The Blake Mackay series of action-packed spy thrillers in chronological order is Czechmate, Meltdown, The 4th Strike, Intercept, The Auroral Contingency, and Spear Garden. Thom is working on his 3rd spy novel, "Deep Rising". Click on any of the book covers below for more details and links to purchase.
NEW: Check out my trailer here for my new book, The Auroral Contingency.
Thank you for your interest in my spy books. I've listed them below with a brief description of each action story. I thought it would be nice to give you an author's perspective on the content of the books rather than the traditional--back cover synopsis. These are in chronological order, mostly. I actually wrote Spear Garden first, but I wanted to publish it with an already waiting audience. That meant I needed to build up interest in my character, as well as hone my skills, which hopefully you'll see if you follow them in order. I wrote Spear Garden in just six weeks but then took the next four years to perfect it as well as write the first five e-books. If you join my email list, I'll be including things like; how I came up with the idea for the stories, if some of the characters are based on real people and how I research for some of my content. Remember, you can click on the book cover and make a purchase. I hope you enjoy them. ~Thom
Czechmate was my first e-book. It is short and gives a good introduction to my main character, Blake MacKay, but fear not, it is not lacking in action. I wanted my stories to take place in exotic places and Prague is a place that I find fascinating. I actually rewrote and added quite a bit to this story, but never published it. That might be another benefit to signing up.
Blake is part of a very small black ops operation within the department of Clandestine Affairs at the CIA. The U.S. Ambassador to Czech Republic has a beautiful but naïve teenage daughter that has gotten herself drawn into the dark world of raves, sex, and drugs by a charismatic Russian dealer named Sergey. Left with no choice, the Ambassador asks his long-time friend, who just happens to be the President of the United States, for a favor; have Sergey Dubrovskiy eliminated. Blake temporarily changes from agent to assassin and unleashes hell on Prague's dark underground that will be legendary.
My second book takes place in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is a bit longer than Czechmate. It's a pretty good read and I like the story. At this point, I'm still developing my writing skills and style, so I'm a bit critical of myself. As far as what inspired it, I think I may have just thrown a dart at a map and it landed near Jakarta, so I went with that. As far as the plot goes, I just made it up as I went.
Dimitri Evanko, a nuclear scientist from Ukraine, is kidnapped while on vacation with his family by a ruthless man, Indra Gunardi. He is the leader of an infamous Islamic terrorist organization and needs Dimitri's knowledge to build dirty bombs using nuclear material they stole from old Soviet lighthouses. They plan on using them to create chaos throughout Asia but with the ultimate goal being the United States. With the help of Detachment 88, the Indonesian counter-terrorism group, Blake discovers Gunardi's plans of widespread terror. When Blake tries to rescue Dimitri's family, it turns into a disaster and the result is that Gunardi speeds up the clock. A dirty bomb is placed on a cruise ship as a test and Blake has to race against time to find it and deactivate it before thousands of lives are destroyed.
Okay, this is actually my second e-book, but I published it third. Why? I had actual submariners read it and give me insight into how a submarine might behave under these circumstances, what would be realistic and what would be considered bullshit. I didn't want any bullshit. While I was waiting on their feedback, I wrote Meltdown.
I love this story. The North Koreans have an old Whiskey Class Soviet submarine that they use to steal some nukes from the U.S. that aren't supposed to be there. Attu island is the farthest west of the Aleutian Islands. It's so far west that it crosses over the Prime Meridian and technically is the most eastern part of the United States. Great trivia question. There is a LORAN station on Attu Island and that's where we "secretly" stored some nukes as part of a draw-down agreement made with the Soviets at the end of the Cold War. The North Koreans attacked and killed U.S. personnel and stole a warhead and loaded it on the submarine. This counted as the 4th strike on U.S. soil in modern history. Pearl Harbor, the Japanese made a little known-about advancement on the Aleutian Islands during WW II, the terrorist attack on 911, and then this attack on the Loran station.
Not knowing what their plan was for the nuke, Blake, along with SEAL team 5 go on a cat and mouse chase beneath the icy surface of the North Pacific. Their biggest challenge: force the North Korean sub to the surface so Blake and his team can recover the nuke. If they sink the sub, the nuke will be impossible to recover.
This one is awesome because it actually came true. Sort of. This action packed spy thriller is about three different groups wanting to get possession of Iran's nuclear guru, Mohsen Fallali. Two want him dead and Blake needs to "intercept' them so he can keep him alive for intel. I wrote this book in late 2013 and in late 2020 Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the REAL Iranian Nuclear guru was assassinated. I wonder if there was a real-life Blake trying to intercept that?
This takes place in Vienna, Austria. Mohsen is on his way back to Iran to head up Iran’s new nuclear weapons program after being off the grid for several years. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence arm, has to act fast and sends Solomon Zinn, an elite sniper, to take him out. However, the Ansar al-Sharia militant group wants Fallahi for their own purposes. A badly botched kidnapping attempt by Ansar al-Sharia disrupts Solomon's assassination attempt and gives the CIA a heads up. They send Blake over to find him and bring him to the U.S. The nice kicker I put in here is that Solomon, the Mossad sniper, is a former lover of Blake's. She's been ordered by her father, an Israeli intelligence head, to take him out if he gets in her way. Blake finds out and he must devise the ultimate deception to complete his mission. When the three competing forces descend on Vienna, all hell breaks out!
This one's got some pretty cool tech in it too. I introduce "Alice" to the series. He's "Blake's 'Q'" if you will. He is a young, super-smart guy on loan from DARPA. He supplies Blake with some pretty cool gadgets. I think of all my e-books, this is my favorite. If you subscribe to my email list, you'll learn how I came up with this gem.
This is where it all began. My first spy thriller. No less than a thrill ride a minute, you travel with Blake from Cuba to Belarus and many places in between. It's about terrorism, communism, and defeating evil of all sorts. So here is Spear Garden in a nutshell.
A Cuban general turned arms dealer has put a bullseye on his back by selling weapons to a group responsible for the deaths of several U.S. Border Patrol. Blake has been sent to take him out, but to get close to the heavily guarded target, Blake has to charm the General's beautiful daughter, Adriana. Of course, things don't go smoothly and he barely makes it out of there with his life, but in the meantime, he uncovers a much deeper problem.
An Al Qaeda arms dealer from Afghanistan is moving an extremely deadly, super-weapon from Cuba to somewhere. After a disastrous raid on an Al Qaeda safe-house, Blake uncovers a deeper plot involving the Al Qaeda weapons dealer, a corrupt European prime minister, and a traitor inside his organization.
The #2 guy in Belarus, Oleg Shorets, is sick of their dictator, Vladimir Solonovich, and wants to bring the country back to its glory days. He devises a plan to make it look as if Solonovich is collateral damage in a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, making it seem believable will require a lot of other collateral damage. Meaning thousands will die.
To get the intel he needs, Blake has to go back to Cuba and ask for the help of the General's daughter. The woman he deceived and whose father he recently killed. This one has it all; endless action, sex, victories, and horrible losses. It has some unexpected outcomes and a nice twist at the end. I hope all that read it, enjoy it as much as I do.
Fun Fact: I know that several Hollywood directors have read this book.
If you're familiar with all of my books, you may be wondering what happened to Red Storm. Well, look no further because this is it. However, I've rewritten it and added more than twice the content, taking it from a novella to a full-blown spy thriller novel. This is the action story, in my words.
Nikoli Petrovich is a Russian billionaire who built the world's largest High-Altitude Auroral Array Research Project (HAARP) in the middle of Siberia. He's discovered a way to alter the weather and create natural disasters. He's also figured out how to make hundreds of millions of dollars off each disaster he creates.
A young and inexperienced CIA Agent assigned to investigate has disappeared. Sofia Kuzma, a young woman working for Petrovich on his projects discovered the true intentions of her boss and stole files proving his guilt. Petrovich sends his goons to find her and eliminate the threat of her exposing him.
Blake travels to Moscow to meet Sofia, get her proof and protect her from the people tasked to kill her. His secondary mission is to find the missing agent and extract information about Petrovich from a device implanted under his skin.
Looking at the data, he discovers Petrovich has a master plan and his next attack could have devastating effects and destroy the U.S. economy. Together, with the help of Sofia, they infiltrate Petrovich's compound in Siberia. It's a race against the clock as they battle his henchmen and Blake faces the man himself. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but there are a few surprises in here as well. The timeline of this book is it happens after Intercept and before Spear Garden.
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