AN HONORABLE ASSASSIN - Steve Hamilton
Nick Mason lives on the edge in a non-stop state of chaos and intrigue. He could still be serving out his twenty-five years to life sentence in federal prison if not for the influence of Darius Cole, a powerful Chicago mob boss who arranges Mason’s early release to do his bidding on the outside as one of the most lethal hitmen in the business. It all came with an enormous cost in personal freedom and as the death toll rose, Mason was desperate to find a way out while protecting those closest to him.
When we talked to author Steve Hamilton in 2017 following the critically-acclaimed introduction of Mason in the thriller The Second Life of Nick Mason, and the second book in the series, Exit Strategy, Hamilton was well along on the next book in the series that would take Mason far from his midwest roots to a location halfway around the world.
STEVE HAMILTON
As the soon-to-be-released An Honorable Assassin opens, Mason arrives in Jakarta, Indonesia under the operational control of a new organization who thrust him immediately into a face-to-face confrontation with Hashim Baya, one of the most infamous sponsors of international terrorism who also holds a top spot on Interpol’s “Red Notices List.” Everyone is out for the elusive Baya who leads Mason, his newly appointed watchdogs Torino and Luna, and Martin Sauvage, an Interpol agent with a personal score to settle, from the rooftops of Jakarta’s most exclusive locales to the seedy back alley’s and across the tip of East Asia to Singapore and the Philippines in a non-stop, action packed tale of intrigue filled with the explosive twists and diabolic turns that have been the hallmark of Hamilton’s cinematic storytelling style.
The two-time Edgar Award-winning and NY Times bestselling author of the Alex McKnight series, joined the CONVERSATION on August 12 in advance of an extensive tour to talk more about An Honorable Assassin and the deadly challenges ahead for Nick Mason and the unknown organization that holds his fate in their hands.
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Nick Mason in Jakarta …
Steve Hamilton: “The whole point of that second book, which was called Exit Strategy—and it's really the title that sort of gave it away—was that he's been living in this life where he's been released from prison, but with this huge catch that anytime the phone rings, he has to answer it… then he has to go do whatever he's told to do. … He's looking for a way out. And without giving away how that book ends, I can say that the idea is that even if you free yourself from the person that you think is the master, you always find out that there's someone above him that he was indebted. And so now you just have a new master. And the very last scene of that book—and I can say what that was—he was on an airplane flying to Jakarta of all places, the most remote foreign place that he can ever imagine. In his mind, it's on the other side of the world and now he's working for this new organization. … and An Honorable Assassin picks up literally with him getting off the plane in a place that he's never been. He has no idea where he is or what he has to do.”
Torino and Luna …
SH: “They're basically his new teammates. He goes right into the fire. He literally gets off the plane, not even over the jet lag and he's instantly dropped into a really bad situation. And he learns that these are the people that he has to trust his life to. And it's not a very comfortable feeling because that first mission, that first job, doesn't go very well. Nick Mason is someone who is used to acting on his own. He's used to planning things very carefully. So, on top of being in a place he doesn't know and languages he doesn't know, all of a sudden now he has to be part of this team of people that he doesn't know. It's pretty obvious to him early on that he's not going to last long if he keeps doing what these guys tell him to do.”
Hashim Baya …
SH: “Hashim Baya is sort of a play on words. The Indonesian word for “crocodile.” It's very similar to that and why they call him “The Crocodile.” … He's someone who treats terror as a commodity… he invests in it. He funds it. And he directs it. He really doesn't have any allegiance to anybody. For most of the book, he's just this shadow. This cipher who Mason is trying to hunt down because he has to. Because that's the only way he can survive. That's the only way that he can protect his family.”
Martin Sauvage …
SH: “He is an Interpol agent who has his own personal reasons to be hunting down this same guy. And of course, even though they have the same goal, ultimately they're going about it in obviously very different ways.”
Interpol …
SH: “The movies don't do a great job of showing you what Interpol really does. They will show these Interpol guys running around with guns and making arrests and shooting people. And that's not at all how it works. If you work for Interpol, which is based in France, of course, you are sent to a country to assist with law enforcement, and you basically have no powers at all. None. You can't arrest people. You can't, God forbid, shoot people. You're just sort of an advisor and that's a really tough position to put him into. … he has certain powers maybe that Nick doesn't, but on the other hand, he's much more limited because Nick can just go shoot (Baya) if he ever finds him. And Savauge can't even show a badge and arrest him.”
An Honorable Assassin …
SH: “Luna is this other assassin who came from this really tough place. She has a different sort of ethos than he does. And she sort of makes fun of him a little bit for trying to be an honorable assassin, as if that's a possibility. As if that's something that you can even be. But he's trying so hard to hold onto that one piece of himself, even though he is forced to do all of these terrible things. He has always tried to hold onto that one piece of himself, which I hope is what helps you maybe root for him … that you can see that he's just in this really bad situation.”
The Narrative …
SH: “It's all fiction. I started writing this book before the invasion of Ukraine. It was obviously well before what's happening in Palestine and I wasn't thinking about the real world that much. Even though I do refer to real groups that were operating in that part of the world. … you can't even imagine or create fiction that would outdo just how upside down things can get in the world right now. And I'm very much aware of that … I hope nobody thinks that I'm taking any of that lightly or using it for cheap effect because, this kind of thing is happening all over the world. And there are people who will just do anything because somebody tells them that someone else deserves to die. And it's the most horrifying thing I can imagine.”
This content has been edited for clarity and length.
An Honorable Assassin, the third installment in Steve Hamilton's Nick Mason series debuts August 27th from Blackstone Publishing and is on sale wherever books are sold. An extensive book tour in Scottsdale, Arizona, New York, and throughout Michigan and other locations, is scheduled through September 2024, with new dates being added. For more information on the book and the tour, visit: www.authorstevehamilton.com.
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