Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Long Shot - My Sixth Book




For the sixth Stephen Leather book I revisited some of the characters in The Chinaman, most notably Mike "Joker" Cramer (who makes a very brief appearance at the end of The Chinaman) and Mary Hennessy, who was a minor character in The Chinaman but who steps onto the main stage in The Long Shot.

I was living in Baltimore on the east coast of the United States while I was writing The Long Shot, and that's where the end of the book takes place. I was also learning to fly at the time so aviation plays a big part in the novel, too!

Mary Hennessy is one of my favourite characters - when I first introduced her in The Chinaman she was just going to walk into the garden with a cup of tea for her husband, Liam Hennessy, an IRA lawyer. But she refused to go away and ended up playing a pivotal role in the book.  Once I'd finished, it was as if she was in my head, insisting that I write about her again.

Mike Cramer was always a character who cried out to be written and I went on to feature him in book number eight, The Double Tap.

The Long Shot is basically a sniper story, and as I wrote it before the days of the internet all the research was done at first hand and I'm happy to say that I pretty much got all the technical stuff right.

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