Yesterday I recapped all of the amazing guests who have appeared on this blog in the past year. Today, I am excited to host fellow International Thriller Writers member and author of RUINS OF WAR (Berkley, May 2015) and SPOILS OF VICTORY (Berkley, Feb. 2016), John A. Connell.
Dissecting my protagonist
By John A. Connell
A question that comes up quite often in author interviews is where did I get the inspiration for my protagonist Mason Collins. I have an answer, of course, but here I wanted to go deeper into my process of creating Mason.
Mason was actually the bad guy in one of my previous, now defunct, novels. In that story, the hero was a young man named Ethan Collins. He was an ex-Marine turned schoolteacher, who lived in Ohio in the late 1950s. One day he receives a letter with a cry for help from his father, a father Ethan hadn’t seen in 12 years. All Ethan knew about his dad was he had been in the army, and he had come home after WW2 a changed man. He was sullen and cruel, and he only stayed long enough to wreak havoc on his family before disappearing, never to be heard from again. Ethan does end up going to seek out his father—Mason Collins—and gets far more than he bargained for in the process.
There’s a Hemingway quote that I used as the main theme for the story: “All things truly wicked start from innocence.” By circumstance, Ethan’s innocence is perverted by the actions he is forced to take to survive. His father, on the other hand, had devolved from a respectable man to one of wickedness by events in his life. The major flaw with this novel was Ethan. He wasn’t a strong enough character to carry the story. But to change Ethan meant changing the entire book from page one. As I reviewed my options, I realized the strongest element in the story was Mason. When he was on the page, his power, his commanding presence, demanded all my attention. I was fascinated with this man. It is then that I decided to make Mason the protagonist in a new novel, as a U.S. Army detective—criminal investigator in army parlance of the time—for the CID, or Criminal Investigation Division.
Despite Mason’s new status as the protagonist, I wanted him to have the potential to cross over to the dark side, to borrow a well-known phrase, which is only kept in check by a strict moral code. I decided to keep elements of Mason’s original backstory, which originally drove him from a moral man to a murderous one. Early in his detective career with the Chicago police, Mason tries to bust a ring of corrupt cops who murdered his partner. He broke the blue code of silence by going to the district attorney, and the system turned on him, framing him for selling drugs and booting him off the force. That unjust treatment fosters Mason’s distrust and lack of respect for authority. And the experience of being a POW during WW2 and interned for a short time in Buchenwald has left him bitter and disillusioned with humanity. Yet, despite those deep scars, he manages to maintain his need to right wrongs, even if it means putting himself in harm’s way.
Those two elements relentlessly weigh on Mason’s psyche, threatening to push him over the line, creating a constant clash against his values of right and wrong, his sense of justice. Mason knows that one or two steps in the wrong direction could lead him on a very dark path. In SPOILS OF VICTORY, Mason comes very close a few times, while trying to bring down a murderous criminal organization. One thing I would like to explore is having him actually cross that line, to turn dark at some point in the journey, something that pushes him to abandon his strict moral code, and see if he can ever get back again.
And finally, one additional aspect of Mason came to me while writing Ruins of War. It and SPOILS OF VICTORY are kind of the origin story for Mason’s future wanderings—masterless, homeless, and always short of cash, like the wandering samurai, irascible and stoic, who gets deep into trouble because of his compassion and sense of justice. The interesting thing is I wasn’t fully aware of where this idea came from until later, somewhere in the final rewrites of Ruins, I realized, at least in part, it was manifested from my experiences as an expat. I’ve lived in Europe—Paris, now Madrid—for the past 12 years, and every author imbues their characters, consciously or unconsciously, with parts of themselves. Crossing borders has changed me, and though Mason doesn’t know it yet, his wanderings will help rediscover who he is after so much trauma in his life—if he can survive the journey…
John A. Connell is the author of Ruins of War and SPOILS OF VICTORY, the first two books in the Mason Collins series. He was born in Atlanta, where he earned a BA in Anthropology, and has been a jazz pianist, a stock boy in a brassiere factory, a machinist, repairer of newspaper racks, and a printing-press operator. He has worked as a cameraman on films such as Jurassic Park and Thelma & Louise and on TV shows including The Practice and NYPD Blue. He now lives with his wife in Madrid, Spain, where he is at work on his third Mason Collins novel. Visit him online at johnconnellauthor.com.
From the author of Ruins of War comes an electrifying novel featuring U.S. Army criminal investigator Mason Collins, set in the chaos of post-World War II Germany.
When the Third Reich collapsed, the small town Garmisch-Partenkirchen became the home of fleeing war criminals, making it the final depository for the Nazis’ stolen riches. There are fortunes to be made on the black market. Murder, extortion, and corruption have become the norm.
It’s a perfect storm for a criminal investigator like Mason Collins, who must investigate a shadowy labyrinth of co-conspirators including former SS and Gestapo officers, U.S. Army OSS officers, and liberated Polish POWs.
As both witnesses and evidence begin disappearing, it becomes obvious that someone on high is pulling strings to stifle the investigation—and that Mason must feel his way in the darkness if he is going to find out who in town has the most to gain—and the most to lose…
“A second installment just as terrific as the first – this is going to be a must-read series for me.” ~ Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels
“Excitement melds with adventure as the tangled threads gradually unwind, revealing treachery coming from all directions. The whole thing is reminiscent of early-Robert Ludlum, and makes you clamor for more.” ~ Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Patriot Threat and The Templar Legacy
“Connell’s intense sequel to 2015’s Ruins of War… keeps readers guessing to the end.” ~ Publishers Weekly
