Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

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Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel Page 35

by Jon Land


  Of course, I needed a plot, too, and if you’ve been with me for the last few Caitlin Strong books, you know I’ve cast the Chinese (Strong Darkness), the Russians (Strong Light of Day), and ISIS (Strong Cold Dead) as villains in consecutive tales, making Nazis the next obvious choice in that succession. So I googled “Nazis in Texas” and came up with a ton of hits about the German prisoner-of-war camps that dotted the Lone Star State in the latter days of World War II, exactly as I laid out in these pages, including the camp in Hearne.

  Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

  So much of the book grew out of that notion (including the twist about the identity of one of those prisoners), but I also needed a “MacGuffin,” as Alfred Hitchcock might call it, which came to me in the course of a discussion with a good friend of mine named Stan Israel who’d received two liver transplants in the course of a week after his body rejected the first. We got to talking about the future of anti-rejection medication, and Axiol, the clinical trial drug developed in these pages, was born in that discussion. Lots more research needed to be done, of course, and, if you’re wondering, yes, the notion of transplantable, replacement organs being produced by 3-D printers is very real (Thank you, Natalia Aponte!).

  Truth being stranger than fiction again.

  My editor, Bob Gleason, served up the idea of a lawless biker town when he told me such places really do exist—I think he mentioned California, maybe around Barstow or way farther up north, as a setting for a few of them.

  The Aryan Brotherhood really was founded in prison and I probably don’t have to tell you that the rise of nationalist movements across the globe is very real, too. What’s different about Strong to the Bone, though, is that the villain’s world-altering plot doesn’t exist from the get-go. Instead, it develops organically over the course of the action. So I guess this time out I really relied on my characters to do the heavy lifting for me.

  Hopefully that produced a whole bunch of fun hours of reading for you, enough so that I’ll see you again next year when Caitlin and company return in Strong as Steel!

  OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND

  The Alpha Deception

  *Betrayal (nonfiction)

  *Black Scorpion: The Tyrant Reborn

  *Blood Diamonds

  *The Blue Widows

  The Council of Ten

  *Dark Light: Dawn

  *Day of the Delphi

  *Dead Simple

  *Dolphin Key

  The Doomsday Spiral

  The Eighth Trumpet

  *The Fires of Midnight

  The Gamma Option

  *Hope Mountain

  *Keepers of the Gate

  *Kingdom of the Seven

  Labyrinth

  *The Last Prophecy

  The Lucifer Directive

  The Ninth Dominion

  The Omega Command

  The Omicron Legion

  Pandora’s Temple

  *The Pillars of Solomon

  The Rising

  *The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending

  *Strong at the Break

  *Strong Cold Dead

  *Strong Darkness

  *Strong Enough to Die

  *Strong Justice

  *Strong Light of Day

  *Strong Rain Falling

  *Strong Vengeance

  *Takedown (nonfiction)

  The Tenth Circle

  The Valhalla Testament

  The Vengeance of the Tau

  Vortex

  *A Walk in the Darkness

  *The Walls of Jericho

  *Published by Forge Books

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of forty novels, including Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), Strong Darkness (finalist for the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and winner of the 2015 International Book Award for Thrillers), and Strong Light of Day (winner of the 2015 BooksAndAuthor.com Book of the Year Award for Best Mystery-Thriller and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery). He’s a graduate of Brown University, lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at www.jonlandbooks.com or on Twitter @JonDLand. Or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Three

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Four

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part Five

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part Six

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Part Seven

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Part Eight

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Part Nine

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Part Ten

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Epilogue

/>   Author’s Note

  Other Books by Jon Land

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  STRONG TO THE BONE

  Copyright © 2017 by Jon Land

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs: woman © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images; background © A and Rob/Shutterstock.com

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8464-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8466-9 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765384669

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: December 2017

 

 

 


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