I’m drawn to characters who are stuck between two worlds and in over their heads and doomed to fail, but they stick with it anyway. My novels also tend to include overlooked historical themes from the WWII and Cold War eras, often involving espionage or crime. I have an MA in history, so I like researching and using historical detail to dramatize the story. I’ve also been a Fulbright Fellow, a fiction editor, and a translator of German fiction. The books on this list all include the type of underdogs that I love—and inspired my work.
I wrote...
The Losing Role
By
Steve Anderson
What is my book about?
When the SS orders struggling German actor Max Kaspar to impersonate a US officer during the bloody Battle of the Bulge, Max devises his own secret mission to escape the war and flee to America.
It’s both his one big break and a deadly last chance on a journey that’s taken him from a once-promising career to brutal front-line combat.But his mission is doomed from the start. Trapped between the brutal front lines, he must summon all his acting talents and newfound courage to evade perilous traps laid by both sides. The desperate special operation in my story is inspired by a real-life WWII operation.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
By
John Le Carré
Why this book?
It’s simply a great and well-crafted story and one that grabbed me well before I knew I wanted to write. British agent Alec Leamas is burned out and believes the Cold War is over for him, but then he’s given a chance at revenge by posing as an East German defector. All the while, Western espionage methods aren’t looking any morally better than the enemy’s, and Leamas feels it. No heroes here, just underdogs and survivors—a revelation at the time. A classic for so many reasons.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
By
Patricia Highsmith
Why this book?
The now (in)famous confidence man Tom Ripley debuts in this classic. Talk about an underdog and a survivor—the aspiring Ripley so desperately wants to become someone he’s not that he will do anything, murder even, to reinvent himself again and again. He’ll even assume another’s personality and own it when all seems lost. He’s one of the original bad boys whom you want to follow despite their bad deeds, and why is that? It’s because Ripley never gives up, even when he has no clue what’s next.
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True Grit
By
Charles Portis
Why this book?
Who can’t love the main character Mattie Ross? Young Mattie has one of the best voices in fiction. She’s just fourteen when a coward shoots her dad dead and takes his horse and $150. Mattie’s not going to let that go unpunished. She leaves home to take revenge, teams up with tough US Marshal Rooster Cogburn, and pursues the killer into Indian Territory. Mattie should be way in over her head and is. But Mattie’s always the boss. Charles Portis tells the headstrong Mattie’s quest in an engaging first-person style and fills the story with great historical details.
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Going After Cacciato
By
Tim O'Brien
Why this book?
I didn’t love this book at first, but it’s grown on me as a deceptively inventive anti-war novel. One day, frustrated GI Paul Berlin resolves to walk away from the Vietnam War—by walking in a straight line. His journey takes him from the jungles of Southeast Asia to India to the streets of Paris. It’s a sometimes puzzling ride and about so much more than going AWOL that it has to be experienced. Tim O’Brien gets away with tricking the reader, but by the time you realize it, you probably don’t care as it’s the ultimate desperate escape.
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The Honest Spy
By
Andreas Kollender,
Steve Anderson
Why this book?
This is the improbable story of a true underdog who will stop at nothing to fight fascist evil, even when he has no idea what he’s doing and no one to help him. It’s also a true story. In WWII, Fritz Kolbe was a nondescript German official in the Berlin Foreign Office who made himself into a crucial spy against the Nazis yet for years remained an unknown and unsung hero. Kolbe’s dark drive and passion are fictionalized brilliantly by Andreas Kollender. I was so taken by this tale that I translated it myself from the original German.
