Before being bitten by the writing bug, I was an attorney. I was good at it but I wasn't passionate about it; at least not like I am about writing. Ever since I can remember, I have loved books. Any and all types—cold war thrillers, Victorian romances, science fictions and fantasies, whodunits—I devoured them all with equal enthusiasm. On my bookshelves are worn, dog-eared paperbacks and hardbacks of Daniel Silva, James Rollins, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Vince Flynn, and Dean Koontz, to name a few. I hope you find their influences in my words and novel.

The first few chapters of THE GUARDIANS are intended to be—for lack of a better analogy—like a spider's web: various threads twisting and turning along different pathways until the entirety of the web is revealed. I wrote the book this way because it was how the story revealed itself to me. As I researched the book, I was continually amazed and shocked that what I originally perceived as distinct groups, from West African black-market diamond dealers to Middle Eastern arms dealers to Chechen mobsters to Mexican drug kingpins, with nothing in common were in fact directly related. My hope is that when you read the book you experience that same initial sense of bewilderment and astonishment that I felt. And then as you begin to understand how the story and the characters fit together, I hope you get fired up!

Thank you and good reading.