The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Nameless Ones: A Thriller (19) (Charlie Parker) by John Connolly

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

The Nameless Ones: A Thriller (19) (Charlie Parker) by John Connolly From the international and instant New York Times bestselling author of The Dirty South, the white-knuckled Charlie Parker series returns with this heart-pounding race to hunt down the deadliest of war criminals. In Amsterdam, four bodies, violently butchered, are discovered in a canal house, the remains of friends and confidantes of the assassin known only as Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland. They are wrong. For Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into thin air. There is just one problem. The sixth. With John Connolly’s trademark “dark, haunting, and beautifully told” (Booklist) prose and breathless twists and turns, The Nameless Ones is an unputdownable thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here who knew we'd do like another podcast did you know there's over like almost a thousand podcasts on the chris voss show i can't even keep track we like doubling and keep tripling our

audience numbers in fact it looks like they're gonna triple or quadruple again this year just on the first month of the new year of 12 years of doing this so be sure to go back and listen to some of those listen this one this is an important back and listen to some of those. Listen to this one. This is an important one to listen to because this is the newest one. It has that new shiny smell to it, like a new car. But listen to the old ones because they're still really good, especially some of those ones that kind of that musty old car smell. I don't know why we got started on cars this morning, but it sounded good to me. So hopefully it sounds good to you. Anyway, guys, to watch the video version of this, there's a video version. It's free for an unlimited time on YouTube.

You just go on there, as long as Google's still in business, and you can subscribe to the Chris Vosho channel and watch all the great videos of people because it sure beats listening. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. It's up to you. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvos.

See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. See all our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, wherever the cool kids are playing. That's where we put up all sorts of additional noise for the Chris Voss Show. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character.

I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken

and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today we have an amazing author. He's written like, I don't know, one or two books or 20, 30. I will have to ask him how many. I forgot to ask him in the green room. But evidently, I don't know. He's been alive for 100 years, evidently, for the amount of time he takes to write books. But he is on here with his newest book and guess what it is hot off the presses today they sent me a copy and it

burned my fingers the title of the book is called the nameless one thriller this is number 19 in a series of the charlie parker series came out today john connelly is going to be sharing the show with us today he'll be sharing the show not on the show but he will be sharing the show i I don't know what that's about. Do I have to give him royalties? Anyway, guys, he is the author of the Charlie Parker series of thrillers, the Supernatural Collection Nocturnes, the Samuel Johnson trilogy for younger readers, Chronicles of the Invaders series. He lives in Dublin, Ireland, and we have him on the show live. Who knew that was going to happen? It usually always does. Welcome, John.

I'm very well, thank you. I'm slightly hurt to be described as 100 years old. I've got some gray hair. As a man of my advancing years, these are inevitable. I mean, be fair. Be fair. That's quite me. You look like, what are you, 50 with a hard life?

You know, I just wrote my first book this month. It's free, John. It's going to take me another three years to write a book. Unlike you, I don't have a proper job, so I just need to fill my days somehow, or else I'm just going to be standing at three corners smoking and whistling at girls, and that's just going to get me into trouble.

We probably should clarify this. How many books do you have? Because I couldn't count that high. I think this is 33. I think. Yeah, I just, yeah, I slacked off there towards the end of the last decade. I got distracted by something on Netflix and it never got the time back. Ah, that'll do it. And Netflix gets you every time.

Fall down that hole. So, John, welcome to the show. Congratulations on the new book congratulations give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs you can go to john connelly books.com and everything you need to know about me and more that you didn't really care to know about me will be available to you there oh there you go john why did you decide to write the 33, 34th book? I didn't. I didn't. It wasn't like I sat down and thought, oh, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to write 33 books. And eventually that Chris Voss guy, he's going to come along. He's going to come along. Not just all his big shot Hollywood friends. He's going to want to talk to somebody, somebody Irish. One of the chosen people in our case. You guys are, especially when it comes to whiskey. As the chosen people.

I didn't. in our case. You guys are, especially when it comes to whiskey. As the chosen people. I didn't, I like most people, I wrote my first book back in the 90s and was completely taken aback when somebody said they wanted to publish it. And I think most writers

feel that way. You work alone, you think, no one's ever going to want to publish me. And then somebody comes along and publishes it and we'd like to publish it.

And your first instinct, the first thing you say is, can I have it back and I'll do it properly then? know this is something awful has happened and it takes a long time for you to come to terms with the fact that you're published for years i lived in fear of opening my door and there would be two huge guys there saying we've come to reclaim all the stuff that you bought with the book money because that the terrible mistake has been made and they were going to go that nice tv there did you buy that with our money and you go

yeah and they take the tv away and eventually it? And they would come in and go, that nice TV there, did you buy that with our money? And you go, yeah, and they take the TV away. And eventually it's just you and the cat and the stool that your mum gave you when you moved into your first place. So I kind of got taken by surprise. And now I'm still slightly shocked that I got this far and that I have all of these books. It seems very strange. Yeah, and this is your very first novel you started in 1999 the

parker series correct yeah yeah yeah i took unlike it took me about five years to write it i was working as a journalist for the irish times which wasn't a bad way to do it because i would actually agree to take night shifts just so i could sit in there very quietly and work away and the only thing you were afraid was that the Pope would die. If the Pope died, you were in trouble because the front page would have to be changed. But otherwise, that was the only disaster that might happen. And I remember it was me,

and they would leave one sub-editor in the newspaper just in case, like I said, the Pope died. And what I remember, he had trouble with his back, I seem to remember, and so he would do these quite ornate yoga exercises to take away the pain. So whenever I looked at him, he would be standing on his head. Now, would that be the Pope or the editor that was in your office? Well, the current Pope looks like he could probably do it.

The previous guy, I don't think he was doing much standing on his head. Yeah, but the sub-editor, he would be standing on his head with his feet against the wall. So he clearly didn't want to be disturbed. And so I would just write away quietly in the corner and so much of my first book was written in those quiet moments praying that that you know poke john paul would keep talking about football being in the corner and standing in her head is uh when the girls come over on friday anyway there's an image of you that i did not yeah we put your pants back on chris you've got visitors wait i i'm supposed to wear pants for this anyway guys uh this is why some people just listen to the show

but thankfully there's the below the folders they like to call it on the websites there no i'm just kidding i have pants on people i just lost my no pants audience anyway so you've written 19 of these this is the 19th in the series. Yeah, you really just pop these books out and have done a hell of a job. So let's talk about who is this Charlie Parker in the 19th, the book of the series. Well, Parker is a private investigator. And oddly enough, he barely figures in this book. Much of this book is given over to, he has two acolytes, two colleagues called Angel and Louis. And this is really their book.

I wanted, I've always liked globetrotting thrillers, those thrillers where suddenly they're in France and the next minute they're in Spain and they're hopping off aeroplanes. And I'd always wanted to write one. And curiously, I ended up writing one

at a time when nobody could go anywhere. We were all stuck indoors in Ireland. You weren't allowed to go more than five kilometres from your house without the police knocking on your window, asking you what you thought you were doing. And so it seemed quite odd to be writing a book about people hopping on and off planes. And yet there's something lovely.

One of the things we learned, I think, during lockdown and all of this awful unpleasantness that's happened over the last year or so was the value of escape, whether it's listening to a podcast or watching a tv show often something from your youth that you enjoyed or reading a novel or watching a movie suddenly you got taken out of this awful situation for just a couple of hours and you got to leave it all behind you so in that sense it's quite nice to be publishing where people can still travel without wearing a mask or without fear of it and i'm sure down the line when i'm writing the next book i'm gonna have to take

into account everything that's happened but but this book is set before at all and there was a kind of freedom in that there you go we had the same thing with the podcast i'm like we have a captured audience people are sitting at home listening uh consuming content so it's really good so give us a bit more arcing overview of the book and some of the details inside. There's some little things I can call the deets. The deets, yeah. The young people.

Are you down with the young people? The young folk, Chris. You know, it's what happens in a friend of Louis, an old friend of Louis is killed by a group of Serbian criminals. And it's their farewell to Europe. They're going to kill them. And they're going home. They're going back to Serbia.

And there will be no chance of getting them there. There's no way they're going to be extradited. And then, unfortunately, the guy who was looking after them in Serbia gets blown up. And so they're left to try to negotiate a way to get back to Serbia. And at the same time, Louis is coming to look for them. He is coming to hunt them them. He is coming to hunt them down. And they realize that this net is closing as one by one, they're picked off.

And so you have this sense of almost like rats caught in a trap. They need to get away from this guy. He is closing in on them. They're trying to negotiate their way back to Serbia. And if they can't, they'll kill their way back. And all the time, Louis is inexorably approaching. So I like that idea. And what I also want to do is it's very easy to write with bad guys and make people hate them. I want the readers not quite be on their side, but to respect

the tenacity with which they fight. They're desperate to get out of this trap. They'll do anything. So we have this ingenuity as they keep trying to find ways to get back home and those ways keep being closed off to them the suspense the thrill i'm not hiring you yeah once i remember doing a book tour in australia and literally they hired a guy who was like a carnival barker to stand outside the bookstore with a microphone okay

everybody roll up roll up you know come see the irish guy who writes books roll up everybody roll up it was really weird short of just getting a dancing bear in beside me the thing about novels is i can never ask you what happens at the end if it's a political uh non-fiction author we have on like i always joke with them i go what happens at the end and they're like trump getsached. Give us some more tidbits. Give me some juicy teasers, if you would. Juicy teasers. Well, yeah.

One of the things I had to do, curiously, was I can't write about places I haven't been. I'm not that really imaginative. I need to go. So what it involved was obviously going to Serbia, which is not a country that actually is big on the tourist trail on this side of the world. A lot of Russians and Eastern Europeans go to Serbia. Western tourists, not really. And so the street signs, often they're in the Cyrillic alphabet. So it can be quite a struggle to find a way around. But one of the things I was interested in was there is a subculture called the Vlach in Serbia. And they're regarded as the last great bastion of witchcraft

and people in if you're in trouble if you're having trouble with your job with your love life with a neighbor who's annoying you won't give you back your llama or whatever it might be you can go you go to the vlach they're they're in it they're linked to their their son of romanians and their their their territory is beside the danube and you can go to them and they will sort you out they will they will they will find a way to for you to get the loved one you want or get a better job or get your lawnmower back whatever it might be and i thought it would be really interesting to go and talk to some of the vlatch witches and it's quite after we're talking a couple of days before Halloween.

One of the problems you run into is that actually witches don't really look like they do on Halloween. It can be quite, it would be great if you went to a village and there's a woman with quite a long pointy hat and a little wart on her nose and you go you wouldn't by any chance be the local witch would you? And lo and behold, your problems

are solved. And so I hired a lovely driver and he said, what are we going to be doing for the next couple of days? And I said, well, actually, are we going to be looking at ruins? And I said, we can look at ruins along the way, but maybe we're going looking for a witch. And so we hopped in the car and drove to what is believed

to be this town in Serbia by the Danube that is the centre of the Blatch community. And of course, you arrive and it's a nice town with coffee shops, people pushing prams and nobody who remotely resembles, you know, the stereotypical witch. And I realised that I hadn't thought the whole thing through. I'd been hoping that I'd arrive in something that looked like

a Hammer Horror film set. And, you know, with an innkeeper going, you don't want to be here after nightfall. And so the driver and I just wandering around thinking what the hell are we going to do now? And we found a museum that wasn't open, but had a sign on the door saying if you'd like to visit the museum, ring

the doorbell and somebody will come. So we rang the doorbell and a lovely lady came along and she only spoke Swedish and Serbian, okay, neither of which I'm very fluent in, okay, by which I don't speak Swedish or Serbian. But the driver thankfully spoke a little bit of English and a lot of Serbian, okay, neither of which I'm very fluent in, okay, by which I don't speak Swedish or Serbian. But the driver thankfully spoke a little bit of English and a lot of Serbian.

And so she shows around the museum and she says, what are you doing here? And he said, the guy over there, he'd like to meet somebody from the Vlach who knows a bit about witchcraft. And she said, the guy who put in my shelves in the kitchen, he's Vlach, and he'd probably know a bit. And so this lovely woman called up this guy,

and we met him in this deserted village. I actually ended up in my deserted village, near deserted. I think it had about 600 houses and 200 inhabitants because most people had left. There was one store and a lot of stray dogs. And for a couple of hours, he very politely

talked about the Blatch and witchcraft. They make these very ornate tombs because they believe that after you die your soul has to spend about seven years on earth. And so it needs somewhere to be. So they build it. They'll put a TV in the tomb. They'll be a tomb. Yeah, a nice carpet.

They put a bit of effort into it because they figure down the line they'll have to use it. Do they give you a remote? Hopefully a remote. I think the practical benefits of the television are probably less just for show sake and at the end of it i one of the things i wanted to do i'm planning a book and i was still thinking about i said well i was thinking maybe of using minds because i quite like the idea of something coming from deep beneath the earth i have these supernatural elements in my books and this is where it got really strange.

The lovely Dutch guy said, he said, we don't have mines around here. He said, you'd have to go a little bit further south to Borne. They have mines. But he said, they have a problem, he said. They dug too deep. And now they have trouble with demons. And he wasn't smiling.

He wasn't smiling or laughing. And the woman from the museum, she wasn't smiling or laughing either. And suddenly my the museum, she wasn't smiling or laughing either. And suddenly my poor driver, he didn't look terribly happy about it. And so we're standing in this darkening village as the sun was going down. And I said to him, but do you have problems with demons? And he said, no, we don't have problems with demons. He said, we have problems with vampires.

And he wasn't smiling. And the lady who was with us wasn't smiling. And the driver certainly wasn't smiling. We looked at each other and thought, I think we're about done here thanks very much and we'll go back to we're going back to bell graves and it seems talking about those myths persist there this is carpathia this is where dracula was set yeah we're in a carpathian village and the sun is going down in winter and somebody is telling you i think we have problems with vampires you're inclined to take the man yeah i'd be like maybe we won't go out to dinner tonight yeah maybe we maybe we'll cancel the picnic you know those woods they look lovely i don't want to find

a lovely dark and deep quote but yeah it didn't seem like a good idea but it was fascinating those folk beliefs were really persistent there now i don't know what this guy thought a vampire was or what precisely the nature of the threat would be but yeah i didn't want to hang around to find out quite frankly whoa i've never i'm pretty well like i know a lot of stuff like i i know a lot of stuff i have, I know a lot of stuff. I have never heard of this. I've been Googling it as we've been talking. This is extraordinary. Yeah.

It's how distant we've become from a lot of these belief systems. In Western Europe, we go, yeah, we've got our cities. And we don't even trust folk medicine as much anymore. Because a lot of this is folk medicine. One of the things that was really curious was that the lady from the museum said that when her mother died the latch which is the bachelorette you don't call them witches but essentially that's what they are they would come along and stand around the coffin because one of the beliefs is that if you let's say you're having a problem with your neighbor the lawnmower guy? If you can go around to his house and take something of his,

let's say you take his pocket handkerchief, you get a lock of his hair, you take one of his keys, and if you drop it in a coffin, and then the coffin is sealed and buried, a couple of days later that guy's going to die, okay? It's a really, if you really wanted that lawnmower back and you were getting really sick of sending around to it. And so quite often what will happen is that the vlatch, you will

engage some of these ladies to mine the coffin, just to ensure that nobody who has a grudge decides to interfere with it and stick something in the coffin. I was just thinking, and something that seemed like, because, you know, in Ireland we still have wakes occasionally, and I'm thinking, that's a really good way to get, you know, in Ireland, we still have wakes occasionally.

And I'm thinking, that's a really good way to get back at somebody. And the other thing is, if you did it and then said afterwards, you know, that lawnmower you didn't give back to me. Remember when I came around to your house and you couldn't find your favorite bottle opener? It's in my dad's coffin with him. And pretty soon, you're going that way. I suspect that what it would do to your nerves, even if you didn't quite believe it, I suspect that you'd be quite uncomfortable afterwards.

Definitely. Note to self, return the vice gifts to the neighbors. McDonald homage there. I've been reading this. So I thought I'd do a lot. I've been reading as you've been talking. And here's a Reddit thread that says, One of the ritual practices of the Vlach witches, they bathe dead bodies, then use the water to make coffee.

Yeah, I don't know. I think there's quite a lot of kind of stuff said about them that isn't in turn. That coffee thing sounds a bit dubious, to be perfectly honest. But the other stuff is, certainly my driver, when we were driving, said that he had neighbours who had gone to consult with the Black Witches when they were having trouble with a job. Or your love life,

and they'll give you a potion, or they'll say a set of prayers for you. Because it is a mix of Catholicism and some slightly older belief systems that have moved in together. But it's one of the pleasures of doing research. If I sat at home and looked at a Reddit thread or decided to make stuff up,

those little grains of truth wouldn't have made their way into a book. And one of the things about readers is that they have a very good ear for rubbish. They can spot when you're just winging it. There will be things that just won't ring true to them. And that's why I like to go to these places and spend time talking to people. It's maybe a hangover from journalism as well.

I think that almost any life, and I guess you probably feel the same way given the show that you do, almost any life, if you ask the right questions, is interesting. Yeah, they're always using interesting. People have led, even though they don't think of themselves as interesting, they will often have done things that no one else has done. There will be something from their past or their family's past that's interesting. And you just have to give them the time to talk about it. And if you do that and listen, you'll learn stuff.

You will come out with interesting stuff. Yeah, I'm going to be like, after we get off the show, I'm going to be like, the next four hours, I'm just going to cruise the internet looking at Flatch Witch stuff. This is pretty wild. Yeah, and the next time someone comes, someone's live on your show, you're going to offer them coffee, and they think, I don't think so, Chris. Yeah, in fact, I'm probably going to.

That's normal. That's Thursdays around here. Make their talismans from the hair of illegitimate children, and they slip it into water to bathe the vile cat, thus making their husbands blind to cheating husbands. So did you use some of the vlach witch magic in the book no just i i like the backdrop to it there is a there is a character called zaria in the books there is to be a child but when you get quite close to you you can see actually she's actually just something much much older and a little bit of that not

necessarily the vlach stuff but some of that folk history fed into it and i like giving the books those textures like i said to you my books all have a little element of the supernatural to them and that may come be very honest from being irish irish people have always been very comfortable with with that notion you know science most crime novels certainly american crime novels are very they deal with there's a there's a murder there's an investigation there's a killer there's a murder, there's an investigation, there's a killer, there's a solution. And I've never liked those supernatural elements,

by and large, apart from maybe somebody like James Lee Burke. In Ireland, we're quite comfortable with keeping the rational and the anti-rational side by side. We're a Catholic country. It's hard to be Catholic and entirely rational. You have to allow a little bit of leeway for the strangeness in life. And I suppose that's why, even though my books are set in the United States, I've spent a lot

of time there. I've worked there. I have a house there. I pay some taxes there. The little Irish part, that fascination with the darkness, with the strangeness of the world, creeps into them and makes them a little bit different, I think. Well, you write thrillers, so it probably makes them a little bit more juicy. Yeah, I just don't want to write a straightforward thriller. And I wouldn't be able to. There's something just slightly bent about me. If you gave me a skewer,

it would turn into a corkscrew, probably. But I like that idea of giving, and you know, if you want to read very straightforward thrillers, there are plenty of them out there. There's no shortage of them. There are perhaps fewer books that mix it up a little bit.

There you go. Anything more you want to tease out on the book? No, I think if you give away any more, I think there's stuff that people can buy. What I do think, I often think a lot of people want to write. I think what people are often curious about is how people write. And I don't really give workshops. So everything I know about writing, I can tell you in about two and a half minutes. Really? But it will be reasonably valuable, I think think it's the only things i know the first is that

everybody like i said i've published 33 books now and the 34th and 35th are on their way every one of them i've wanted to throw it away after about 20 000 words every single one of them and i think that's quite natural and i think people who are trying to write sometimes forget that what happens is about 20 000 words into something i'll think oh this isn't very good and no one's going to want to read it and i don't know where it's going in this plot and at that moment a little voice in your head comes in and go i'm the shiny new idea and if you get rid of that as a false start and come with me everything will be fine but this is don't worry about that one and so you start with the shiny new idea and you everything is great 20 000 words into

the month throw it away again and so doubt is part of the process i think it was ray bradbury said that we said writers are people who finish things and i think somebody else said that professionals are amateurs who finish things and that's true of anything in life the mechanic who gives you back your car and says yeah we've got the brakes fixed on the front yeah i didn't really bother with the back they should be fine you're probably not going to go back to that guy again even if you survive the trip home so the thing is the really difficult thing whether you're writing a poem a short story a novel whether you're starting a song whether you're doing a painting is that the minute the first word or the first note or apply your paintbrush to the canvas you have to commit to

finishing you have to commit to writing the last words to finish the song, to writing the story. Because every person is born with a limited amount of creative confidence. And every time you abandon something, you chip away a little piece of that confidence and you never get it back again. It never comes back.

So finish what you start, but know that doubt is part of the process. And now, if you would send all of the checks care of the Chris Foss show, make sure you spell my name. I'm really fussy about that. And I guarantee you, and we'll send all of the checks, care of the Chris Foss show, make sure you spell my name. I'm really fussy about that. And I guarantee you, and we'll send you on a little latch token as well.

That's going to help you too. A little latch token. I don't know. I'd be afraid to carry that thing around. You know, what if it turns on me? I'm going to read some of the stories. It's like a whole world has opened up to you that you didn't really want to know.

Thankfully, I had a lot of author friends because I could have used that when I wrote my book recently and my first book. I think I was about 50,000 words in and there were two moments. I think the worst part was in the editing where I was ready to throw it out the window, but I think it was

about 50,000 words. I was calling all my friends going, you know what? F this thing. F all of it. I'm throwing it all away. I'm going to go do something else. And my friends were all like, no, this means you're almost there. And I was like, what? And they're like, yeah, the fact that you want to quit and throw it all away and it's

all garbage, this is the sign that you're almost there. And I'm like, are you? It is kind of counterintuitive. Because it's like you end up in the weeds in the middle of it. The first 10,000 or 20,000 are quite easy, relatively speaking. Yeah, that was easy, the 35,000 words. Yeah, but then I guarantee it's well done to get to 50,000 before you fell that way.

Most people hit the wall. It's like the wall in marathon running, but that thing where you hit it about 20 miles. You think, I can't do this. And that's the part which a lot of people drop out and probably never run a race again mine was a memoir uh slight book on leadership and ceo stuff so i've been telling these stories like a griot for 53 years and so the first pounding out the book there's 35 000 words were easy in the last part and then really the the biggest pain in the butt came over the structure and people going, well, you should put that part over there and this part over there.

And then I think I wrote 60. And then at the end, I was like, what do we do with all this crap? There's a whole second book, I think, on the cutting room floor, but you know what that is. This is awesome. It's been fun to talk to you, John. You're awesome. In fact, let's have you on for the future books because we'll just schedule them now since you already wrote them. Do you see the Charlie Parker series? This is probably something a fan would like me to ask. Do you see the Charlie Parker series continuing on and on? I know you dabble with some of your other series.

Yeah, I still enjoy it. When I began writing books, I was 25, and I'm a very youthful 53 now. And this is where you leap in and go, yeah, yeah, God, of course, yeah. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, thanks for just laughing at my face. Well, no, you've done 33 books, and we're both God, of course, yeah, thanks, Chris. Yeah, thanks for just laughing at my face. Well, no, you've done 33 books and we're both 53. Yeah, no, yeah, whatever. It's too late now. I'm trying, I'm trying.

You missed your mystery opportunity. You missed your cue. I'm hurt. I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. I was 25 when I began writing the book. And I like looking at the world through his eyes. The books have, he's aged as I've aged, and the books are different. I couldn't leave him.

One of the things in mystery fiction is often that you leave your character around 40 to 50, because that's the age where you can still kick your door down and women still might find you mildly attractive if the lighting is right. I remember I used to love Robert B. Parker. Spencer books were one of those series that I read when I was younger. And they were great fun. But Spencer never really seemed to get old. And Robert B. Parker was writing these novels for 50 years.

There would be discussions between Spencer and his girlfriend in the 1990s or 2000s about whether they should have a child. And you'd hang on a second, you served in Korea and you were dating her then. But it's not going to happen now. That's barren ground. You'd be lucky. No amount of Viagra is going to help you in that situation. get a dog and so i'm trying to let parker get older and so the books have changed a little bit but yeah i still like doing them but what would i do i don't have any skills you know i don't i don't know you do have some skills you've written 30 yeah but other

than that my dream i at one point when i was younger i wanted to be vet. But then I thought I'm going to spend most of my time. I thought being a vet would be lovely because I used to watch All Creatures Great and Small, that TV series. I'd be riding around the Yorkshire Vale patting dogs rather than having my hand halfway up a cat's arse. And then I thought, actually, that's probably not going to be something I want to do. So I can either write or I can live on the streets. I think there's some streets. Or both. I think there's some writers that do that. So you alluded that you have two books coming out right after this,

34 and 35, do you say? Are those both Parker books? The Parker book for next year is done. That will be out this time next year, actually next August. And then on this side of the Atlantic, there's a book out day after tomorrow, which is a different book, which is a history of Irish genre fiction. Because I was stuck during lockdown and I don't do jigsaws. You know, should I really found a hobby or made little models or something like that?

Instead, I wrote a history of genre fiction because that's what you do when you leave the house. Yeah. And your other half says to you, I'm sick of looking at you. Go and do something useful. I think that was my memoir, half fiction. I don't know. At this point,

it's the memory has faded over 53 years. John, it's been wonderful and fun to have you on. We love it. It's been a pleasure, Chris. Thank you. Give us your plugs,

John, so that people can find you on the interwebs in order. Okay. You can find me at johnconnellybooks.com is the website. There's a contact John through that. And I'm on Twitter at johnconnellybooks. And I, johnconnellybooks.com is the website. There's a contact, John, through that. And I'm on Twitter at John Connelly Books and at jconnellybooks. And I think I'm on Facebook, but I don't tend to look at Facebook because Facebook is really bad now, as we've all decided.

So, yeah. If I'm on Facebook, I'm really sorry. No, it's still good. Whatever. Hopefully they'll do something with that Zuck guy or something. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks. Contin to you chris you're a gentleman and you too as well my friend i'm gonna try and catch up to you since we're both 53 i'm gonna try and catch up to you and i'll see if i can bang chris you're not 53 you look so young you see that's what you

say how hard would it i'm 53 i got one book put out this october 5th and you put out 33 so i'll try and do 10 books a year for the next three years and see if I can catch up to you. That can be your task. I don't know. I got to remember a lot of crap in my past. But check out the new book, guys. Order it up. It's hot off the presses today.

So you want to get it, be the first one on your block, your book club, to read it and say, I read it first. The Nameless Ones, a thriller, number 19 in the Charlie Parker series, is out today. You can pick that baby up internationally or wherever fine books are sold. To my audience, go to YouTube.com, 4ChessChrisVoss. See this fun interview for free for an unlimited time on YouTube. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, 4ChessChrisVoss. See all the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those places where all the crazy kids play. Be good to each other. Stay tuned and we'll see you guys next time.

So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader,

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