Of Course, I knew both of them well, but it had never occurred to me that 11 year old Cassie Webber and Thomas Reston Thomas, III would ever have met, would ever have had anything in common. What possibly could they have had in common? But, as William Shakespeare said it in The Tempest, when I was still a young man, “mystery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
Thomas’ father and his father’s father had been cops as long as he could remember, They loved what they did. Everyone thought young Thomas would follow in their footsteps, grow up to be a cop too. But Thomas had no interest in protecting society from run-of-the-mill criminals. What he wanted to do was to protect the country from those who wished it ill. So he went to school and then joined the CIA as soon as they would have him.
Twenty-five years and 12 different postings abroad later, Thomas was back home. He had learned his trade and plied it well, but a bad ticker had forced early retirement on him. His government pension and benefits, and the money from his mother’s side of the family, were more than he needed, but he was bored. Then he fell into another opportunity to serve, the job of a lifetime. The Committee to Re-elect the President needed a chief intelligence officer. When he was offered the position, he never hesitated.
And therein lies one of the key elements of The Puppet Master, which you know by now will be released in Spring 2018 as the prequel to The Amendment Killer, which will be released, ye gads, in just two more days! Recently returned from a self-imposed exile to take up residence, so to speak, in The Amendment Killer, Thomas is, to put it mildly, a psychiatrist’s dream case study.
In sharp contrast, or so it might seem, Cassie Webber is like your typical pre-teen girl next door, except she’s really anything but typical. Like any youngster her age, Cassie worries about the wrong things as much as she worries about the right things. A highly motivated superstar athlete on the verge of becoming a world class golfer in spite of her diabetes, Cassie’s taller than all the boys in her class. Which doesn’t help her dating life, if she had one. The braces straightening her teeth make her sound like a dork. Even her dog looks at her strangely since the braces were added. More importantly, at least to me, Cassie plans to give her kidnappers more than they bargained for. A lot more.
Different backgrounds. Different ages. Different interests. What could these two disparate souls possibly have in common? I couldn’t see it. Not at first. But then I don’t write like Shakespeare. Strange bedfellows indeed. Hmm, maybe not so strange after all. Dig a little deeper. Beneath all of their obvious differences, are there perhaps any values Cassie and Thomas share?
This is one of tne of the many questions that intrigues me about The Amendment Killer. What about you? Does any of this intrigue you about The Amendment Killer?
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