Ten Books Books That Will Explain Current Strife in the World I write military counter-terrorism thrillers, which, by design, have to parse the world into neat shades of black and white, with perhaps a touch of gray thrown in. My protagonist, Pike Logan, has to have a clear antagonist and must solve the problem all […]

Ten of the Most Notorious Kidnappings FRANK SINATRA JR. This sensational kidnapping had all the hallmarks of a classic noir thriller: the only son of a Hollywood star snatched at gunpoint from a nightclub dressing room. To arrange his son’s quarter-million-dollar ransom, the kidnappers forced Sinatra Sr. to race around Los Angeles calling from pay […]

Ten Ways to Break the Law in 16th Century Spain From the perspective of a twenty-first-century secular democracy that upholds religious pluralism, gender equality, and LBGT rights, sixteenth-century Spain was a harsh and unforgiving place. Though some crimes, such as murder and robbery, were crimes just as they are today, others were specific to a […]