Contemporary Thrillers Net Force: Moving Target by Jerome Preisler

A NEW BATTLE IS BREWING—ONE THAT WILL SOON RAGE ACROSS ALL POLITICAL AND GEOGRAPHIC LINES.

As this new threat escalates, the US president calls on the members of Net Force to prevent global chaos.

In Paris, the leader of a new political movement has gone into hiding, pursued by a relentless group of bioenhanced assassins. Seeking to rescue him in the mysterious catacombs beneath the city is one of Net Force’s own, Kali Alcazar, who has become a hunted fugitive herself.

Halfway across Europe, meanwhile, her friends are about to strike at the heavily armed fortress of the world’s most dangerous hacker…and he’s prepared a deadly trap for them.

“This is a series for thriller fans to check out pronto.”—Kashif Hussain, Best Thriller Books

“A brilliant fusion of genres, The Da Vinci Code meets Blade Runner in a clever new take on the old spy thriller.”—Taylor Moore, author of Firestorm and Down Range

“Preisler is an expert at complex characters … and meticulous research that makes you believe the author himself has been in the arena of special operators and cyber spies.”—Steven Hartov, New York Times bestselling author of The Last of the Seven

“From unexpected biometric advances placed against the real-time conflict in Ukraine, to deep-seeded secret societies… Moving Target delivers.”—Tara Copp, Award-Winning Pentagon Correspondent and author of The Warbird

Jerome Preisler recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing his latest thriller, NET FORCE: MOVING TARGET.

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?
Not so much a single moment as a time and set of circumstances in my life. My father passed away under difficult conditions just as the omicron wave of the pandemic swept in. It was the dead of winter and I went straight from New York, where he died, to the isolation of my Maine home to work on the book. Also while I was writing it, Russia moved onto Ukraine and began sending in Wagner Group butchers. One of story’s main characters Kali Alcazar became a kind of surrogate for me having to process all that and find hope, courage and faith in the darkest and strangest of places. In my case that place was largely internal. In hers it physically manifested as the catacombs under Paris. Meanwhile, my other protagonist, Mike Carmody, is in Crimea leading a mission that’s very much affected by current events in Ukraine.

Jerome Priester

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?
Well, I had a multi-book contract to honor. That makes things easy in a certain respect. I know my characters and their universe, so the stories are very organic.

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?
T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land was a huge inspiration. I kept telling myself, “I bet there’s never been an international thriller with all these Eliot references!” Also a nearly forgotten 18th Century book of political philosophy called the KEY OF LIBERTY by a farmer and soldier named William Manning. This was one of the rare novels I’ve written that didn’t have a lot of background music.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?
Since this is a series, and a team book, I have recurring characters that I created to fill certain roles within the team dynamic. Kali Alcazar’s the Outlier, a mysterious outsider who doesn’t quite fit that dynamic–who’s wanted by the law all around the globe–yet is the best and most potent of my heroes. She’s coming from a different place than the others in every sense, and this book reveals a lot about that place for the first time.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?
I think there’s a lot of humanity in this book. At the same time, it lays out a very scary and complicated political, social and technological reality that”s working toward us from the dark edges of our awareness. I think its challenges and conflicts are pretty much those that will soon overtake us all … and they’re formidable. We’re going to need courage to face them, and that’s what my heroes do.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?
As for my next project–it’s classified!

Jerome Preisler is the New York Times bestselling author of over forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including all eight novels in the New York Times chart-topping Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series, and the relaunch of the New York Times bestselling NET FORCE series co-created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.

His latest novel is NET FORCE: MOVING TARGET (pub. 2/21/23 Hanover Square Press). He has also written two novellas spotlighting different characters from the novels, EYE OF THE DRONE and KILL CHAIN.

“I approach writing as an artistic endeavor but also approach it as a job. I love it, I’ve invested my entire life in it, but it’s still a job. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think that if you’re a writer you just have to sit down and do it. I suppose that in that sense I’m something of a pragmatist.”

Among Jerome’s many works of narrative history are ALL HANDS DOWN: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion, CODE NAME CAESAR: The Secret Hunt for U-boat 864 During World War Two, and FIRST TO JUMP: How the Band of Brothers Was Aided by the Brave Paratroopers of Pathfinders Company. His most recent work of nonfiction is CIVIL WAR COMMANDO: William Cushing’s Daring Raid to Sink the Invincible Ironclad C.S.S. Albemarle.

From 2005-2013 Jerome wrote the baseball column YankeesInk for YESNetwork.com and it quickly became one of the most visited pages on the site. He additionally co-wrote the memoir GAME FACE: A Lifetime of Hard-earned Lessons On and Off the Basketball Court with legendary NBA Hall of Famer Bernard King. Optioned by the preeminent film and television production company Radar Pictures (the Jumanji franchise, The Last Samurai, Runaway Bride and the Amityville Horror) GAME FACE is presently in development as a major motion picture.

Jerome grew up in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of working-class immigrant parents. He now divides his time between New York and Maine with his wife Suzanne and two feline masters.

To learn more about the author and his work, please visit his website.