Writing The Torch Betrayal, the first in a series of novels that feature OSS Agent Conor Thorn, allowed me to immerse myself in the cataclysmic, world-shaping event of World War II — a subject that has fascinated me since my youth.

The period of the 1930’s and the war years of 1939 to 1945, to this day, still produce multitudes of histories, stories, biographies, and memoirs. The availability of once secret documents from the archives of Great Britain, the United States and other countries involved in the conflict have proved to be a trove of fascinating facts and information.

Over the years, in my research of World War II, I have often come across little known facts that seem to tell only a part of a story leaving me wondering what the missing parts of the story were. The premise for The Torch Betrayal was inspired by just such a fact—a top secret document that contained key directives for the invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch, went missing and was never found. The Torch Betrayal is my story of the race to find the document before Allied task forces set sail from the US and England for the beaches of North Africa.

The second book in the Conor Thorn series, The Ultra Betrayal, is also inspired by an actual event—the disappearance of a Polish engineer who possessed top-secret information as to the British government’s successful efforts in cracking the German military codes.

The third book in the Conor Thorn series, The Unquiet Genius, is also inspired by the true story of a brilliant Italian physicist that went missing in 1938. Did he commit suicide, as many thought, or did he disappear by entering a monastery? This scientist would have been a critical asset to the Allied and Nazi atomic weapons programs. Finding the scientist and making sure he stays out of Nazi hands falls to Conor Thorn and his partner, MI6 agent Emily Bright.

After thirty-seven years in the broadcasting industry, most years spent in Washington, DC, my wife Chris and I moved back to Park City, Utah where I have been writing full time. We have three children, Thomas, Michael and Riley, who all live too far away.

I am an associate member of the International Thriller Writers, and The OSS Society. I attended Villanova University and graduated from Boston University. I look fondly on my years growing up in the great state of New Jersey.

FILE: BIO WITH BOOKS