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The Mercenary Series – how it started.
The idea for the Mercenary – Johnny Silver – series is interesting. Going way back to an event in the 1990s, there was a chap called Nick Leeson who worked for Barings merchant bank, the oldest merchant bank in the UK. He was sent to Singapore to start up a base there. He started gambling on the Singapore stock market in his own right using money that was Barings’ funds. He lost some money – not a big sum. To try to recoup that money he made one of the stupidest mistakes – every fraudster knows it is just dumb. He doubled up. When he incurred losses, he bet double the amount lost the next time. He got to the stage where he had lost around 1.4 billion dollars. The bank crashed. He had lost them everything. The oldest merchant bank gone for ever.
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I thought why not do a fictionalised story of the crash with fraud being the focal point. The original idea was to write the novel in conjunction with Nick Leeson – I would write the book and use Leeson’s name to sell it. A problem emerged that because he was a bankrupt, any money made from the novel would go to the pot for settling some of the debts of Barings. He would get nothing. So the concept had to be abandoned.
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However, I thought what about a novel around a merchant bank that had more action, more tension than the Leeson idea. So I came up with Mercenary: a novel with a really strong base of five characters. So, what about if they are ex-mercenaries – aging mercenaries. One can’t see as well, one had got fat and so on. How would they fare if getting back together for one last job, and another, and another and so on.
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If you enjoyed The A Team and The Magnificent 7, I think you’d really like the Johnny Silver series.
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When you read Mercenary see if you guess the significance of the character names and the arrangement of the location.
Mercenary – Johnny’s brother, who runs the bank in Amsterdam disappears along with ten million euros. Johnny and his crack team of mercenaries come out of hiding to pursue the man and the money but will they get caught in the crossfire between two mafias.
Killer in Black – Someone is trying to drive Red, the half Texan/half Comanche part of Johnny’s team, off his ranch in Texas. All for one, one for all. The team assemble in Texas to fight a gang of bikers and the hit-man killer in black.
One Bullet Too Many – Stan, the tactician of the crew, has a hotel by a lake in Poland. The local crime lord, not satisfied with the money made by prostitution and drug running, starts a protection racket around the beautiful resort. The crime lord picked the wrong men to threaten. Enter Johnny and his compatriots to right the wrongs.
No Easy Way Out – Johnny is blackmailed by the Drug Enforcement Agency to go to a village in Mexico from where a young girl has been kidnapped by the Columbian drug baron. As it says on the tin, there’s no easy way out of his mission.
The Ivory War – The crew head to South Africa to Pieter’s private game reserve where the poachers are slaughtering elephants, hippos and rhinos for their ivory. With a pair of elephant tusks worth one hundred thousand pounds, the poachers are not going to give in easily. Vastly outnumbered, Johnny has to resort to a strange alliance of elephants and man.
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