Author Chats
Timothy J. Lockhart Brings Naval Intelligence Expertise Into Rollicking New Spy Thriller
August 12, 2024
Timothy J. Lockhart’s sixth novel since 2017, The Exfil, expands on the author’s noir-tinged world of gritty
detectives, shady attorneys, assassins, and former military operatives with an international thriller about the extraction of a North Korean missile scientist by CIA operatives. In a series of globe-hopping confrontations, Hamer, a former Navy SEAL, and Mona Jin, a Korean American intelligence analyst, face off against “The Butcher,” brutal North Korean intelligence officer Colonel Park.
Lockhart’s writing, like his characters, moves with efficiency and determination. While The Exfil includes all the action set pieces one hopes to encounter in spy fiction — shoot-outs, high-speed pursuits, steamy romances, and assaults on fortified locations — the characters, situations, and equipment are portrayed with a restraint that keeps the narrative from straying into fantasy. The result is a fast-moving ride, perfect for the summer.
The D.C. Bar recently spoke with Lockhart, an intellectual property attorney at a Norfolk, Virginia, law firm, about his writing philosophy, process, and latest book.
The Exfil includes a number of exotic settings and characters. What was your process for researching and writing about covert ops and the North Korean military?
When I write a book, I always start with the leading characters. That’s the technique that the great crime writer Elmore Leonard recommended. I’m sure a lot of other authors have recommended it too, but that’s what seems to work for me.
So, I started with the character of Hamer. I knew that the story would be about trying to get a North Korean missile scientist out of the country, and I thought that it would be helpful if he had a partner who spoke Korean. That’s how I came up with the character of Mona Jin, who is Korean American and works with the CIA. I started with the two of them and then I said, obviously there’s got to be an antagonist, and that would be a senior Korean military or intelligence officer, so I came up with Colonel Park, and I just sort of built the book around those three characters.
I didn’t really do any research in advance of writing the novel. I did the research as I went along. I think that there’s a danger for writers, or there certainly would be for me, if you do too much research in advance because you can get bogged down in research and never get around to the writing. It’s a lot easier to sit at the computer doing Google searches than to look at that blank screen and write the text of your novel.
I start with something I know or believe I can create in a believable way, and when I come to places where I need to verify a fact or need additional facts, then I do whatever research seems necessary at that time.
Stephen King even said to write the book, then do the research. When you write first, then you can easily identify the holes where things need to be filled in. There’s another technique you can use too, which is that as you go along and find that you need a detail, or a fact, or the address of someplace, or the appearance of something, you just put a note to yourself in brackets to research or check a fact or detail later, and that way you don’t get bogged down or distracted while writing the book. It is very easy to go down some rabbit trail, and that’s not cranking out the pages. After I finish the first draft I do a little bit more research.
But I’m always mindful of a well-known story about the great crime writer James M. Cain, who did Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Late in his career he was working on a historical novel set during the Civil War, and part of it involved black market cotton trading across the Mexico–U.S. border. So, he went down to the border. He [spent several weeks] interviewing people and viewing archives. Then he wrote the book, and the part about cotton trading only takes up about a page and a half. So, he spent all that time and money and effort on something that was only a minor part of the book.
Another thing you can run into — and I see this sometimes with historical novelists — [is that] they do a lot of research about a particular period or a particular place, and because they’ve done all this work they feel compelled to put it in the book. When I wrote my second book, Pirates, a lot of that story is set on a sailboat. I’m a sailor in a small way and know a bit about the lines and the sails and the parts of the boat. I put that terminology in the book, but my test readers said [that I had] way too much nautical stuff in the book, so I [took] out at least half of it. It’s still believable. We know that we’re on a boat and how it operates. We have enough facts to give the information to provide a semblance of reality, but, in fiction, people don’t want to read a textbook about sailing or any other topic.
I was greatly assisted with The Exfil by my friend Mona Lee, a trademark attorney I’ve worked with over the years. She’s Korean American, born here, but she speaks Korean and lived in and practiced in Seoul for a number of years. I asked her if she would be willing to read the manuscript and give me comments about the Korean aspects of the book. I don’t know that I could have written the book without her assistance.
Did you draw upon personal experience at all in writing The Exfil?
There are some. I was a naval intelligence officer for 30 years. Some of it is based on things I was involved in, and that’s about all I can say about that.
Were there challenges writing a contemporary spy novel?
The Cold War was the golden age for writers of espionage fiction because we had the USSR versus the United States and things going on in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world … a lot of great espionage fiction coming out of that time. But you can write espionage fiction in any time period because there’s always espionage going on. There are always real-world conflicts and intelligence organizations from different countries out there doing what they do.
One thing that you do have to be aware of is changes in technology. I was careful to work in the use of drones in The Exfil. I have some spy equipment, such as pen radios. I don’t touch on artificial intelligence in this book, but it’s something that I think espionage writers and other writers will need to be sensitive to going forward. I’m not talking about using AI to write the book; I’m talking about reflecting how characters in the real world use artificial intelligence. I didn’t touch on that in this book, but in a future espionage book I think I would need to.
What appeals to you about the fiction genre?
I try to write the kind of book that I like to read, and I think that, for novelists, that’s really important. If you like romance novels, that’s probably what you’re going to write. If you like westerns, you’ll write that. I like crime fiction, including mysteries. I like thrillers and espionage fiction, so those are the kinds of books I write. I think I would get bored if I wrote the same thing, book after book after book, so I try to vary it a bit. That keeps me more interested, and I hope that it keeps the reader more interested.
Are there throughlines in your work — in the characters or the stories?
There are — I think that would be true of any novelist. Of course, I was in the military for a long time, so a lot of my characters … tend to have a military background. I’m comfortable writing about people with that background, with a military mindset, if you will.
I’m a male writer, but I try to create credible female characters. Sometimes writers of one gender have trouble creating characters of another gender. Some can do it all, but I’ve read a number of books written by male authors where I thought the female characters didn’t come alive quite as much as they might have. I try hard to have realistic female characters. I have a number of female test readers, and I pay close attention to what they say about my female characters.
I try to make the dialogue as realistic as possible. Sometimes, when I’m writing, I’ll even read it aloud to see whether it plays. You can’t be too formal with dialogue because that’s not how people speak.
In terms of style, I think I’ve been very influenced by Hemingway, generally. Short paragraphs, short sentences. I don’t try to write in a simplistic way, but I try to write in a friendly, approachable way that I think readers will also respond to. I’m also very influenced by Raymond Chandler. I’ll never have his gift for simile or metaphor, no one will, but sometimes you feel like you can come up with something that sounds good and has a loose, jazzy feel. Elmore Leonard and Lou Berney are noted for that.
Mostly what I want to do is keep readers turning the pages. Somebody said of James M. Cain that nobody stopped in the middle of his books. I’m always very pleased when readers say that they had a hard time putting the book down. I’ve even had one or two readers tell me that they read it in one sitting, and that’s what you want to hear. I’m not preaching a sermon. I’m not trying to send a message. Who was it who said, if you want to send a message call Western Union? I’m trying to write entertaining stories.
You have maintained a very consistent publication schedule. Do you have any new projects?
I’m working on a new novel; I’m about a third of the way through it. It will be the second in the Wendy Lu series, which is the only series that I’ve started, to date. Unlucky Money, my fourth novel, was the first novel in the series.
The protagonist is a Chinese American private eye who lives in Norfolk, Virginia, down here in Hampton Roads. She’s in the Naval Reserve and was an intelligence specialist with the Navy during her enlistment. Then, she got off active duty, went to Old Dominion University, majored in criminal justice. She was a Virginia Beach police officer for a while. Now, she’s a private investigator.
So, Unlucky Money was her first case, if you will. Now, I’m onto the next case, which has many of the same characters but introduces new characters too. The plot is all new. It is a missing-persons case, and the plot involves human trafficking.
Where can readers find your work?
Interested readers can find The Exfil on the website of the publisher, Stark House Press, at Amazon.com, or at their local bookstore. If a bookstore does not have the novel in stock, the store will probably be happy to order it. To support bookstores, especially independent bookstores, I encourage readers to look for the novel first in a brick-and-mortar store.
