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| Brandon Webb | |
Brandon Webb and John David Mann are the coauthors of six nonfiction titles, including Webb's memoir, The Red Circle. Webb is a former Navy SEAL sniper; Mann is an award-winning author. Their first novel is Steel Fear (Bantam), about a disgraced Navy SEAL sniper tracking a serial killer aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf. Cold Fear, the sequel, is scheduled for release in 2022.
On your nightstand now:
BW: Just finished reading Dune again; on my nightstand now is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. An incredible book, should be required reading for all middle schoolers. Yuval Noah Harari does an impossible job of distilling a massive amount of science and data on humanity in a very simple, Gladwell-like, entertaining read.
JDM: Just finished devouring the entire Inspector Erlendur series, started as research for our next thriller (which takes place in Iceland) and fell in love. Now reading Stacey Abrams's thriller While Justice Sleeps. On deck: The Sinner by Petra Hammesfahr.
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| John David Mann | |
Favorite book when you were a child:
BW: I was a profuse reader as a kid living on a sailboat with no television. Oh the torture! Hah! Actually an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. Favorite for sure is The Hobbit. Tolkien gave us something special with Middle Earth.
JDM: Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, first book I ever read (age 5) and still one of my favorites. The first story, "What Will Little Bear Wear?" has all the elements of a great novel: mystery, suspense, adventure, love. And C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle. The whole Narnia series changed my view of reality and showed me what profound impact a story can have.
Your top five authors:
BW: Tolkien for what I said above. Steinbeck, for his plain-English that most can identify with (Tortilla Flats is LOL funny). Ayn Rand for her amazing ability to weave personal philosophy into an exciting page ripper (Atlas Shrugged a top pick). James Michener and his massive historical novels; Hawaii is a favorite. Clancy for his relentless attention to detail. I was in the military at the time and still learned things about the Department of Defense from Clancy I couldn't learn on active duty!
JDM: Kate Atkinson, for the humanity of her characters. Raymond Chandler and Lee Child, who for me stand like bookends of the modern thriller craft, for showing how effective it can be to alternate lean, blunt language with florid passages that verge on poetry. Tana French: the language, ye Gods, the language! Arnaldur Indridason; the Erlendur stories are acts of levitation: they float above the ground, holding your attention without all the usual visible means of support--copious action, grisly deaths, patently malevolent villains, spine-tingling suspense. Finally, Harry Bingham. Harry's brilliant, profoundly troubled Welsh policewoman Fiona Griffiths had more to do with the invention of Finn than any other character, living or fictional.
Book you're an evangelist for:
BW: The Tree of Knowledge by Maturana and Varela. Like Sapiens, it's a gift to humanity. A really hard read because of the unfamiliar vocabulary, but read it with a dictionary by your elbow and you'll be a better person for it.
JDM: Kate Atkinson's magnificent debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. My favorite novel of all time. It's a master class in fiction-writing. There are bigger books, but none so fully capture the human comedy in all its range and depth.
Book you've bought for the cover:
BW: Whoever said don't judge a book by its cover was an idiot. A cover is SO important. Recently I rebought and read Dune for the cover. Incredible book.
JDM: Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. I had no idea who Christopher Moore was when I saw this on a bookshop shelf. First, the subtitle, and then the illustration, a whale mid-dive, just its tail showing, inscribed with the words BITE ME. How do you not buy that?
Book you hid from your parents:
BW: My Dungeons & Dragons books and modules. I was an avid D&D player as a young teen and my grandmother thought I was going to hell for reading and playing, so my mom would buy them for me (with Grandma X-mas money) and I'd have to hide from plain view. So technically, it's a grandparent hide!
JDM: They were both huge advocates of reading everything and anything, though they leaned toward searching out the best. When I was 10, I asked my mom if she'd read me The Odyssey, Fitzgerald translation, and she did, a chapter a night, till we got through the whole damn thing. I wish they'd both lived long enough to read Steel Fear.
Book that changed your life:
BW: Tree of Knowledge by Maturana & Varela taught me to respect everyone's views, the importance of environment in our lives and that nothing is certain. We must in fact resist, taking a lesson from scholars who were convinced the Earth was flat and the universe was Earth-centric, the temptation of certainty.
JDM: As a kid, C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle, which introduced me to the idea that there is an unseen world beyond the realm of our limited senses. As an adult writer, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Steinbeck's East of Eden, which showed me the scope and majesty a novel is capable of.
Favorite line from a book:
BW: Excellence Matters, from the last page of The Red Circle, the first book John and I did together. I try and live this every day. Thank you, John, for pulling that out of me.
JDM: The first line of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, "I exist!" coupled with that book's last line: "I am alive. I am a precious jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox." I can't even type the words without tearing up.
Five books you'll never part with:
BW: Atlas Shrugged; The Tree of Knowledge; Reality in Advertising (the mentor of Ogilvy); The Flame and the Flower, an old romance novel; my mom named me after the lead character, a swashbuckling pirate captain. A few years ago she gave me her original edition. Sapiens, a new favorite.
JDM: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson. The Enemy, Lee Child. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho. The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis. Little Bear, Else Holmelund Minarik. Reasons all given above!
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
BW: I would love to read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy again. I'm excited just thinking about it as I type this in my hotel lobby in Kyiv.
JDM: Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. And honestly, I'd love to be able to read Steel Fear from day one having no idea what happens next!
Books and/or experiences that most directly inspired you to write Steel Fear:
BW: My own personal experience on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs and Clancy's Hunt for Red October, both equally thrilling!
JDM: Talking to the Dead, the first of Harry Bingham's Fiona Griffiths series, and Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas both had a huge impact on the invention of Finn. And Another Great Day at Sea, Geoff Dyer's enormously entertaining chronicle of his time on an American aircraft carrier, was extremely helpful in bringing the USS Abraham Lincoln to life.