It’s a global economy, now more than ever; so crime’s more global as well: International conspiracies; arms, artworks, drugs, and human traffickers; spies and terrorists—they’re all subjects for mystery and thriller novels that allow a reader to become an armchair traveler who accompanies crime fighters and soldiers of fortune on their international journeys. I went on those journeys as a reader of Agatha Christie and H. Rider Haggard’s novels years ago, but I also created a few of those adventures myself for other readers as well, starting years ago with my NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco.

I’ve chronicled quite a few of their cases in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. Most start in New York City, but about half of them go international…or start there! The Midas Bomb, the first novel in the series, appropriately takes place in the world’s most famous city (there are international flashbacks and back stories involving Castilblanco, though), but the villains are international in origin. That’s an obvious mix to make because NYC is often called the “crossroads of the world,” a city so diverse that over 800 different languages and dialects are spoken there besides English.

Other novels in the series have an even stronger international flavor: In Angels Need Not Apply, Aristocrats and Assassins, Gaia and the Goliaths, and Defanging the Red Dragon, the city, if it’s a character, plays a minor role.

The most international of these novels, Aristocrats and Assassins, is a tale of international intrigue and terrorism that takes place completely in Europe—much of Europe is visited, in fact. It starts with Castilblanco and his wife Pam beginning a rare vacation they’ve promised themselves for a while—she’s a busy TV news reporter and he’s a cop, so their periods of free time don’t often overlap! A group of terrorists are kidnapping European aristocrats. The motive’s not clear, but Castilblanco gets involved. The action involving Chen begins in China, but the two detectives eventually come together to solve the mystery of the kidnappings.

The other “international novels” in the series take place only partially overseas. Angels Need Not Apply is about a conspiracy where a drug cartel, Muslim terrorists, and an American ultra-right militia team up to create major mayhem. Each group has a different motive to create chaos, so Chen and Castilblanco’s struggles to thwart their plans aren’t easy. A lot of Gaia and the Goliaths takes place in France. In perhaps my most prescient take on things to come, an American energy exec teams up with a Russian petrol-oligarch to try to increase the West’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Defanging the Red Dragon is a crossover novel that connects the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series with the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (it’s novel #8 for the first and #6 for the second). It begins in NYC and continues to DC and London. Castilblanco is present in both the US and UK; Chen holds down the fort in the US. (Esther and her new husband Bastiann van Coevorden had earlier cameos in several “Chen and Castilblanco” novels—Esther in The Collector and Bastiann in Aristocrats and Assassins and Gaia and the Goliaths.)

Unlike what Michael Connolly did with his famous Harry Bosch, I didn’t want to restrict Chen and Castilblanco to one city and turn their cases there into mystery/thriller novels that are little more than police procedurals. There are very few Harry Bosch novels with an international flavor (most take place in LA), but policing these days often has an international flavor, if only for international terrorism. (Even my Family Affairs has this aspect.) I believe authors like Baldacci, Connolly, Child, Deaver, and other old stallions in the Big Five’s stables would appeal to more readers if they went international more often. (In Deaver’s defense, his best book, Garden of Beasts, is completely international, but it’s not in his “Lincoln Rhyme” series!) Maybe foreign readers love stories set in the US, but I bet a lot of American readers like stories with an international flavor. (I certainly do!)

I’ll admit that sometimes my novels might have too much international flavor (e.g., Muddlin’ Through and Goin’ the Extra Mile, the first and third novels in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”). Perhaps either extreme is bad? If that’s the case, the “Chen and Castilblanco” series is the Goldilocks choice for readers who want some crime stories that are an eclectic mix. (You can leave a comment to this article or use my contact page to tell me what you think of this.)

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules spelled out on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” Series. This seven-book series (eight, if you count Defanging the Red Dragon, a free PDF available on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website) takes you from Manhattan in the US to Latin America and Europe and beyond as the NYPD detectives battle the criminal elements of humanity. Chen is a Chinese American from Long Island whose beguiling Mona Lisa smile belies her cleverness and strength; Castilblanco is a sarcastic and tough Puerto Rican American from the Bronx. Both are ex-military and suffer no fools. These novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold. There are many hours of reading entertainment waiting for all armchair detectives out there who are fans of mysteries and thrillers.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

(Note: While science and sci-fi writing motivated this post, some readers might find the following material offensive. Tough.)

The U.S. president wanted a Space Force. The U.S. military capitulated. And the U.S. Congress gave it to him on December 20. Sounds neat. Does it make sense?

Traditionally the USAF took care of most things happening above the Earth’s surface, including spy satellites and whatever secret weapons are up there (yep, and they’re just as dangerous as the U.N.’s black helicopters that will invade the U.S.). Astronauts have generally been a mix of USAF and Navy pilots, discounting civilian scientists, so there was already a lot of overlap with other services. And the U.S. NASA wasn’t above getting into the militaristic aspects either. So forget tradition. Maybe we should call a spade a spade? The military is in space, so maybe we should admit it and wrap it up in one tidy package?

Is there some savings to be had? Even if the answer were yes, that’s probably not an argument most reasonable persons would make…or believe. The current administration will have created a trillion dollar U.S. debt very soon, so what’s a few more dollars here and there? A precedent might be the moving of the Coast Guard into Homeland Security, but the creation of Homeland Security also increased federal bureaucracy and incompetence (not to mention murderous enforcement on the southern border where thousand of illegals are invading). Maybe they should have put anything to do with protecting the U.S., including what’s now in Space Force, into Homeland Security? Isn’t Space Force about protecting the homeland and not invading ETs or killer asteroids? U.S. of A., uber alles!

Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Smaller isn’t either. (Seems like the Goldilocks Principle needs to be applied here, but the Pentagon’s good ole boys would never listen to a girl.) And where does the Earth’s atmosphere become space? Where does it end and space start? I can’t wait for scramjet technology, where intercontinental flights hop and skip across the atmosphere, going from the USAF’s domain to the USSF’s and back. Who will have authority over those flights? Or might that be the FSA (not to be confused with the Russian equivalent of the FBI) instead of the FAA?

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The nuclear ogre has been sleeping in his cave since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s a long time, so it’s no surprise that small minds like Trump have forgotten or purposely ignored how terribly destructive that nuclear ogre was. Of course, awakening the ogre is the kind of blustery threat Narcissus le Grand likes to make. This pathetic man believes that like-minded tyrants will bow down before him because he controls the mighty nuclear arsenal of the U.S. His restrained use of Tomahawks against Assad in retaliation for the Syrian despot’s use of sarin gas shows he’s not reluctant to end his isolationist policies and shoot off missiles. How far will he go?

My first criticism: U.S. leaders have NO business talking about preemptive strikes. Their cause must be geared to sanity in this insane nuclear world, setting an example for the rest of the nations and their leaders. Emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric perhaps, India is talking about preemptive strikes. Against Pakistan? Against other non-Hindu ethnic groups? Will Israel unleash the nuclear ogre on Iran—or vice versa? North Korea against South Korea? Right now North Korean missiles can’t reach the U.S. mainland, but that can change. They can easily reach Japan and South Korea, though. That ogre owes no allegiance to any nation and is indifferent about which one he gnaws on. His only goal when awake is to fill his maws with human beings.

I’m in agreement with Il Duce’s limited response toward Syria’s Assad with respect to the sarin gas attack. It followed seven years of frustrating attempts at a diplomatic solution complicated by Russia’s entry into the foray into the skirmish on the side of the Syrian despot. In 2013, we thought Assad got rid of his chemical weapons—obviously he didn’t. The attack on that little Syrian town was obviously his tactic for determining how far he could go, so the measured response was correct. Whether this will keep him from using such weapons again—I would have liked to see all his airfields destroyed for that reason—and it might drive the particulars back to the diplomatic table, no one can predict what Trump will do in the future. Will he shake his nuclear stick at Assad now? What will Russia, Iran, and the various terrorist groups do in response?

Tyrants like Trump aren’t known for their diplomacy. In Trump’s case, that’s ironic because he and his minions are often touting his skills using that infamous “Art of the Deal.” So far in his administration, he has only governed like a tyrant with his executive orders, the one move against Assad being a notable exception. Even the latter bypassed Congress, and those executive orders tend to get bogged down in the court system. There is no deal making whatsoever (so far his healthcare wheeling and dealing has flopped because he can’t get the factions in his own party together). You have to wonder if his definition of “deal” is as twisted as those “alternative facts” used in his tweets, in other words. There is no diplomacy in his deal making, only bluster and strong-arming, “talents” he developed in his very restricted and surreal business world that has little or no relevancy in international politics, or even politics in general.

Hence my second criticism: Trump (or any other president, for that matter) should be forced to appeal to diplomacy before going to war, especially nuclear war. The less likely diplomacy is used, the closer that Doomsday Clock approaches midnight. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink of nuclear war; diplomacy brought us back. There was no pre-emptive strike against the Cuban missile installations. Instead, Kennedy waited for the Soviet Union to blink. The threat of retaliation and assured destruction, not a pre-emptive strike, solved that crisis, and that threat was iterated to Kruschev in no uncertain terms, an example of strong diplomacy, to be sure, but still diplomacy.

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With Il Duce Trump, there are many things to worry about, but none more serious than an arms race. Nukes were and are in every fascist’s wet dreams. Think of what the world would become if Hitler’s atomic program had gelled. Think of what the Cuban Missile Crisis might have become if Nikita’s shoe tantrum had led to nuclear Armageddon. Every time a two-bit fascist shakes the nuclear club, that Doomsday Clock approaches closer to midnight.

Trump argues we can build more and better bombs than anyone else. This crazy policy isn’t the dandy’s game of an old-fashioned duel between Burr and Hamilton with old pistols, yet our dandy Il Duce is challenging the rest of the world’s fascist leaders to a duel (and maybe anyone else he doesn’t like?), and everyone else in the world will be innocent bystanders for the duelists. Potential candidates for Il Duce’s wrath? Leaders of France, Great Britain, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia—have I left anyone out?—are either fascists like Trump waving this dueling pistol or potential fascists who will do the same if the world continues to turn to fascism. It’s like a game of musical chairs: round and round we go, and, when Berlioz’s “March to the Gallows” stops, someone will shoot the first missiles. Given Il Duce’s thin skin, the first one will probably be Trump.

He’s so thin-skinned he’d like to censor SNL and ship Alec Baldwin off to Gitmo. Let’s hope he doesn’t confuse the nuclear codes with his Twitter account! Of course, most fascists are thin-skinned and raging paranoid hotheads, so that’s not surprising. What’s surprising to many of us and a large part of the world is that U.S. voters can elect a hot-headed fascist to be their president. Whatever popularity he has is beside the point. Hitler was popular. Stalin was popular. Castro was popular. Franco and Mussolini were popular. Putin is popular. Their attraction stemming from carefully cultivated cults of personality still exists in their respective countries. Once in Madrid I wasn’t almost trapped in a pro-Franco demonstration. Weeping crowds in Cuba over Castro’s ashes on tour is yet another example. People can love fascism…until it bites them in their butts.  Trump, if tweets are any indication, has enormous mandibles (made larger by his foot in his mouth, of course), so he will be biting us sooner than later (his cabinet is a big intolerable bite already).  The monster is loose and will soon be in the White House.

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Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in Mr. Obama’s trip to Hiroshima? Or, at least the irony? OK, as a guy who wordsmiths full-time now, what the president said is both ironic and hypocritical. His basic message was that everyone has to work toward a nuke-free world. No apology for dropping the bomb (more on this later), but that message was clear. It was hypocritical because the U.S. isn’t doing that, and it’s ironic if Mr. Obama really knows he’s being hypocritical.

The nuclear powers of the world—and they include Israel—don’t want others to join that exclusive club. Their nukes allow them to strut and posture instead of walking softly, and to wave a very big stick to the rest of the world. If you assume that their arrogance is accompanied by restraint, that’s OK, but that’s quite an assumption. The Cold War avoided nuclear Armageddon only because the sticks of the two parties guaranteed a no-win situation—both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have been destroyed.

That was a precarious situation, as the Cuban Missile Crisis showed. While that balancing act still continues with a shriveled Russia taking the place of the U.S.S.R., there are other states who can shake the stick—Israel, in spite of denials, has nukes, and that psychotic despot in North Korea is starving his people so he can shake that stick too. Iran was going down that road. It’s not clear that a détente between two theocracies in the Middle East, Iran and Israel, would be a good thing—Israel has shown some restraint, but Iran is unpredictable.

The Iran/Israel case also reflects U.S. hypocrisy. Jump on Iran for the good of peace in the Middle East? What about jumping on Israel? They’re both theocracies, and the current leaders of Israel often seem just as conservative as the Ayatollahs. There’s probably a guilt trip lurking in the background here. The predominantly Christian West, sitting between Judaism and Islam historically for the most part, would just toss a coin—again from the religious point of view—if it weren’t for guilt about the Holocaust.

Of course, I’m even wrong treating the Jewish Holocaust as unique. The Armenian Holocaust occurred earlier (World War One era, not World War Two–Germany just incurred the wrath of the Turks by calling it a holocaust) and others have occurred too—Cambodia and Yugoslavia, to name a few. Even the U.S. interned presumed enemies, Japanese-Americans during World War Two. All this was terrible; none of it is unique because human beings do terrible things to other human beings en masse on a regular basis.

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I’ve heard that phrase from various media pundits.  It’s comical.  Resurgence is what Godfather Putin would like Sochi to signify, but the only thing resurging in Russia is this narcissist strongman’s egotistical delusion.  Russia is spiraling down to insignificance.  For nearly a century, it has been ruled by mafiosos whose only interest is to ensure that Russian workers make them rich.  In the Soviet era, they hid all this under the cloak of ideology.  Now it’s clear that the only ideology is greed and exploitation.

Russian people are worn out and angry, except for those who participate in the corruption, of course.  A recent Sixty Minutes episode showed how extensive and lethal this can be, and that’s probably only the tip of the iceberg.  Persecution of singing groups and other protestors make the news here, but you can be sure that what goes on behind the scenes is worse.  Journalists, industrialists, and opposition leaders who don’t play by Putin’s rules are jailed on trumped-up charges, or simply killed.  A Russian gangster, a confident of Putin, bribes and threatens to bring the Olympics to Sochi and then scams the Russian people.

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Nuclear technology is with us to stay…well, as long as we don’t destroy the Earth!  On one hand, we have the frightening scenario of a nuclear exchange; on the other, we have the possibility that nuclear power plants can contribute as alternate energy sources.  Somewhere between these polar opposites, one finds nuclear medicine.  I’m a person that believes that nuclear technology is not inherently good or bad, but human scientists and engineers who handle it need to ensure its safety.  More than most technologies, human error can have devastating consequences.

The reactor problem in Japan is one egregious example.  That region might require millennia to recover.  The same can be said for Chernobyl.  Estimates are all over the board.  Both cases are examples of human complacency, stupidity, and terrible miscalculations.  For Japan’s case, one can ask: Who would build a reactor close to a fault line?  We do!  California is one of the most active earthquake areas in the world, yet there are reactors on the California coast.  The one on the Hudson in New York State only seemed to have the problem that the river provides an easy access.  I rode by it on a tour to West Point—I didn’t see any special security arrangements.  Moreover, an earthquake did occur not long ago.  I was writing when the room started swaying and felt like I had returned to my youth in Santa Barbara.

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[TANSTAAFL: Do you read this blog?  I’m not asking if you like the posts, just whether you read them!  If so, don’t be passive.  React.  Write a comment—chew me out if you like (no foul language, please).  You can even receive a free ebook—see the bottom of the “Free Stuff and Contests” webpage; or write an honest review of one of my ebooks in exchange for the ebook.  In general, buy, read, and review some of my books.  Your participation motivates me and helps defray the costs of this website and my ebook releases.  Be active.  Help indie authors provide you with inexpensive entertainment.  It’s a two-way street, folks!]

After two lengthy wars in these countries, it’s time to step back and analyze what we’ve gained.  It’s clear what we lost: war casualties—our combatants, their combatants, and innocent civilians; national wealth—billions and billions of dollars; good will in the Middle East; and good feelings among present and former allies.  Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo showed an ugly side of the war on terror that seems to contradict our worship of democracy and democratic institutions—whether you think that non-U.S. enemy combatants can be tortured or not, the fact that we did doesn’t sit well everywhere in the world.

Many Marines who participated in the battles of Fallujah were distraught when al Qaeda in Iraq (or are they from Syria?) captured the city.  They saw compatriots fall there.  The survivors brought home physical and mental wounds from the battles.  They have a reason to ask, “What did we do that for?”  This is a common theme in the Middle East.  No matter the national sacrifice in personnel and wealth, no matter the diplomatic overtures, and no matter the good will of many civilians living in the region, extreme elements come back to haunt us like antibiotic-resistant bacteria reinvading the body politic of the region.

Karzai in Afghanistan is showing his true stripes.  He and his corrupt family and friends have no real interest in turning that country into something beyond an opium-producing state.  Noises are being made about deals with the Taliban.  You can expect that any advances made during our time there will disappear, leading to the horrendous treatment of women and the slavish following of sharia law once again.  This is a tribal society—a collection of warlords and their fiefdoms, not a modern state.  There’s little chance it will ever become one.  Moreover, we might see this relic of the Dark Ages corrupting Pakistan in the future in a major way, leading to terrorists with nukes.

Whatever you have against Joe Biden (ex-SecDef Gates in his new book expresses no love for the man), you’ll have to admit he was right about Iraq (Gates is too stupid to do so).  There are three Iraqi states at least—Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd—and possibly four now with the incursion of al Qaeda from Syria.  The absurdity of this situation is that the Shiite Iranis possibly feel threatened by the al Qaeda Sunnis and other Sunnis in Iraq, which might explain somewhat their recent diplomatic overtures.  But, like in Afghanistan, Iraq’s central government is corrupt and inept and completely incapable of holding all the different factions together.  Syria, Iraq, and Kurdish Turkey are like the old Yugoslavia.  To hold them together, you need a tyrant.  With the tyrant gone, you need multiple nations, one for each ethnic group.

The whole Middle East is like quicksand—even when the situation seems favorable, you can start to sink.  Israel isn’t helping either.  Their resistance to a Palestinian state is always a sore point for the most tolerant of Muslims and offers a rallying point for the most bellicose.  Pakistan, long at odds with India, has gone its own way, and the Indian government is showing its backward ways in their unreasonable support of an exploitative diplomat.  Turkey, the only NATO member in the area, isn’t stable and also a fair-weather friend, for both EU and US.  From Istanbul and the SSR Muslim republics to Sri Lanka, the Middle East and from Morocco to Bangladesh, you have unstable governments whipping up ethnic and anti-US sentiments.  It’s hard to find a friend anywhere.  No wonder “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has been the corner-stone of American foreign policy in the region.

Europe doesn’t help.  European governments love to see the US spending money fighting terrorism that they don’t have to spend.  They love to see the US take the foreign policy hits.  The US is the EU’s biggest competitor, of course.  What Europe doesn’t see is that their myopic policies for treating the ethnic minorities providing their cheap labor will become their Achilles heel in the future.  Many of these minorities are poor Muslims—they have no love for the rich Europeans in charge of the economies throughout the EU.  They will place demands on the great socialist democracies of Europe and, if not met, there’ll be hell to pay.

Putin’s Russia is a loose cannon.  While the US and EU are debating same-sex marriage and human rights, homophobic Russia is heading in the opposite direction.  Led by Putin, that dark nation is returning to Stalinism, making a farce out of any democratic inclinations.  There are worse tyrants (the spoiled brat in North Korea is one), but narcissistic Vladimir rules the old land of the czars with an iron hand too.  He’s like the Godfather.  He and his friends form a mafia that is much stronger than any found in the old USSR, and they hide under the cloak of democracy.  Putin and therefore Russia deal with the Middle East erratically, as the contradictions between their support of Syria and their criticism of Iran show.  Again, there’ll be hell to pay because those former SSR Muslim republics haven’t forgotten the heavy boot of Stalin and his successors.

Given that the Middle East is so problematic in general and Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, what are we doing there?  The region won’t ever amount to anything.  Taking the region as a whole, you have a huge, mostly uneducated population that has never learned to get along.  I’m counting Israel here—if not the former (Bibi’s emotional responses don’t show much education, in my opinion), at least the latter.  It’s a strong argument for isolationism, by which I mean isolating the region and letting them settle their differences without our interference.  Becoming embroiled in the disputes in the region hasn’t proven to be a good idea historically.  One can say that “hands off!” should be our foreign policy mantra.

On the other hand, that huge population is a huge market and certain countries in the region provide oil, more to the EU than the US.  I’d suggest that we let the European countries assume the peace-making role.  Let them try to broker the diplomatic deals that might win peace in the Middle East.  They have more to lose.  Unfortunately, Europe has shown that they’re inept in most things diplomatic.  We’ve more or less taken the attitude that it’s a dirty job, but someone has to try to make the different parties sit down and make peace.  I don’t see that ending well.

And so it goes….

[TANSTAAFL: Do you read this blog?  I’m not asking if you like the posts, just whether you read them!  If so, don’t be passive.  React.  Write a comment—chew me out if you like (no foul language, please).  You can even receive a free ebook—see the bottom of the “Free Stuff and Contests” webpage; or write an honest review of one of my ebooks in exchange for the ebook.  In general, buy, read, and review some of my books.  Your participation motivates me and helps defray the costs of this website and my ebook releases.  Be active.  Help indie authors provide you with inexpensive entertainment.  It’s a two-way street, folks!]

The evil one who shall not be named decided Uncle Jang (Jang Song-thaek), his mentor, was a threat to solidifying his power in this oppressive, dark, and paranoid country.  Exit Uncle Jang.  Hanging…poison…ten thousand lashes…does it matter?  While some people in Washington might think this is just a distraction from their negotiations with the Persian nutniks in Iran, I call on them to remember that, in contrast to Allah’s warriors, he who shall not be named already has nukes and missiles to carry them—if not to the U.S., at least to South Korea, Japan, Vladivostok, and Beijing.  Any of his neighbors that pisses him off and sends him into a spoiled brat’s tantrum better be prepared for a nuclear attack.  And, as the case of Uncle Jang shows, it doesn’t take much to piss him off.  Talk about dysfunctional families.

Like Grandpa and Daddy, the North Korean leader doesn’t give a rat’s ass that his people are starving, that North Korean children are turning into low IQ zombies from malnutrition, that his prisons are just thinly disguised torture camps, and that his economy is the laughing stock of the Asian world.  He’s a sociopathic psychopath so much into establishing his own cult of personality—he wants to become God—that psychiatrists wouldn’t know what to do with him, except put him in a strait jacket and lock him up in a padded cell.  He makes Kaddafi, Pinochet, Amin, and even Hitler look like angels.  Given the state of his economy, he probably smoke-cured Uncle Jang and is slicing ham from the carcass for his breakfast.

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Dennis Rodman made an ass of himself as an NBA player.  Now he’s playing diplomat—rather, Kim Jong Il’s favorite pal—and continuing to make an ass of himself.  There have been articles in our enlightened media on how this “basketball diplomacy” just might work.  BS!  That  theoretical flatulence has been quieted a bit after Rodman’s trip because the boy wonder of North Korea postures and threatens the West, testing missiles as a way to threaten South Korea and the U.S. in general and in their joint defense exercises.

Rodman must have had one too many blows to the head as other NBA players returned the hits from his flaying elbows.  He’s now certifiably crazy.  Or, completely naïve.  In any case, the North Korean dictator, in a fascistic variation of North Korea’s “three generation rule,” learned from granddaddy mostly because daddy was a moronic recluse.  Garcia-Marquez in his Autumn of the Patriarch painted a picture of the archetypical South American dictator.  Kim Jong Il makes Gabo’s dictator look like a choir boy.

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