Between Fact and Fiction: Bestselling Author Brad Thor on How His Thrillers Draw From Real-World Security Threats

In Brad Thor’s novels, the line between fact and fiction is often blurry.

Bestselling author Brad Thor, who writes a thriller every year, is known to tackle emerging security topics and create novels characterized by assiduous research and imaginative plots—what he calls “faction.” This wasn’t lost on the U.S. government, which tapped him to join its Analytic Red Cell program to come up with plausible scenarios involving threats and attacks on the United States.

With his latest novel, “Dead Fall,” he took a different tack, writing about the Ukraine–Russia conflict—as it was happening. We spoke to Mr. Thor about his recent book as well as his views on America’s role in the world.

“Dead Fall” (Simon & Schuster, 2023) takes place in Ukraine, where a mercenary unit of the Wagner Group has gone rogue.

American Essence: What was your experience writing this book in real time?

Brad Thor: So it was interesting. There was a certain amount of trepidation on my part that the headlines might get out in front of me, as opposed to me being in front of the headlines, which is what I like to do. But I have to be honest with you, I grew up reading fabulous thrillers that were set in World War II. I always wished that there was a similar setting that I could place my hero Scot Harvath in, and when the war in Ukraine broke out, I thought, OK, this is my opportunity to do my own version of some of my favorite movies like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Fury” with Brad Pitt, or the HBO series “Band of Brothers.”

There were very definitive bad guys. There was lots of what we call the fog of war, lots of confusion, lots of difficulties with getting men and matériel to the front lines. It seemed like the perfect setting to put my hero. I like to put him into very difficult situations without a lot of support. I didn’t want to send him into the story with an army right behind him. I wanted to send him in as poorly equipped and undermanned as possible so that that would raise the stakes and the tension. So Harvath had to go by himself. He had to join the Ukrainian international Legion, so that if he got killed or captured, the United States could say, “We have no idea why he was there.” That was the jumping-off point for “Dead Fall.”

What we’re seeing here in Ukraine is very much an echo of the run-up to World War II, particularly when the Republic of France, fascist Italy, and the United Kingdom via Neville Chamberlain decided to allow Hitler to take a piece of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. [They] thought, “Well, if we let Hitler have this, then that’ll be the end of it.” And what do we all know from history? It wasn’t the end of it. It only encouraged him. And that’s exactly what’s happened with Putin. In his 2014 invasion of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, he said he was there to protect ethnic Russians. With my book, I saw all of these parallels from August to October of 1944. Hitler sent one of his worst SS brigades into Poland, and some of the most horrific, the most terrible war crimes of World War II were committed by the SS brigade, so we were seeing a lot of echoes of that with Russian troops, and particularly the Wagner Group, part of the mercenary force that Putin was using in Ukraine as well.

A young girl holding a Ukrainian flag runs in front of a destroyed cultural center during the graduation ceremony of art students in the town of Derhachi in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine. SERGEY BOBOK/Contributor/AFP/ Getty Images

AE: There is a humanitarian aspect to this book. It involves rescuing a U.S. citizen and orphans. But what’s also at stake are Ukrainian cultural treasures and artwork—and as you mentioned in the book, the identity of a nation. How did that idea come about?

Mr. Thor: The Nazis looted treasure throughout Europe. There were only so many things that the Louvre was able to hide and get away before the Nazis came into Paris. A genocide of a culture exists on many different levels. Obviously, when we hear the word genocide, we think of killing people, and that is absolutely the worst. There’s also kidnapping the children and killing the children, consuming them, if you will, pulling them into your culture, which the Russians have done in Ukraine. A final part of genocide is to wipe out any trace of the culture and history, particularly their art. I was inspired by the movie with George Clooney and John Goodman, “The Monuments Men,” where they were trying to rescue pieces of art. That was another pop culture touchstone for me. And I love the book “All the Light We Cannot See,” which was a Pulitzer Prize winner. It starts with a young girl and her father who works at the Louvre and they have to get out of Paris because the Nazis are marching on Paris.

So this idea of art and what the Russians are doing in Ukraine, I read lots of articles leading up to the invasion about how different museums throughout Ukraine were trying to pack away and hide their precious works of art because they knew Putin was going to try to steal them.

AE: Your books deal with security issues and bad actors around the world. What’s your perspective on America’s role in the world?

Mr. Thor: We can start with Ukraine, and we can open up from there.

This is not fiction from my books. These are actual historical facts. When the Soviet Union broke apart in the 1990s, one-third of the Soviet nuclear stockpile was in Ukraine. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States was very worried that the Ukrainians would not be able to maintain those weapons, much less protect them. We were very concerned that a bad actor, whether that be a terrorist organization, some sort of a rogue state, would be able to steal these weapons from the Ukrainians and use them against the United States or one of our allies.

And so we went to the Ukrainians and we said, “Listen, you don’t have the ability to take care of these weapons, nor do you have the ability to protect them. We will help you dismantle them and get rid of them.” And Ukraine said, “OK, we have one condition. We want you, America, to promise us that if we give up these nuclear weapons, we will never lose one single inch of Ukrainian territory. We will never be invaded. No one will ever take our territory,” and the United States said, “Yes, we will guarantee you that this will not happen.” And they said, “OK, can you also get the Russians to sign this?” The Ukrainians and United States worked together with some other allies and the Russians to sign this agreement in real life. This is called the Budapest Memorandum. So that’s in the 1990s; it’s pre-Vladimir Putin. Everybody agreed and then what happens?

In 2014, Vladimir Putin invades Eastern Ukraine, takes the Donbas, and puts the “Little Green Men” in there to do fighting for him. That was the Wagner group. This is a big deal because we have a G7 today, because as a result of that 2014 invasion by Putin, along with our partners in that organization, we kicked the Russians out. It used to be the G8. There were some sanctions and then a very harshly worded letter from the Obama administration. And that was it. And that was the wrong thing to do. We did basically to the Russians exactly what the Republic of France, fascist Italy, and the United Kingdom did to Hitler in the in the Sudetenland situation. We just gave him what he wanted. And that was a big mistake for the United States.

As far as our role in the world, when it comes to Ukraine, we’re doing the right thing now, but we’re not doing it fast enough. We should all want that war to be over and the only way to have that war be over quickly and to take Putin off the table as a threat is to defeat him as solidly as possible, to convince him this was a big mistake and he should never do it again. We should not be agreeing to let him keep territories already. If we don’t give the Ukrainians what they need, and as much as they need as quickly as possible, this war will drag out.

Local residents pass by a destroyed church that served as a military base for Russian soldiers on April 10, 2022, in the village of Lukashivka, Ukraine. Anastasia Vlasova/Stringer/Getty Images News

Here’s the other thing. Even though … we’re learning a lot by watching Ukraine use our weapons, … China wanting us to weaken ourselves by staying there as long as possible is not a good thing.

I think the natural state of mankind is chaos. It is only through encouragement of order and a set of international norms that the world does not slip into chaos. We have a very loud segment of our country that wants the United States to be isolationist. Well, that’s unfortunately not possible. With great power comes great responsibility. If we don’t take that role of trying to assure democracy and security around the world, we will suffer the consequences when someone else, like the Chinese, takes that role. The Chinese have invested tremendously, particularly in their navy, and we have fallen behind with our Navy.

Another good thing for the United States that’s come out of the war in Ukraine is that we’ve seen what a paper tiger Russia’s military is. I mean, Russia really is a “gas station” with nukes. That’s an old term that was used to describe them. I think it was John McCain who coined that but it’s true. So our focus now as we do our military planning can be more on China.

Most Americans don’t realize the extent to which China is committed to becoming a world superpower. If we do not wake up and don’t double down and really commit to our national security efforts vis-à-vis China, we’re going to find ourselves left in the dust.

AE: You shadowed black op forces in Afghanistan. What are some of the experiences that have informed your writing?

Mr. Thor: There are a lot of them that I can’t talk about. Afghanistan is a good example, having been over there during the war and seeing how intelligence is gathered and assets are developed.

Two favorite things that I’ve been able to do as an author: doing what I did in Afghanistan, and flying an F-18 Hornet with the Blue Angels was absolutely fantastic. Probably one of the things I’m most proud of, though, is that shortly after 9/11 happened, I was invited to become part of a government program called the Analytic Red Cell unit.

The United States government realized that the attack on 9/11 was successful because the American government was not creative enough. So they said, let’s bring creative people from outside D.C. into D.C., and let’s work with them and see where they think terrorists or rogue nations or enemies of the United States might hit America, and how they might do it.

There were people like me, Michael Bay, the director of the “Transformers” movies, who also did the Benghazi movie [“13 Hours”]. We were asked to help the U.S. government and its various intelligence agencies, the Defense Department, think outside the box. Anything that we discussed in there remains a secret to this day. I’m not allowed to talk about it and I’m not allowed to put it in any of my books.

A U.S. soldier stands amidst crates of loot stolen by Nazis in Schlosskirche, Ellingen, Bavaria, on April 24, 1945. Public domain

AE: Are you still part of that program?

Mr. Thor: They call every once in a while so you always have the door cracked open. I’m not allowed to say how many times I’ve been called or what I’ve discussed. But once you’re in that program, if they want to reach back out to you with a certain question, they will. Sometimes it’s just a question, sometimes it’s a set of questions.

AE: From a writer’s perspective, if you could be a fly on the wall anywhere in the world, where would you be?

Mr. Thor: On the domestic front, I’d want to be a fly on the wall in the special prosecutor’s office, Jack Smith’s office. It would be fascinating to see what evidence they’ve been gathering and where things might go.

Internationally, I think the greatest threat to America in the world is the Chinese Communist Party. So I’d be a fly on the wall there, see what their plans are, with their military pushing into space.

AE: What does it mean to you to be an American?

Mr. Thor: I am the son of a United States Marine. And my mom was a flight attendant in the 1960s for TWA, back in the glamour days, the “Mad Men”-style days of air travel.

America has represented to my family, and millions of other families, opportunity and security to be an individual. America means to me that I have the freedom to pursue what I want to pursue, that I can make decisions for myself and my family, and that I will be allowed to make those decisions.

When Ronald Reagan gave his first inaugural address, he said that one of the reasons that America is so great is because we did something no other nation in the history of the world had ever done. And that is, we unleashed the creative genius of the individual.

When I think about the resources America had, you know who had more natural resources available to them and more manpower? The Roman Empire. The Roman Empire did not see the incredible leaps that we saw within 200 years of our founding. The difference is that we protected private property and the individual rights of our citizens to a degree that had never been done before. We empowered individuals to pursue their dreams.

My grandfather was the first in our family to be born in America. So I take pride in saying that I’m a third-generation American. In America, it’s not about where you’re from or what you look like. It’s what you believe. You can be black, you can be brown, you can be white, none of that matters. To be an American means to hold a certain set of ideas as core to who you are.

A child waits to be evacuated from the city of Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 10, 2022. ARIS MESSINIS/Contributor/AFP/ Getty Images

How are you and your protagonist Scot Harvath most alike?

I joke that he gets to do the things that my wife says I cannot. If I ever say that around my wife, she says, “Well, I let you go to Afghanistan,” which is true. Scot Harvath is my alter ego, the same way I think James Bond was for Ian Fleming, and Jack Ryan was for Tom Clancy. Scot and I are most similar in our belief that you should always do the right thing no matter what it costs you.

What do you need to get into the writing zone?

There are days where it’s very, very difficult. The most important ingredient to making a living as a writer is discipline. Creativity is important too, but nothing happens without discipline.

What other jobs have you had before hitting it big as a writer?

Before being a writer, I had a travel show. It started in the late 1990s and ran into the 2000s. It was called “Traveling Lite.” I was the producer, writer, and host, and I showed young people how to travel Europe inexpensively. I loved it. I thought travel made me a better American—seeing my country from abroad, seeing other countries, and realizing how good I had it as an American citizen. So I created a TV show to encourage people to travel because I did not want younger people to wait until they were retired to do it.

What are your favorite travel destinations?

I love Greece. I love Switzerland. Having lived in Paris a couple of different times, I am a huge Francophile, so I love France; and being of Scandinavian descent, I love traveling to Sweden and Norway as well.

What figure in history would you love to have a conversation with?

If I had to pick one person in history, I would have to pick the most influential person in history, the most influential person in Western civilization, and that would be Jesus Christ—not from a religious standpoint, but from a historical standpoint. No other figure in history has had as much impact on civilization as Christ has. 

Are there books that you consider life-changing for you?

Stoicism has made me a better father, a better husband, a better business person, a better friend, a better boss and employer, and just an all-around better human being, so I’m a big fan of stoicism. When General Mattis went to Iraq, he took the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius with him. I love how much I’ve been able to learn from Ryan Holiday, and particularly the book “The Obstacle Is the Way.”