In Conversation: Two Thrill Writers Traverse the Genre 

Charles Lichtman is an expert in Middle East affairs and issues regarding terrorism. The Sword of David: A Novel (Bombardier Books) is an action thriller that tells the story of Chaim Klein, a fearless Israeli Special Forces officer. Having found the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, looked for the Ten Commandments tablets, and confronted a terrorist consortium, Klein ultimately comes across the mystical and awe-inspiring Sword of David. While at it, he must handle a cast of characters that includes a terrorist who trained under the infamous Carlos the Jackal, an Israeli spy working undercover in Paris under the alias Sister Chloe, a renegade CIA operative, and a Palestinian once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The final climactic confrontation between Klein and the terrorists is unexpected and inspirational. Bestselling author Brad Meltzer called the book “a breathtaking thriller. It has the best elements of The Da Vinci Code and a modern-day Raiders of the Lost Ark but trust me, Charles Lichtman has created a pulse-pounding novel that’s entirely his own.”

James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. He is also a trial lawyer who teaches law and literature at the University of Miami School of Law. In Twenty: A Jack Swyteck Novel (Harper), defense attorney Jack is at his office when he receives an emergency text from Riverside Day School that every parent of a school-age child fears: Active Shooter on Campus. His daughter, Righley, is in her kindergarten classroom. His wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, is in the school’s rec center. The shooting claims 20 lives and prompts mass hysteria. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility; police find a handgun at the scene that’s registered to a parent, a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. Amir is married to Andie’s friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution. Then Xavier, Amir and Lilly’s oldest child and an 18-year-old senior at Riverside, confesses to the crime. Terrified for her son’s life, Lilly asks Jack to step in. He’s not inclined to take the case, but he must. Now he must unearth the Khoury family’s secrets to expose a shocking truth and save his client. The New York Journal of Books called Twenty an “excellent legal thriller by an experienced hand at storytelling. … one of the best thrillers of 2021.”