It appears we’ll see the Tokyo Olympics this July, just not the one we imagined. That’s fertile ground for a creative thriller writer.
In the real world, organizers decided to postpone the Games from 2020 to 2021 due to the Covid pandemic. Then there was the recent announcement that no paying spectators will be allowed from outside Japan. According to The New York Times, Japanese authorities hope that local fans will fill vacant seats as international spectators scramble to get full refunds, which may not be possible.
In Rings of Fire (Permuted Press), Gregory Shepherd builds on the darker realities of our lives and times. He imagines a fictional version of the upcoming Olympics that’s scarier and more dangerous than anything the pandemic might inflict on the Games.
The novel also leverages the reality that any Olympics requires sharply heightened security, a trend that started with the massacre of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics. As the story unfolds in this follow-up to Shepherd’s Sea of Fire, the reader discovers a believable alternative history that involves North Korea and a journey through Japanese ways and culture.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AMIDST CHAOS AND THREATS
Olympic organizers see clear evidence of threats but grow increasingly frustrated by their failure to identify either the source or the bad guys’ agenda. Meanwhile, the peninsula is in great upheaval following a coup in North Korea that pushed out the terrorist Kim family that ruled with repressive, iron fists for decades. This leaves the nation with leaders more friendly and progressive towards the West, much like the “Arab Spring” that briefly flourished in 2010 in the Mideast only to collapse into new forms of repression.
Just like that “Arab Spring,” progressive hopes for a better North Korea have vanished like light beams entering a black hole, triggered by economic misfires, political mischief and crop failures. As chaos ensues, people yearn for the not-so-good-but-better-old days of stability. And, as always, the dudes who had the power, guns and money haven’t exited willingly.
Can the Chinese resist interfering and doing what they often do best: Stir trouble to fulfill their own purposes? What role should America play in this mess? Could the terrorist threats be emanating from the splinter group that wants to put the Kim family back into power?
These questions challenge our hero, Patrick Featherstone, a former American agent for the Joint Special Operations Command. Featherstone is working as the head security consultant for the Tokyo Olympics after successfully thwarting the plot that unfolded in Sea of Fire to start a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. Along with his security credentials, Featherstone is a good choice for the Japanese government because he’s steeped in the culture of said nation by birth and past experience.
IMMERSIVE, SUBTLE AND WELL-RESEARCHED
To protect the Games and get underneath the threat, he reunites with colleagues including former sniper Tyler Kang and brilliant hacker and North Korean native Jung-hee Choy. With the help of FBI agent Kirsten Beck, the more they learn about the cryptic threats they’re seeing, the more they realize that the Games face a cataclysmic attack designed to move the pieces on the political chessboard dramatically in favor of Korean terrorists.
What separates Rings of Fire from the pack is the author’s ability to immerse American readers in Japanese culture, in some cases showing us typical political butt-covering but with Asian twists. It’s a subtle-yet-welcome effort to push some of us out of our Yankee parochialism.
As we explore Japan through Featherstone’s eyes, Shepherd channels some of his own journeys. According to his biography, he lived in Japan for four years, studied Zen Buddhism and received a fellowship to study contemporary Japanese music in Tokyo. He’s fluent in Japanese, has traveled regularly to Seoul, South Korea, and done extensive research on the deplorable conditions in North Korea. The reader benefits from all of those experiences, which adds a deeper level of realism to Rings of Fire. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be prescient, though.
—∞—
Rings of Fire is available for purchase as a paperback, ebook and audiobook.
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