, so a pen would be an exercise in futility.  I wrote my examinations in college, in law school, and took the bar examination by typewriter, so I am very comfortable writing with a computer.  Stephen King says that a writer writes every day.  I confess that I don't have a strict word count limit, although I probably should.  Paul Levine says "Just sit your butt down in the chair and write" and Hemingway said, "I sit at the typewriter and bleed."  That is pretty much what I do.

Did you know from the start that Paladine was going to be a series? How does the next book in the series tie in with this one?

I knew from the beginning that Paladine was about the character and that his story would not be told in one book.  Therefore, I am hard at work putting the finishing touches on "Russian Holiday."  There is even a preview of it at the end of Paladine.  I am working on the title and cover concept for Book 3, which will probably be called "Trafick Stop," and will deal with the subject of human trafficking.

What are you working on right now?

Russian Holiday, which is the sequel to Paladine and is about the re-ignited cold war between the US and Russia. 

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

I love to hear from readers and answer each one of them personally.  They can connect with me on my website, www.kennetheade.com, by email at: [email protected] or on social media.  I have a mailing list and everyone who signs up for it gets a free book and news of deals and freebies before I put them out.  Here are the social media contacts:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KennethGEadeBestsellingauthorTwitter: https://twitter.com/KennethEade1

This deal has ended but you can read more about the book here.