WINNER TAKES ALL: A Dylan Hunter Justice Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers Book 3)

by Robert Bidinotto

  —Randy Ingermanson, author, Writing Fiction for Dummies

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  The Second DYLAN HUNTER Justice Thriller

  BAD DEEDS

  CLFA “BOOK OF THE YEAR” 2014

  #1 AUDIBLE “POLITICAL THRILLER”

  He sought peace in the tranquility of nature.

  But can he tame the violence in his own nature?

  At a cabin in the Allegheny National Forest, Dylan Hunter and his lover, Annie Woods,

  seek to heal the wounds from their ordeal at the hands of a twisted psychopath.

  And to build a life together, Dylan promises Annie that he’ll abandon his violent ways.

  But ideological zealots and Washington’s political elites have conspired to

  terrorize and plunder the hard-working locals. These victims have no protector against

  the bad deeds of the powerful and privileged—

  —except for one man.

  A man as ruthless and violent as they.

  A man committed to absolute justice.

  Because Dylan Hunter cannot walk away—

  not even if it costs him the woman he loves.

  “I loved Bidinotto’s first novel, HUNTER, but BAD DEEDS just might be better.”

  —Shawn Klein, author, Harry Potter and Philosophy

  “A plot which could be ripped from today’s headlines.”

  —Erika Holzer, bestselling author, Eye for an Eye

  “Filled from prologue to epilogue with tricky twists of plot, passionate ideals, and characters that you love—or love to hate.”

  —Rose Robbins, author, In From the Cold and The Accidental Dragon

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Bidinotto is the author of HUNTER, a #1 Kindle bestseller in “Mysteries & Thrillers,” and a Wall Street Journal “Top 10 Fiction Ebook.” BAD DEEDS, the second book in the Dylan Hunter thriller series, won the CLFA “Book of the Year” award in 2014, and became an Audible #1 thriller bestseller. WINNER TAKES ALL is the third installment in the series.

  Robert earned a national reputation as an authority on criminal justice while writing investigative articles as a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest. His famous 1988 article “Getting Away with Murder” stirred a national controversy about crime and prison furlough programs during that year’s presidential campaign, and it is widely credited with having affected the outcome of the election. It was honored by the American Society of Magazine Editors as one of five finalists for the National Magazine Award for “Best Magazine Article in the Public Interest Category.”

  He is author of the acclaimed book Criminal Justice? The Legal System vs. Individual Responsibility, with a foreword by John Walsh of the “America’s Most Wanted” television show, and of Freed to Kill—a compendium of horror stories exposing the failings of the justice system.

  His many articles, essays, book and film reviews also have appeared in the Washington Times, the Boston Herald, Success, The American Spectator, Writer’s Digest, and other publications. Robert was awarded the Free Press Association’s Mencken Award in 1985 for “Best Feature Story,” and he has been honored by the National Victim Center and other victim-rights organizations for his outspoken public advocacy on behalf of crime victims. As an editor, in 2007, he won the magazine industry’s top honor for editorial excellence—the Folio gold “Eddie” Award. A popular speaker, he has appeared as a guest on scores of major talk programs.

  With his wife, Cynthia, and their stridently individualistic cat, Luna, Robert makes his home on the Chesapeake Bay, where he is working on the further adventures of Dylan Hunter.

  BEHIND THE SCENES

  It took me three years—from 2008 till 2011—to write and publish HUNTER, the first book in this Dylan Hunter thriller series. Then it took me almost another three years before I published its first sequel, BAD DEEDS, in 2014.

  Which is ridiculous. That’s way too long to write a thriller, right? Some prolific authors crank out several decent books each year. But at my pace between projects, even Dylan’s diehard fans can forget about him and lose interest.

  So I vowed things would be different this time. After BAD DEEDS, I’d get cracking right away on the next book, and rush it out within a year.

  Well, three-and-a-half years after BAD DEEDS, the third episode in the Dylan Hunter saga finally has been published. During that period, I cringed almost daily at questions from Dylan’s multitude of fans about my many missed deadlines. I tried to explain, then gave up, because it sounded like excuse-making. Maybe it was.

  And we all know how Dylan deals with excuse-makers, right?

  So, for the past year, I pretty much stopped communicating publicly about the book. I didn’t want anyone—least of all my long-suffering wife—to know I’d reached the point where I met each morning with paralysis and dread, staring at a plot structure that had sprouted and spread like kudzu, harboring within its half-dozen subplots a proliferation of unruly characters who were multiplying like horny bunnies.

  How did that happen? It happened because, for me, this single book had to accomplish so many different objectives.

  For one, the story had to harvest seeds planted in the first two installments of the series—resolutions about Dylan’s future course, where his relationship with Annie might be headed, and the ominous threat looming over them at the end of BAD DEEDS. More fundamentally, I had to confront and answer the questions:

  How can I realistically sustain the “career” of a vigilante assassin over the long term? What could plausibly motivate Dylan to continue on that course? How could he possibly keep his identity secret from the world—especially from the ever-suspicious cop Ed Cronin, hot on his heels? What would it mean for Dylan’s relationship with Annie?

  Not only does WINNER TAKES ALL have its own deviously complicated tale to tell; it also had to answer all those series questions, too. So, though I never planned things this way when I began to write HUNTER, this third book had to give readers a satisfying resolution to everything implied and left open in the first two books—in effect becoming the third installment of a self-contained opening trilogy. (More about that in a moment.)

  Secondly, I want my Story World to remain tied at least loosely to things going on in the Real World. But complications arose because of unanticipated Real World events. Upheaval and reorganization at the CIA, and the unexpected outcome of the 2016 presidential election, considerably affected my planned “series arc.” In the middle of writing, I had to rework the plot of WINNER TAKES ALL so that future books in the series would remain anchored to reality, rather t
han go off into total fantasy.

  Thirdly, the writing challenge was made much greater because my stories are “theme-driven.” Rather than start out with a character or a situation and build from there, I start instead with some abstract premise or “moral of the story.” My characters tend to embody “variations on the theme,” taking opposing sides, and the story events grow organically from their basic conflicts. This approach adds a much higher level of complexity to the plotting, because I am trying not only to write compelling thrillers; I’m also trying to write “thrillers for thinkers.”

  While the primary goal of my thrillers is to give readers grand entertainment, those familiar with my previous novels—and with me as a person—know that my books’ themes and settings are rooted in the serious issues of our times. These are topics I’ve written and spoken about for decades. They’re unavoidable in my fiction.

  WINNER TAKES ALL draws upon many controversies you’ve been reading and hearing about in the Real World. The threat of terrorism. Russian meddling in our elections. “Fake news” and media bias. Sex scandals among the rich and powerful. Government harassment of private citizens. Leaks of classified material from our spy agencies. Border security. The influence of money on politics. The controversy over fracking and energy production . . .

  But in this story, the glue holding all of it together is a theme: the psychology of power-lust.

  Why do so many people crave power over other people? Why do they enjoy bending others to their will, through manipulation, intimidation, humiliation, or brute force? Why do they believe they can only achieve their own success and happiness if they make others fail and suffer? Why do they believe their gain requires someone else’s loss?

  Though the lust for power is an epidemic in our political lives, the disease certainly isn’t confined there. We find it everywhere in our society: in our families, schools, social and cultural institutions, churches, businesses, and personal relationships.

  So, while the main villains in WINNER TAKES ALL are enmeshed in political conspiracy and conniving, I wanted to show how the lust for power permeates all other aspects of their lives, too: their workplaces, friendships, sexual relationships, and social interactions. For me, one of the most interesting contrasts is between Dylan and Annie’s passionately romantic relationship, rooted in mutual admiration and respect—and the crude, superficial, manipulative, and abusive sexual relationships of the various villains. If you were uncomfortable reading about the latter, rest assured that I was uncomfortable writing about them. But the book’s theme made it unavoidable: As Henry Kissinger notoriously said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Here, that is depicted literally.

  I also wanted to dramatize the critical role excuse-making and rationalizations play in enabling and perpetuating power-lust. WINNER TAKES ALL surveys a large cast of characters in that regard, but for clarity, it focuses on a few.

  The two primary villains—Trammel and Lasher—share a well-nurtured sense of personal grievance and victimhood, as well as narcissistic grandiosity. In their fantasies, the crimes they commit are righteous revenge upon their (symbolic) victimizers. But as a sadistic sociopath, Lasher’s rationalizations are simplistic and shallow; they amount to a personal Narrative in which he casts himself as an entitled “winner” in a world of pathetic “losers.” By contrast, Trammel, being far more intelligent and self-aware, requires more sophisticated psychological excuses. In his Narrative, he is an avenging angel on a mission fueled by nihilistic revenge fantasies, but rationalized by ideology. In Avery Trammel we see the role that religion, philosophy, and political ideology too often play in providing quasi-intellectual excuses for appalling evil.

  Julia Haight and Emmalee Conn provide an interest contrast, too. Each suffers from a deficiency of self-esteem, which allows them to be manipulated by powerful men. However, Julia is more of an authentic victim, trying to reclaim her sense of self-worth, while Emmalee blithely uses her sexuality as a tool to manipulate men. Readers may find a parable of sorts in how I made things turn out for these two women.

  Squeezing all of these elements into a single, fast-moving, page-turning thriller became a mind-boggling challenge for me, at times an overwhelming one. But slowly, somehow, it finally all came together.

  Early readers are already guessing which Real World individuals and organizations I must have had in mind as I wrote. Let me say emphatically that my Story World characters are completely imaginary; they are not meant to “represent” any specific individuals—though Real World people definitely gave me ideas to incorporate into my characters’ personalities. Some of my characters are hybrids of the styles, attitudes, and values of several people, poured into the faces and bodies of certain actors or celebrities—and mixed well with ingredients from my own imagination. The only Real World characters in the book are Luna (our cat), Happy (our neighbor’s dog), and—by occasional reference only—Vladimir Putin, who never appears on-stage. Given this book’s theme, I couldn’t resist taking a few shots at Vlad, although he is treated completely fictitiously here: He didn’t actually do all the nasty stuff attributed to him in the novel.

  Or at least, not most of it.

  Or at least, not to my first-hand knowledge . . .

  As for the fictitious organizations mentioned in the book: The Trammel Foundation, the Currents Foundation and Currents Center, Vox Populi Communications, and the Center for Advocacy Profiles do have real-world counterparts. No, I was not making that stuff up: The actual groups function pretty much as I describe them in WINNER TAKES ALL, with a few artistic liberties taken. No, I won’t name them; perhaps curious readers will do some homework online and find out what the real groups are up to.

  I offer an apology only to one actual organization: the Capital Research Center (CRC). CRC was the inspiration for my fictional Center for Advocacy Profiles (CAP), although the personnel described in this novel are completely imaginary and bear no resemblance to CRC’s staff. The group does great investigative work to expose the trails of money and political influence in the world of foundations and nonprofit advocacy groups. In the Real World, CRC is headquartered in the very building that my fictional terrorists in this Story World blew to bits. It’s a fine old building, and I’m happy to report that in the Real World, it still stands. I know all this because I used to work there. (I suppose I should also offer apologies to the occupants of the surrounding buildings, including the Methodist church across the street, for the terrible collateral damage my Story World terrorists inflicted.)

  As I mentioned, with the publication of WINNER TAKES ALL, I have completed an initial self-contained trilogy of Dylan Hunter stories. That was not my plan or expectation when I began to write HUNTER. I had no idea that subsequent books would grow from it as they did; nor did I have a clue what directions these stories would take.

  Even during the writing of this one, my characters surprised me constantly. I had no idea the relationships of Dylan and Annie, or Dylan and Cronin, would go where the characters hijacked them. I didn’t know Wonk had a pet. I didn’t know the foxes that are digging up my Real World backyard would take up residence at Vic Rostand’s Connors Point home, too. I didn’t know Julia Haight—who began in BAD DEEDS as a character I didn’t much like—would redeem herself here to play such a pivotal, positive role in the outcome. I didn’t know that mother and baby would be on the street that terrible day of April 20th. I didn’t know what Roger Helm’s fate would be.

  Dylan, Annie, Luna, Cyrano, Wonk, Garrett, Cronin, Erskine, Trammel, Lasher, Emmalee, Julia, Helm, Spencer, Wulfe, Boggs, MacLean, Adair, and the many other inhabitants of this Story World simply showed up in my office, often unannounced, and invited me to spy on them. Sometimes, over glasses of wine, they told me their life stories and revealed what they were thinking and feeling, even in their most private moments.

  I have spent the past decade sitting here spellbound—listening, watching, and taking notes.

  They are so damned interesting. And I bet so
me of them have a lot more to tell me.

  I promise to share.

  —Robert Bidinotto

  November 27, 2017

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WINNER TAKES ALL was the hardest, most exhausting writing project I’ve ever undertaken. My brain was completely fried at the end of the process, and I was incapable of giving the manuscript the kind of close, objective scrutiny it required before publication.

  That’s where over two dozen volunteer “beta readers” stepped in to save me from eternal public embarrassment. These talented people include writers and editors, as well people with backgrounds in many of the specific topics in the book. My beta readers always have been critically important to the process of editing, revising, and proofreading my manuscripts—but never more so than this time. I can’t begin to catalogue the numbers of errors they caught, or the number of brilliant suggestions they made to improve the writing and the story.