Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: THE SEVEN DAY SOLDIERS by Tony Kenrick

So for the first in this series of who knows how many posts, we travel back to 1976 for a look at this great little action thriller from Tony Kenrick. And when I say little, I mean it. Like so many paperbacks from that particular decade, this example comes in at a lean and mean 215 pages. No padding in those days. No unnecessary sub-plots. Just wham-bam and thank you very much, I'm outta here.

And I love the cover too. Or at least the one on my particular edition, with its close-up of a couple of rolls of cash interspersed with various rounds of ammo...

Anyway, I do feel a certain kinship with Mr Kenrick, in that we both started out in the advertising world before turning to writing thrillers. Not only that, but we also both ended up as expatriates. In Kenrick's case, he came from Sydney, Australia, and spent many years as an advertising copywriter in England, Canada, and the USA, before becoming an author and moving to Spain with his Welsh wife and their kids. So all in all the guy could be considered a true man of the world, which I totally respect. But for now let's get back the focus of this post, and that's the book itself.

I first read 'The Seven Day Soldiers' in my teens when my dad brought a hardback copy back from the local library. Once he'd finished it, I gave it a go and found myself immediately caught up in the story and found myself racing towards the end. I do remember being impressed by the story's characters and the various twists and turns I encountered. The book soon went back to the library, of course, and that was that. I moved onto other books and consigned it to the past, although the title always remained in the back of my mind. Then a few years ago the name came back to me for some reason and I had a look for it on Amazon. As soon as I found a paperback copy, I quickly snapped it up and the moment it arrived I read it again in one sitting. And guess what. It turned out to be just as gripping as I remembered, which was a very pleasant surprise.

As far as the plot's concerned, we begin with Barney Rivers of New York State. He's your typical suburban everyman with the wife, the kids, and the mortgage. He's also broke. And he's not the only one. His neighbours, Tom and George, are also finding it hard to make ends meet. So they devise an ingenious little plan to tap a few grand from somebody's Swiss bank account by mail (ah, the innocent seventies) and are astounded when the scam actually works. They get the few thousand bucks apiece that they wanted and all of a sudden the three men are in the black again. Everything's roses.

But naturally it doesn't stay that way, otherwise there'd be no book. So rather than do the sensible thing and quit while they're ahead, the three get greedy and do it again. Only this time they try for more. And it works again, except they now find themselves with 167 million dollars of somebody else's money in their account. And that somebody turns out to be a ruthless ex-Caribbean dictator, who has his own small private army and no shortage of resources to track down the thieves.

Barney, aware that returning the money won't stop the forces he's set in motion, figures they've got a week at most before this ex-dictator closes in and massacres them (along their families). So he decides the only solution is to hire a specialist to teach them how to fight back. To this end, they're pointed towards a badass ex-Marine drill sergeant named Cambell, who was dishonourably discharged and who wouldn't say no to a decent payday. Although dubious at first, Cambell finally accepts the job and sets about the task of making soldiers out of sausages. In seven days.

And bang, there's your title. 'The Seven Day Soldiers.' Catchy, huh?

Kenrick does a pretty good job of constructing the story so that the first half of the book sets up the situation and the players, with the second half focusing on the men's training for the inevitable showdown to come. And he does a nice job with the four main protagonists too, with each man given his own unique personality and his own voice. And the dialogue's not bad, either. For instance, a sample from the initial exchange between Rivers and Cambell:

   'Who are you?'
   'I told you, my name's Rivers. I live up near Tarrytown. I dipped into a man's Swiss bank account and he turned out to have friends.'
   'Who gave you my name?'
   'A sergeant I talked to. He remembered you from Fort Jackson. His name's Larsen.'
   Cambell absorbed the information. 'Did Larsen tell you I could get you guns?'
   'No he didn't. And if you can't, tell me now and I'll get out of here.'
   'Goodbye,' Cambell said.

Simple and effective. Just how I like it. And I also like Kenrick's prose. For some reason it puts me in mind of Donald Westlake with it's witty, ironic turns of phrase. Here are the very first two paragraphs:

'It's a well known fact that Nature, that 'Creative and controlling force in the Universe,' as Webster's has it, abhors a vacuum. It's also a fact, although less well known, that Nature abhors an imbalance, too. Or too much of one thing and not enough of another. And the way it moves to adjust these imbalances, and the medium it sometimes chooses as an agent, can be very surprising indeed.

'In this instance, and this is what the story is about, the imbalance was a situation in which there existed a paucity of good and an over-abundance of evil, a situation that occurs all too often and so is not in itself very surprising. But the medium it chose to do something about it was Barney Rivers of Westchester, New York. Which is absolutely staggering.'

Not a bad way to start a book, is it? I'm not entirely sure it would work in today's marketplace, but it still pulls the reader in with a considerable amount of style.

So is it the perfect thriller? Well, I wouldn't go that far. For a start, this is an unabashed boys' book. It even says so on the cover: 'Should be on every gun freak's reading list.' And true enough, the reader is given numerous explanations throughout the story of what a certain weapon will do and what the effects will be. Added to which, the story's few female characters are little more than ciphers, something that's almost unheard of in this new millennium. And although Kenrick supplies a hand-drawn map of the battleground, when the final battle comes it's often hard to figure out which character's doing what, and where. Or perhaps that's just me. I don't know.

But I do know that despite these small gripes, 'The Seven Day Soldiers' still holds up as a great retro thriller novel with some great plot twists thrown in for good measure, and is definitely well worth seeking out in the second-hand marketplace.



* On a side note, the book was very quickly optioned by Hollywood as a potential vehicle for Steve McQueen. Of course, this was back in the days when just about everything was offered to McQueen, and it's unlikely he knew much about it. But still, when you're reading the book, you can see how seamlessly the actor would have slipped into the role of the taciturn, no-nonsense ex-drill-sergeant, Cambell, (who, without giving too much away, turns out to be the star of the story). It's like the role was made for him. Yet another one of life's 'what-ifs'.

** Another little piece of trivia. Although no official connection has ever been made, there was a film made in the eighties called 'Let's Get Harry' which 'borrowed' many of the plot elements from Kenrick's book. In this one, a group of white-collar pals hire a professional mercenary to train them up as soldiers in an equally unrealistic amount of time. Admittedly, it's for a different reason (they want to rescue another pal who's been kidnapped overseas), but the similarities are unmistakeable. It has to be said that it's not a particularly good film, although it does have an interesting cast (e.g. Glenn Frey, Gary Busey, and a shaven-headed, goateed Robert Duvall as the merc). But when the director disowns the movie before release and it then gets released straight to video, you kind of know you're onto a loser. To date it has never been released on DVD, although for those desperate to see it, the film can be found on Youtube.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: Prelude

Whoa. What happened there? Almost a whole month without a blog post? Well, what can I say? It's simply inexcusable, I know. Anyway, I'm here now so let's move on.

So. Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers. What's that about? you ask. And what's with the inverted commas around the word 'forgotten'?

Well, it's really very simple. I was thinking about what to write for my next long-awaited post and as I did, I happened to take a look at my bookshelf and thought, That's it! I'll post about those thriller novels I love, but that for one reason or another haven't really lodged themselves in readers' consciousness. Could be because they went out of print not long after publication. Or it could be because the author in question wrote other, far more popular, books that overshadowed these ones. Could be any reason, really. But over the coming months I'll be talking about the ones that stuck with me.

Now I've made a prospective list in my notebook so I think it's only fair I give you a small preview of what's in store. I won't post the titles yet, but I will tease you with some of the author names. Coming up we've got offerings from such diverse talents as: William H. Hallahan, Joel Townsley Rogers, Ted Lewis, Roderick Thorp, Gavin Lyall, Dan Marlowe. And we've also got some big names too, such as Goldman, Levin, Gallagher, and Bachman. And that's just a sample.

Not too shabby, huh?

So I'll keep this one short. Next post will be in a day or two (promise!) and it's a good 'un from that forgotten thriller master from the seventies: Tony Kenrick.

Be here!

BACKTRACK Locations

Since my latest James Bishop thriller, BACKTRACK, has just come out in p'back, I thought now might be a good time to give a little insight on how I came up with the various real-life locations that can be found in the book. And the answer is: since much of the novel is set in Arizona I flew over and drove around the state until I found what I wanted. Simple, eh?

Now there'll be a slightly more detailed retelling of my research trip on my Facebook page pretty soon, so to avoid repeating myself I'll keep things on a more pictorial level for this particular blog post (you lucky people you).

So first up, we have a funky apartment complex in Coolidge, Arizona that kind of serves as Bishop's base of operations throughout much of the story (rear and front shots):

Next up, Coolidge's City Hall, which I used as an example of Saracen's business section. Further back is the town library, which plays a small cameo in the book when Bishop needs to check some town maps:

Bishop gains intimate knowledge of the interior of Saracen's Police Department building during BACKTRACK, which I completely made up. However, the exterior was based on Coolidge's police building with its distinctive cantilevered roof:

Here's a long-abandoned motel I found out in the middle of nowhere, with its dilapidated sign still out front. In the book, I reopened the motel for paying customers, spruced it up a little and used it as Clarissa Vallejo's temporary accomodations. I also liked the name so I used that too:

At one point Bishop has to use the rear entrance to surreptitiously get into the Garrick Medical Center. For this I borrowed the rear entrance of the hospital in Globe, Arizona:

At a later point Bishop has to wait for an important call at a public phone box. Since there aren't too many of them around anymore I was glad I found these outside a store in Wenden. I even made a minor supporting character out of the Latino guy at the end there.

A couple of shots of a garage in Salome, Arizona which I used as a basis for Bannings Automotive in Saracen. The oxyacetylene cylinders play a fairly important part in the book too, in case you were wondering.

This closed-down retro department store in Coolidge isn't in the book, but I thought this was such a cool shot I thought I'd share it anyway. Just look at that sky:

And finally, yours truly, looking very much at home in his Ray-Bans (fake) and baseball shirt (Fruit Of The Loom, 3 for a tenner on eBay):

Representation!

So where was I? Oh, yeah, I was still waiting for a response from the three agencies I'd approached.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard all the horror stories by published authors who claimed to have been rejected twenty, thirty, forty times before getting their chance, and I was well aware I might fare no better. So I decided the best thing was to get back to my day job and try not to think about it too much. Easier said than done, of course, but the world keeps on turning, as they say.

But as it turned out I didn't have too long to wait. The first response came through the post about a fortnight later, and I pretty much knew what it contained before I even opened it. It was just your standard rejection letter. Nothing particularly noteworthy or personal about it. They just weren't interested in taking me on and wished me luck for the future. I think my initial response was 'Well, at least they responded.' But I also took major consolation from the fact that the rejection wasn't coming from my first choice agency. There was still a chance.

The next response came by email. And this time it was from my first choice: Camilla Wray at Darley Anderson. And guess what? Camilla really liked what she'd read so far and wanted me to send her the rest of the manuscript.

I can't honestly remember, but I think it's a safe bet I was walking on air for the rest of the day. Maybe the next, as well. Naturally, I sent the rest of the manuscript out to Camilla immediately in the hope that she'd like the rest of the book as much as she'd liked the samples.

I see no point in drawing out the suspense here, especially as I've named both the agency and the particular agent in question. Camilla did like THE WRONG MAN (although it had a different title then), but she also made it clear the manuscript needed a lot more work before she could make a decision about whether to represent me or not. Which, since a literary agent can only take on a couple of new clients a year at most, I felt was totally understandable.

Camilla then invited me up to the London offices where we had a coffee and got to know each other, while at the same time hashing out what needed to be done to the book. Plot holes needed to be filled and characters had to be strengthened. Pacing needed to adjusted, and exposition reduced. Basically, everything needed to be reworked. Fortunately, though, it was clear we thought along the same wavelengths, and almost every suggestion Camilla made I agreed with. The satisfactory meeting ended with me promising to come back with a third draft, after which Camilla would make a decision on whether to take things further.

Cut to three or four months later. I'd already made the required changes to the manuscript and had emailed the whole thing over to Camilla. A few weeks later, she contacted me again and said she LOVED the new draft and that she'd like to officially represent me!

Whoa. How much better can life get? That was a day I don't think I'll ever forget. In fact, I was on cloud nine for a whole week after hearing that. I actually had a literary agency representing my work! And not just any agency, but the one I'd earmarked from day one. Just goes to show - dreams can sometimes come true.

Now all we needed to do was find a publisher.

But that's for another time, I think. Next up, I'll talk about my trip to Arizona to research my latest novel, BACKTRACK...

Finishing THE WRONG MAN

There's a very famous quote of Hemingway's that goes: 'The first draft of anything is shit.' A sweeping generalisation, maybe, but it's essentially true. And it should be noted that Hemingway was a world famous author when he said that, so you can imagine what my first draft was like.

Although I was up against a self-imposed deadline, I knew I had to give myself enough time to produce a second draft before sending it out to prospective agents. The manuscript simply wasn't good enough as it was and needed a lot more work. And I mean a LOT. But I also knew I needed some time away from the story in order to be as objective as possible. So as much as I wanted to get straight onto the second draft, I forced myself to take a couple of weeks away from it so I could come back and look at things with a fresh perspective.

But they weren't wasted weeks, oh, no. When I wasn't at my day job, I was spending every spare moment thumbing through the Writers and Artists Yearbook, looking for literary agents that might be interested in representing another thriller writer. Although there was one agency I really liked (and who helpfully had a full-page ad on the inside front cover), I came up with about a dozen more possibles in case they weren't interested. I'm sure I could have found more, but I felt a baker's dozen was enough to be going on with. I also did a lot of research on how to submit to an agent. Fortunately the interweb was full of helpful sites that gave me the information and advice I needed. Such as: how to structure the query letter, making sure keep the thing as short as possible, don't submit blindly, name the agent correctly in your letter and on the envelope, etc. Most of it was common sense stuff I'd already worked out for myself, but it was good to have it confirmed.

Once that was done, I spent about ten days working on the two things every agent asks for: a query letter and a synopsis of the book in question. And I thought writing a novel was hard! But synopses. Man, don't get me started on synopses. All I'll say is that they're not one of my favourite things in life. But I did it. I sweated and I raged, but in the end I did it. Yet I knew the query letter itself was far more important, since this is what the prospective agent sees first. I probably spent a whole week on that letter, polishing it into something I felt no agent could ignore. By the end, I was left with just a couple of paragraphs, but what paragraphs they were! After working and working on them, I was finally satisfied that they contained everything that I wanted to get across.

So with those tasks done, I then came back, read through the manuscript again, hung my head in despair and really got down to it. Whole chapters of the book got moved around while others were erased completely. Numerous plot holes got filled. Dialogue got polished. Characters got fine-tuned. To be honest, I could have spent the rest of my life trying to make it better, but at some point you have to let go and just put it out there. So I made copies of the first three chapters, stuck them in three large manila envelopes along with a synopsis and a personally addressed query letter, and sent them off to my top three choices.

And I waited...

The Russian WRONG MAN

Will continue blogging in a couple of days, but as an interlude here's a pic of the cover to Russian hardback of THE WRONG MAN. Not exactly sure what the image is supposed to be - possibly the prison block behind security fencing - but at least now I know what my name is in Russian!

Writing THE WRONG MAN

Writing your first novel is never easy. Not for anybody. That doesn't mean the process isn't enjoyable, because often it is. But easy it ain't.

And the main reason for this is TIME. Or to be more precise, the lack thereof.

Like many new authors, I was still in full-time employment when I began laying down the first words of my first novel. Not a major obstacle, you might think. Work during the day, write during the evenings. Problem solved. Except I was planning to emigrate, and since that took money I was taking all the overtime I could get - which meant I was working very late most weekdays. Once I got home I had enough time to eat, shower and sleep, and that was about it. This essentially left me with just the weekend to write. And while I was still managing to eke out my self-imposed 1000 words-a-day quota on both days, I wasn't particularly happy with the results. Because of the five-day gap away from the keyboard I was finding it harder and harder to transplant myself into the story and get any momentum going. Clearly, the whole situation was less than satisfactory and needed to change. But how?

Outside circumstances solved the problem for me. With the worldwide recession rapidly affecting the whole of England, my company was forced to drastically cancel all overtime until further notice. Bad news for most people. Good news for me. My evenings were free again, allowing me to write seven days a week. What could be better? As any author will tell you, if you're serious about becoming a professional writer you have to write every day. Now I was able to do so.

It also helped that I was now able to set an achievable target for myself. Weekends stayed the same at 1000 words a day. During the week, I was able to manage 500 words a day. That made 4500 words a week. I worked out that, barring complications, I would have written 120,000 words in about six months. And 120,000 words is a book. I now had a clear quantifiable objective to aim for. I got to work.

For the next six months I stuck to the same routine. I'd go to work in the mornings and come back in the evenings and write. At weekends I'd write all day. I hadn't been going out much before, but now I didn't go out at all. As far as I was concerned, any time not spent writing (or earning a living) was wasted time. And it wasn't long before I realized I enjoyed writing, which was a real bonus. Because I hadn't at first. Those first few chapters in particular were painful to write and even more painful to read. Many days I wondered if I was doing the right thing. But I persevered and found that the more I wrote, the better my writing became. And the better it became the more I enjoyed it.

My word count steadily rose over the months until I finally got to the third act, the part of the novel I hadn't actually outlined. But that was okay, too. I was confident enough at this point to know I could come up with the final part of the story without too much trouble. I spent a few days staring off into the distance and making lots and lots of notes, essentially brainstorming with myself, until I was able to formulate an ending to the book that felt totally satisfying. Then came the epilogue to wrap up a few loose ends, and right after that came those two magic words every author loves to write: THE END.

Cause for celebration? Most definitely. But 'the end'? Not by a long shot. There was still plenty more to do yet. But that's for another post...