What really happened the night Dr. Byron White disappeared?
Quiet Deception, my recently published mystery/romance, answers that question but delves into deeper questions as well. I wrote the first storyline with the vanished professor as the villain. As I developed the characters around that beginning idea, Byron White told me his true story. The other characters, suspects some of them, in his disappearance, also shared.
Each character, it turns out, is a story within Byron’s story. Then I understood that all were villains at some point and all were heroes/heroines. Perhaps they mirror most of us.
Mixed into the story is an ancient legend from my Tennessee childhood, a few tangled relationships, scraps from an old document, and stolen research.
Your other books have all had overseas settings and themes. This seems like quite a departure from your normal genre.
Is there any tie-in with your other books and characters?
The overseas theme is present in an indirect way. Todd, the male progonist, is a professor of Middle East studies. One or two of his conversations hint of conflicts to come between the Middle East and western nations because one region is becoming more religious and the other less religious. Also one of the secondary characters, Lynne, has a role in the earlier novel, Singing in Babylon.
I really enjoyed reading Quiet Deception.
I was wondering about this idea of subversive Christianity you bring out in the book. You seem to be making the point that Christians are often called to live in ways that are different from their surrounding culture. This conflict between Christ and culture, for me, most clearly came out in the book in the area of sexual ethics. Several of the characters had to come to grips with whether or not they were going to have sex with their respective romantic interests. This made the characters odd and out of step with their larger culture which commodifies sex and emphasizes sexual promiscuity.
I was curious why this same subversive Christianity was not also applied to the area of violence. For example Todd served in Vietnam without any reflection that his participation in war might be in conflict with Jesus’ teachings on the treatment of our enemies. It appears to me that Todd’s larger culture reaches for violence as a panacea for most international problems, and that Todd has simply acquiesced to this approach.
Thanks, Andy, for your thoughtful comment and the issues you raise, issues I, the author, did not think about until now.
First, it seems to me that the decision not to accept society’s sexual standards is a personal decision whereas the decision of a country to engage in war is a collective decision. Whether to go along with the society’s choice is certainly a personal decision (the choice may be wise or unwise), but other issues are at stake: Is my society in danger? What should be the reaction of a nation which is threatened?
Second, your questions as relate to this second issue require a full blog. Thanks for raising such a relevant topic, as we consider the lessons of 9/ll.