MM#348--Diving into the Thrilling World of Brad Thor's Scott Harvath Series

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Hello and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. You know, for the last four or five weeks we have been heavy on the politics, very heavy in fact, and we just covered religion in our last podcast episode. So perhaps today we will talk about country music.

0:49 What I was waiting on the collective gasp. What in the world is he talking about? We ain't talking about no country music, and I was thinking when I just said that about that country song way back in the day. I think the name of it was politics, religion and her all three things you were allowed or were not allowed, I should say, and should not talk about in polite company. But no, seriously, today we're going to cover an old favorite of mine, and that's not country music.

1:30 Thank God there will be no singing on today's podcast, but it is my favorite author, fiction author, that is, brad Thor, the new Tom Clancy of the fiction thriller Cloak and Dagger novel. We have featured him in an author spotlight last year and we have covered some of his books from this microphone, but now he is out with another sure to be bestseller this year. It just dropped on August 6th and that title is Shadow of Doubt. It is the 23rd installment of Brad Thor's Scott Harvath series and I hope it delivers another high-octane thriller.

2:15 Hope it's filled with espionage, international intrigue and heart-stopping action. Most of his books are, but let me read from the back of the book what the shadow of doubt promises us. The story kicks off with a mysterious cargo plane, escorted by Russia's most lethal fighters, taking off from a remote airbase. The United States is closely monitoring the plane, but the Pentagon has no clue about its destination or its cargo. Imagine that Concurrently, a high-level Russian defector seeking asylum in Norway holds secrets that could destabilize the West and across Europe.

2:59 In Paris, a lone French agent uncovers a conspiracy so explosive it threatens to ignite a global conflict. Sounds like today's certain headlines across all newspapers. As these events unfold, alarm bells ring in Washington and none other than Scott Harvath, america's top spies. Thrust into the midst of the chaos, harvath is forced to navigate a world filled with double agents, international intrigue, making difficult choices between his conscience and his duty to his country.

3:40 And I think I've said this before if you like espionage and intrigue, if you like the cloak and dagger type stuff, this novel and all Brad Thor novels are rich with spycraft and double agents and complex international plots. That's part of why I like them, because of the spycraft, but also these moral dilemmas. I mean, this dude faces all kinds of stuff. That's part of the fun in the fiction novels, isn't it? Put yourself into the role of the protagonist. In this case, the guy's name is Scott Harvath, and who is he? Well, we've never really pulled him apart, and that's where I wanted to share, on this episode, just who he is.

4:27 But staying with this trend of putting ourselves into the role of the protagonist in fiction novels, I want to share a funny story. I had a grandmother who would devoutly watch Days of Our Lives, you know that middle of the day soap opera from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s. Actually, I think it's still going on now, but maybe it's over on the streaming service. I don't think it's on. I don't think it's still on regular TV during the day, but anyhow, my grandmother and this is the godmother who raised my dad, my dad's real mother, died giving birth to him.

5:09 So he was farmed out to this godmother and my grandmother. And anyhow, we would go back to see grandma, because my grandfather died before I was born. He died in 1968. I was born in 1974, so I did not know him. But we would go back to see grandma and she would be devoutly watching Days of Our Lives and she would be all wrapped up in it, just like it was happening in real life. And she would get my mom off to the side and start talking to her about these stories of these characters and how it's interwoven between who said what to who and who's doing what backstab and who and who, all these intricacies of these relationships that happen in soap operas.

6:01 None of it, true, but the way my grandmother would tell my mom it was as if it was true, and it took my mom several times to understand and unpack that she was not really talking about the neighbors or about old friends from a different part of the city that my mom assumed she was talking about. And my mom was trying to stay riveted on everything she said it's her mother-in-law, but she wasn't talking even about real people. She was talking about these fake characters on days of our lives like it was her best friend. So once my mom caught on and started to remember this whole way of what happens when you go back to grandma's, she would try to read up through the old TV guide or she would try to find something so she could stay up on the latest.

6:54 My mom wasn't able to watch the Days of Our Lives soap operas. My mom was a librarian so she was working part time at the library so she was not able to catch up on the latest and greatest from Days of Our Lives. But she wanted to have some working knowledge of what grandma would talk about so she could engage back with her, like girls often do, on the intrigue of these relationships. So I think it's just funny, so funny because I've often thought as I've gone from novel to novel I feel that same way about Scott Harvath. After seven or eight novels now I feel like I know Scott.

7:35 You know he's a good friend. He's a former ex-Navy SEAL. He's a former Secret Service agent, we learn later on. He becomes a covert counterterrorism operative. Now he started his regular career outside the military. He was working for the Secret Service. In novel one or two he's then thrust into the presidential protective detail. After that he moves on to contract work for the CIA and then he eventually joins the private sector to continue his fight against the bad guys and against terrorism.

8:17 So the funny thing is, if people ask me detailed questions about these novels, I have a picture perfect in my mind's eye of who Scott Harvath is, and the funny thing is with fiction novels, this is the beauty of reading your picture perfect that you have in your mind of the character is completely different than what is in the mind of somebody else, and that's the beauty of reading. Um, the way Brad Thor describes him. He has blue eyes, sandy Brown hair and a powerfully muscled physique Sandy Brown hair and a powerfully muscled physique, and he stands about five foot 10.

8:59 I think he has tons of resilience. I love his MacGyver like tactical expertise and I really, really love he's the Patriots Patriot. He pursues justice with relentless activity. He is all about making sure good guys win. It's the old version of the Western the good guys always win and I just love that Part of the compelling reason for reading these books. Well, I actually don't read any of them. My dirty secret is I crush them. I crush them on audible. Uh, they always come out in audible.

9:39 It's the same narrator. So they totally have you. They totally have you sunk in to uh, um, this. This narrator, who is very, very good at his name, escapes me just now. But, um, all of them, you know all of them. All of the books, the last seven or eight I have crushed in a week to 10 days. They go very fast, short chapters. So if you have to break for lunch or whatever, uh, you can very easily stop. You know just, probably every, every chapter is between seven and 10 minutes. Stop, you know just, probably every chapter is between seven and ten minutes. Short, choppy chapters.

10:20 They get right to the point, action-packed. Brad Thor is a very compelling writer. He often has storylines that are very compelling. They involve geopolitics and that's part of the other intrigue. And then Brad has Harvath operating and making decisions in morally gray areas to protect the United States from these various threats. And I just love that. I love putting myself in Harvath's shoes to say, ooh, when I make that decision, when I make that call, that's the fun of these cloak and dagger novels, when I make that call, that's the fun of these cloak and dagger novels.

11:01 So Brad Thor and the Scott Harvath series spans over 20 novels I think we're at 23 now and some of the most notable books in my mind are the Lions of Lucerne that's Harvath's first appearance where he survives an attack that kills the president's secret service detail and then embarks on a mission to rescue the kidnapped president. If you want to start with any books, start with the lions of Lucerne. That's where you'll first learn about Scott Harvath. He'll become your best friend. Then, path of Assassin, harvath targets those responsible for a plot against the president and leads him through some dangerous encounters.

11:44 Blowback, I thought, was very, very good. Harvath is brought back into action to thwart a shadowy organization planning to use an ancient weapon to destroy the United States. That's a very good book. The second to last one I read, rising Tiger. This was very compelling. I did not know or understand the Chinese and Indian hotspot along their border that had been flaming up here and there like embers on a fire for the last 50 to 75 years, and brad thor introduces you to that. Then we're also introduced to the notion of china's string of pearls theory about how china is exporting their foreign policy, and we've covered that in the previous mojo Minute, so be sure to look back through the listings for that.

12:40 And that's the reason, the compelling reason why I read and listen to these books. Not to mention, like I said, brad Thor is a great storyteller. He has Harvath undergoing significant and personal and professional challenges. Now, one of the very cool things. That is he, he. You get to understand Harvath a little bit better because he takes you into the thoughts of the character and especially his personal challenges. For instance, in backlash the book backlash Harvath is portrayed as a broken man grappling with his losses, and he's only pulled back into the action to face new threats.

13:31 His journey is intertwined with a cast of reoccurring characters, including allies and adversaries. Now, one of the best relationships that brad thor has turned all of his readers on is a guy named nicholas, also known as the troll. He transitions from being harvath's nemesis to a valuable ally in their common fight against the larger threats. Nicholas is kind of a stud, but yeah, it's, he's kind of weird too. The first or second book you read, or I read and listened to um, I guess is the proper way to put it I did listen to it because I don't read any of.

14:18 I listened to nicholas was hunting down harvath as part of this cyber crime syndicate and uh, and there's all kind of twists and turns, but nicholas is, uh, he suffers from dwarfism, but he's a super stud on the computer, like he can. He's part of this, like I say, a cyber syndicate, and he can hack his way into anything Anyhow. He becomes the Chloe. If you know 24, the TV show back in the day I can't think of the guy's name, kether Sutherland Is that?

15:02 I think that's right, kether Sutherland. And then he had a. He had a. He had a sidekick, chloe, who was always the girl in the computer war room, had 15 monitors up and she could scramble and hack into anything and get him a camera, get him a rent-a-car, get him a map to show him how to get out of a tight spot. That is Nicholas for Scott Harvath now. So just pretty cool. Now most people say that Brathor novels are ripped from tomorrow's headlines. He blends real-world politics, geopolitics with a fast paced, high octane action, and I think that's all true.

15:50 Like I said we, we have now featured over 20 books. He's now featured over 20 books, and this current book is Shadow of Doubt. Like I said in the beginning, his last book, deadfall, was released about a year ago, which is just incredible. And he writes he literally writes a book a year, which is hard to believe. Tom Clancy at his height was not writing a book a year, writing a book a year. It's very hard for everyone to do the research and write a book a year and Brad Thor has done it for 23 years.

16:32 Just incredible writing tenacity. Now, deadfall, the last book that we read before, shadow of Doubt, just came out on August 6th. That centers around the revenge and justice of war crimes and barbarity. Now the plot is set against the backdrop of the war-ravaged borderlands in Ukraine and it features a rogue Russian mercenary unit, and you might remember the Wagner Group from the news headlines. This unit was composed of some of the most violent and psychologically dangerous individuals from Russian prisons and mental asylums.

17:14 They would go around committing horrific work crimes. Well, brad Thor has taken that group, the Wagner group, and then written the fiction. We don't think this is true, but has written the fiction that part of that group would break off and be completely working on its own, outside of any Russian leadership. So it provides what could compellingly really happen. And so in this book, deadfall, he has this rogue Russianary unit moving from village to village and they are raping women and children and kidnapping them.

18:11 And finally US intelligence picks this up. Scott Harvath is dispatched to avenge the killing of these women and children. Some of them were American aid workers, some of them were religious nuns. So Harvath is righting the wrong essentially, but in the midst of the novel he faces significant moral and ethical challenges, especially with women, as he gets closer to these Russian soldiers, and the climax is always just incredible. I'm not going to play spoiler so you don't have to worry about that, but Scott Harvath can spin a tale, as they say Now, by the end of Deadfall, scott and his girlfriend, solveig, solveig Kolstad, and that's another just part of a compelling story and why Brad Thor is such a great writer Because you get this personal relationship.

19:19 It's almost like the soap opera. Scott Harvath and Solveig Kolstad first meet in the novel Near Dark and Harvath is in a dire situation. He has a massive bounty placed on his head, he's in desperate need of friends he can trust, and then he encounters Solveig Kolstad, who was a Norwegian intelligence operative, and Kolstad is described as being smart and deadly and determined, just as determined as Harvath. They both have troubled pasts that mirror each other. So you can see what I mean. You get pulled in these stories, get all fired up because you feel like you know Harvath and Solveig Under these intense circumstances, and both are motivated by tracking down the killer Of their mutual friend and mentor, this guy named Carl Penderson, and the funny thing is Solveig and Scott have never even met Carl, but he was part of a team With certain unit and the fact that they sought out and killed that guy.

20:32 Then they want revenge and justice for their fallen comrade. So Solveig and Scott's relationship starts out professionally and it's built on mutual respect and professional necessity, but Solveig provides to be an invaluable ally. She really matches Harvath with determination in her skills, which is kind of cool. They work closely together and their professional relationship begins to evolve into a personal one. They find common ground, they share experience and emotional burdens and they tell about their past and so, anyhow, this equality fosters a deep respect and connection between both Solveig and Scott.

21:20 So way back, I guess five books back now. Near Dark was 2020's book. They met and liked each other, so v and scott. And then in black ice, the book in 2021. So v you open up and so v, scott's girlfriend at the opening of the book and you're like okay, here we go, game is on. She helps him uh, because he gets called away, and she was able to work her side of the equation with these Norwegian high-level contacts. She helps him to complete his mission In Rising Tiger, the 2022 novel. Solveig is more in the background, but she helps to provide stability and emotional support for him.

22:06 Scott is in India and China for most of the book and Solveig is still in Norway, but then Deadfall last year's book At the end of it. After completing his mission in Ukraine, he's going to spend some time with Solveig in Poland so he can decompress. She is his anchor and allows him to think through things very well while he's in the combat zone and on mission. So, anyhow, you can see why I just love Brad Thor novels. So in today's Mojo Minute, we offer a lighthearted approach to relaxing, and if we are ever to live the flourishing life, you have to find a way to decompress yourself and to relax with your family, your friends and your loved ones.

22:54 One way that I decompress is to just take a ride out in the country and listen to a good Brad Thorne novel, and, speaking of which, I'm off to listen to that latest group, that latest book, shadow of Doubt, right now. See you on the next episode, oh, oh. And before we go, keep fighting the good fight too. Cheers. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

23:38 Until next time, keep getting your mojo on, thank you.