Of course, I needed a plot, too, and if you’ve been with me for the last few Caitlin Strong books, you know I’ve cast the Chinese (Strong Darkness), the Russians (Strong Light of Day), and ISIS (Strong Cold Dead) as villains in consecutive tales, making Nazis the next obvious choice in that succession. So I googled “Nazis in Texas” and came up with a ton of hits about the German prisoner-of-war camps that dotted the Lone Star State in the latter days of World War II, exactly as I laid out in these pages, including the camp in Hearne.
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
So much of the book grew out of that notion (including the twist about the identity of one of those prisoners), but I also needed a “MacGuffin,” as Alfred Hitchcock might call it, which came to me in the course of a discussion with a good friend of mine named Stan Israel who’d received two liver transplants in the course of a week after his body rejected the first. We got to talking about the future of anti-rejection medication, and Axiol, the clinical trial drug developed in these pages, was born in that discussion. Lots more research needed to be done, of course, and, if you’re wondering, yes, the notion of transplantable, replacement organs being produced by 3-D printers is very real (Thank you, Natalia Aponte!).
Truth being stranger than fiction again.
My editor, Bob Gleason, served up the idea of a lawless biker town when he told me such places really do exist—I think he mentioned California, maybe around Barstow or way farther up north, as a setting for a few of them.
The Aryan Brotherhood really was founded in prison and I probably don’t have to tell you that the rise of nationalist movements across the globe is very real, too. What’s different about Strong to the Bone, though, is that the villain’s world-altering plot doesn’t exist from the get-go. Instead, it develops organically over the course of the action. So I guess this time out I really relied on my characters to do the heavy lifting for me.
Hopefully that produced a whole bunch of fun hours of reading for you, enough so that I’ll see you again next year when Caitlin and company return in Strong as Steel!
OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND
The Alpha Deception
*Betrayal (nonfiction)
*Black Scorpion: The Tyrant Reborn
*Blood Diamonds
*The Blue Widows
The Council of Ten
*Dark Light: Dawn
*Day of the Delphi
*Dead Simple
*Dolphin Key
The Doomsday Spiral
The Eighth Trumpet
*The Fires of Midnight
The Gamma Option
*Hope Mountain
*Keepers of the Gate
*Kingdom of the Seven
Labyrinth
*The Last Prophecy
The Lucifer Directive
The Ninth Dominion
The Omega Command
The Omicron Legion
Pandora’s Temple
*The Pillars of Solomon
The Rising
*The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending
*Strong at the Break
*Strong Cold Dead
*Strong Darkness
*Strong Enough to Die
*Strong Justice
*Strong Light of Day
*Strong Rain Falling
*Strong Vengeance
*Takedown (nonfiction)
The Tenth Circle
The Valhalla Testament
The Vengeance of the Tau
Vortex
*A Walk in the Darkness
*The Walls of Jericho
*Published by Forge Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of forty novels, including Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), Strong Darkness (finalist for the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and winner of the 2015 International Book Award for Thrillers), and Strong Light of Day (winner of the 2015 BooksAndAuthor.com Book of the Year Award for Best Mystery-Thriller and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery). He’s a graduate of Brown University, lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at www.jonlandbooks.com or on Twitter @JonDLand. Or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Two
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part Three
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part Four
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part Five
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Part Six
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Part Seven
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Part Eight
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Part Nine
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Part Ten
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Other Books by Jon Land
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STRONG TO THE BONE
Copyright © 2017 by Jon Land
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs: woman © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images; background © A and Rob/Shutterstock.com
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8464-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8466-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765384669
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First Edition: December 2017