Thunder Road
by Colin Holmes
May 1 – 26, 2023 Virtual Book Tour
Synopsis:
In this gamble, more than a few poker chips are at stake.
When an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his Top Secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him, because the Major owes a sizable gambling debt to a local mobster. The search takes Sharp from the hideaway poker rooms of Fort Worth’s Thunder Road, to the barren ranch lands of New Mexico, to secret facilities under construction in the Nevada desert.
Lethal operatives and an opaque military bureaucracy stand in his way, but when he finds an otherworldly clue and learns President Truman is creating a new Central Intelligence Agency and splitting the Air Force from the Army, Sharp begins to connect dots. And those dots draw a straight line to a conspiracy aiming to cover up a secret that is out of this world—literally so.
Praise for Thunder Road:
“This genre-defying and enormously entertaining romp is Mickey Spillane meets Whitley Strieber meets Woody Allen. I can’t remember when I’ve had so much plain old fun reading a book and just didn’t want it to end.”
~ Historical Novel Society, Editor’s Choice
“Sparkling 1940’s dialogue, wry humor, an unpredictable yet coherent storyline, and a breezy style all his own, make Colin Holmes’ somewhat spooky novel, Thunder Road, a winner. I’ll be on the lookout for his next novel.”
~ Rob Leininger, author of Killing Suki Flood and the Mortimer Angel “Gumshoe” series
“[In this] intriguing debut . . . clear crisp prose . . . morphs from a western into a detective story with an overlay of conspiracy theories.”
~ Publishers Weekly
“. . . one of the best mysteries I’ve ever read. The plot, characterization, timing, setting, dialogue, and tension was spot on. Love the noir feel of the past. Have to admit the ending twist caught me by surprise. Well done..”
~ Larry Enmon, author of Class III Threat, City of Fear, and The Burial Place
Inside the Author of Thunder Road:
I’m so excited to share that Colin Holmes, author of Thunder Road visited with me recently. Here are some highlights from our conversation.
What inspired you to write your first book?
Thunder Road is my first novel. Before this, I’d been a struggling screenwriter who had heard the stories of the 1940s nightlife along Hwy 199 leading north out of Fort Worth. Vegas before Vegas is what the old timers used to call it. There were whispers of mob entanglements, gunplay, and car bombs. Between those tales and my family having worked for generations at the Fort Worth aircraft plant, I ‘d picked up a good deal of local history. But I could never make it work as a movie script, so Thunder Road became a novel.
Along the journey, I stumbled on some interesting coincidences that occurred over the course of the summer of 1947. A couple of things clicked—Bugsy Siegel had visited Thunder Road more than a few times. He was murdered that June. The CIA was created then too, and the Air Force was spun off from the Army at the same time. Oh, and the wreckage from whatever crashed near Roswell? That came to Fort Worth that summer too.
What if, I wondered, these things were all related. Mix in a reluctant cowboy private eye, an is-she-or-isn’t-she love interest and the local color of neon nights on Thunder Road and that mystery became my debut novel.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
There’s a drawback to Thunder Road, but I don’t know if I’d change it. The story begins as a western, then transitions to a more traditional noir detective mystery, and then finally winds up with a decidedly science fiction twist. That multi-genre journey reveals a great deal about the protagonist, Jefferson Sharp, but it made the book exceedingly difficult to pitch and to sell. Editors and agents didn’t know what to do with it. Where does a bookseller put it on a shelf? With Mickey Spillane or Louis L’Amour? Dashiell Hammett or Ray Bradbury?
Readers don’t seem to have a problem with the story though, and that’s the main reason I’d leave it just as it is.
Who has impacted your life the most and in what way?
I’ve been married for over 30 years, so I’m pretty sure there’s only one acceptable answer. My lovely wife is my best critic, cheerleader, beta reader, and occasional therapist. She puts up with long periods of me talking to myself as I rework dialogue. She offers great ideas and shoots down my goofier takes. She’s an excellent chef and allows me to partake when she’s ground and brewed her specially selected coffees. And she reads some great books and clues me in when she’s found something special. It’s worked well for more than half my life and I appreciate her every day.
What event in your life do you remember first when asked for a humorous story?
It wasn’t funny at the time, but I was held up in a Burger King bathroom. When a robber points a large caliber handgun in your face and tells you to get on the floor, the smart person immediately does that. But if you can imagine the floor of your average fast-food restaurant about an hour before restroom cleaning time, the thought of getting down on that tile gives you pause.
Even the mugger chuckled when my first response was “Oh, man. Really?”
Wow! That was a lot to unpack! It’s funny but your summary of the drawback to Thunder Road only makes me want to read it even more 😀 Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend LOL! You’re so lucky to have a partner like that. Congratulations.
Oh Man… A Burger King bathroom 🤯😂
Book Details:
Genre: Noir Mystery
Published by: CamCat Books
Publication Date: February 15, 2022
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780744304978 (ISBN10: 0744304970)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | CamCat Books
Read an excerpt:
A thin flicker of flame licked the blue enamel coffeepot as Jefferson Sharp stirred life into the embers of last night’s campfire. He broke his morning stare and cocked his head as a shiver brought him fully awake. The herd was moving, shuffling uneasily through the wooly ground fog. Somewhere off in the predawn darkness, a mechanical whine spooled up, echoing across the ranchlands of the Rafter B. He shot a glance at the small oak where he’d tied Dollar the night before. The buckskin quarter horse flicked his ears and danced at the end of the lead rope, pulling the branch with him.
“Easy, fella.” Sharp tried to calm them both, but Dollar pranced and threw his head. To the west, the whine increased in volume, and the morning mist glowed with enough purple light that Sharp could make out the terrain through the patchy fog. Whatever had the livestock spooked was just beyond a small rise.
Sharp buckled on his gun belt, and his hand found his Colt. Not the six-shooting cowboy revolver of Gentry Ferguson’s King of the West movies, but a well-used Army issue .45 automatic that had followed him home from the European theater.
All through that war, Sharp had explained that, yes, he was from Texas, but that didn’t make him a cowboy. He’d walked the beat as a cop before the war—didn’t own a horse, have a ranch, or ever slept out under the stars or tended cattle. So naturally, here he was two years later, camped out on a ranch with a borrowed horse, guarding cows.
He patted Dollar’s shoulder as if that would settle the horse, then hiked up the hill in the low crouch that had been driven into him on too many mornings in the infantry.
When he was two steps up the hill, the earth rumbled with the tremor of aggravated shorthorns thundering away from the noise and light. Sharp had been a special ranger for the Fort Worth and Western Stockmen’s Association since the war, but he’d yet to be involved in a stampede.
Of course, it had to happen now, he thought. Before sunup. In the fog.
He had no place to hide as dozens of terrified red cattle came bellowing over the rise. He scrambled back to the campsite. He could see the white faces on the lead pair of Herefords when he yanked the Colt off his hip and fired twice into the air. The startled cattle reeled and parted right and left at the gunfire, the herd splitting to flow past the campsite like a stream around a rock. Luck and the good Lord favored the ignorant.
Sharp shooed the last of the stragglers past as the adrenaline drained away. “That,” he said to the nickering quarter horse, “is enough excitement for today.”
The mysterious whine disagreed. Pulsing lights strobing red, purple, and golden orange rose from beyond the hill. The apparition moved over the ridgeline, and the fog glowed. Behind Sharp, Dollar screamed a whinny and reared, trying for all his might to pull the scrubby tree out of the ground. The branch cracked. Sharp dove for the lead rope and dug his heels into the damp earth before Dollar could bolt. Something was out there with the man and horse, and the smarter one of the pair wasn’t sticking around to find out what it was.
But the light show could move as well, and it did. The brilliant colors rotated in concert with the whine as it became a deafening howl. The hovering glow spun together into an intense white circle, levitated high over the hill, and disappeared into the morning fog. Instantly, the noise changed course and roared back over the camp. The lights flashed overhead, then vanished at incredible speed, leaving a dying echo and a breeze that moved the wisps of fog.
Sharp and Dollar stood frozen as whatever the hell it was blasted above them. They shared a look, and then the quarter horse went full rodeo, bucking, jumping, and twisting—anything to get out of this halter, off this rope, away from this tree, and back to the safety of the barn. Any barn.
It took five minutes of profanity and cajoling, but Sharp finally calmed down the panicked gelding. He took a good hold on the halter and led them back to the campsite. “Look, I don’t know what it is either, but I’m pretty damn sure it doesn’t eat horses for breakfast.”
Dollar’s wild eyes and flicking ears suggested that he was not convinced.
Sharp remembered that something else was out there. Sixtyfour head of cattle the Stockmen’s Association was paying him to keep track of. Now, they were scattered from here to Mingus, and he and Dollar would be all morning rounding them up.
***
Excerpt from Thunder Road by Colin Holmes. Copyright 2023 by Colin Holmes. Reproduced with permission from CamCat Books. All rights reserved.
Author Bio:
Before the pandemic, Colin Holmes toiled in a beige cubical as a mid-level marketing and advertising manager for an international electronics firm. A recovering advertising creative director, he spent far too long at ad agencies and freelancing as a hired gun in the war for capitalism.
As an adman, Holmes has written newspaper classifieds, TV commercials, radio spots, trade journal articles and tweets. His ads have sold cowboy boots and cheeseburgers, 72-ounce steaks, and hazardous waste site clean-up services. He’s encountered fascinating characters at every turn.
Now he writes novels, short stories and screenplays in an effort to stay out of the way and not drive his far too patient wife completely crazy. He is an honors graduate of the UCLA Writers Program, a former board member of the DFW Writers Workshop and serves on the steering committee of the DFW Writers Conference. He’s a fan of baseball, barbeque, fine automobiles and unpretentious scotch.
Catch Up With Colin Holmes:
ByColinHolmes.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @bycolinholmes
Instagram – @bycolinholmes
Twitter – @bycolinholmes
Facebook – @colin.holmes.1213
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Great interview!
Ok, ok! Your answer to the first question has me interested. I might just have to add this to my wish list!
“there’s only one acceptable answer. My lovely wife” – Yes! Correct answer, LOL.
“I was held up in a Burger King bathroom” – Oh my word, are you kidding me?! I don’t think I have ever known anyone who was held up at gun point!