Tale of the Sica, Book #5
Action Adventure / Crime
Date Published: 04-11-2023
Great-uncle Leon, the most successful assassin in our family’s 2000-year-old history, is back.
It’s 1920, the Great War is over, and the death rattles of the White Russian armies echo across Europe and Asia as they crumble one by one before the advancing Bolsheviks. It seems that Leon’s days with the British Secret Service Bureau are over.
But when a battalion of British soldiers is shanghaied by a diabolical Baltic baron hellbent on conquering Mongolia and backed by an international organization of fascists, Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, head of the SIS, sends his number-one assassin to take care of business.
From London and Paris to the Crimea, Georgia and war-ravaged China and Mongolia, Leon and his accomplice, the beautiful Countess Catherine von Merenberg, are plunged headfirst into a maelstrom of horror to rescue the British troops and stop the reign of the Bloody White Baron.
Is There a Message in Your Novel That You Want Readers to Grasp?
My books are meant to be pure entertainment. They’re historical
fiction using real characters, places, and times. So, if anything, I hope my
readers get to know a little more about history told in an amusing and
hopefully congenial way.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Trying to make events and characters as accurate as possible.
This involves pretty intense research,
which as an independent author, means the slog to uncover stuff is mine alone.
How many books have you written and which is your favorite?
The Mercenary of Urga is my 9th full novel.
Ten if I count Death by Green Monkey, a novella I wrote as a giveaway on
my website. If I had to choose a favorite, it would probably be Infatuation,
my only standalone book so far. It’s a love story and a rather unusual one.
If You had the chance to cast your main character from Hollywood today, who would you pick and why?
In the tales of the sica series there are a number of
main characters all based on various members of my family going back to around
1840. I suppose the main one is my great-uncle Leon who, as I wrote in my
description of him, “resembled neither a great lover nor master assassin; and
yet he was both.”
He’s pretty young in the three books that feature him, but I
can definitely see Seth Rogan in the role.
When did you begin writing?
I’ve written my whole life.
From a bizarre school play I co-wrote in high school to an absolutely atrocious
movie I’ve never been able to watch. I was a reasonably successful advertising copywriter
and transitioned to novels the year of my retirement as chairman of a large
global advertising agency.
How long did it take to complete your first book?
Probably close to a year.
I was still flying to various assignments and meeting around the world so most
of my writing took place on planes somewhere over the Atlantic. I also changed
the premise of the book – Killing Harry Bones – half way through to incorporate
an antagonist based on a real-life character that I couldn’t stand.
Did you have an author who inspired you to become a writer?
I don’t know if J.R.R.
Tolkien inspired me to write, but he did inspire me to imagine. Not life as it
is but rather life as it could be. Bernard Cornwell had a similar effect on me
with his wonderfully accurate historical novels.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
Good or bad – I’m never sure – I don’t have a detailed plot
to begin with, but rather allow the characters to decide where to go next. I
love surprising myself on how - with a little manipulation – they find gaps in history
just waiting to be filled.
Describe your latest book in 4 words.
History with a twist
Can you share a little bit about your current work or what is in the
future for your writing?
I have two books going at the moment. The first – set in 1840
- is a continuation of the sica series in which a distant relative is
contracted by the newly crowned Ottoman Emperor, Abdulmejid I, to take out some
rather unsavory characters involved in the Blood Libel of Rhodes – a horrific
event where the Jews of Rhodes were accused and tortured to confess using the
blood of a young Christian boy for baking matzos. The second book goes
back to my absolute passion for saving wildlife from the horrors of poaching, trafficking
and trophy hunters using some of the characters from my first three books but
introducing two new protagonists.
About the Author
Jonathan Harries began his career as a trainee copywriter at Foote, Cone & Belding in South Africa and ended it as Chairman of FCB Worldwide with a few stops in between.
After winning his first Cannes Lion award, he was offered a job at Grey Advertising in South Africa, where he worked as a copywriter and ended up as CEO at age 29, just before emigrating to the US. Like most immigrants in those days, he started once again from scratch. After a five-year stint as Executive Creative Director of Hal Riney in Chicago, he was offered a senior position at FCB. Within ten years, he became the Global Chief Creative Officer and spent the next ten traveling to over 90 countries, racking up 8 million miles on American Airlines alone.
He began writing his first novel, Killing Harry Bones, in the last year of his career and transitioned into becoming a full-time author several years ago, just after retiring from FCB. He’s been writing ever since while doing occasional consulting work for old clients.
Jonathan has a great love of animals, and he and his wife try to go on safari every year. They’ve been lucky enough to visit game reserves in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania, India, and Sri Lanka.
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