The Devil's Garden

Author Brady Christianson cures writer's block by target practicing with his knives. "I can spend hours throwing them," he says. "Focusing on the target helps focus my thoughts." 

It's no wonder this former Marine, who served in the Reconnaissance Division, has centered his first novel, The Devil's Playground, around a retired Recon Marine who thinks he is enjoying a quiet, civilian life but who has his world suddenly turned upside-down when heavily armed Arab terrorists break into his house and try to kill him and his family. It is clear that his former military "secret identity" has been compromised and ghosts from the past have come back to settle old scores. 

 

This action-packed mystery/thriller was inspired by true events, after Christianson learned that a laptop was stolen from the Department of Veterans Affairs. "It contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers of every veteran who served this country since the Vietnam conflict. The missing laptop was not recovered until about a month later, which was an eternity for someone to copy the information and sell it...Considering these events and weighing them against the fact that there are those in the military services whose identities are protected—and they are protected for good reasons—the potential for disaster becomes painfully apparent...The story almost wrote itself."

I am pleased to welcome Brady Christianson to Reading Between the Lines to share his thoughts, in his own words, about The Devil's Garden:

The fog of war is a place where confusion rules, innocence dies and demons are born. Sometimes these demons come back to haunt a man and other times they simply come back to kill him. Few men would welcome the fight, which is to say, a proud and terrible few. The Devil’s Garden twists a Recon Marine’s worst nightmare into a deadly reality.

There is a saying in Recon: There is no life after Force. The lack of adrenaline and ensuing boredom will kill a warrior’s spirit. However, former Recon Marine Brandon Colson has a different kind of death to fear. After years spent in remote deserts and jungles on the other side of the planet dreaming of a quiet, civilian, family life, he finally has it. The problem is he has a large price on his head that even his family doesn’t know about: He is wanted by terrorists he worked to bring down.  With revenge in their hearts and murder on their minds, Colson’s enemies plan to revisit his sins upon him, his wife and his children. When a heavily armed squad of assassins arrives at his home in the middle of the night, he quickly dispatches the men, but knows the identity he buried deep in his past is no longer a secret. With his family in hiding, he makes it his personal mission to eliminate the threat to his family and reclaim the life he’s made.

The Devil’s Garden captures the irreconcilable thoughts and trepidation of a military man turned family man who must now fight to protect his family. As Colson’s crucial mission leads him to the Devil’s Garden of Florida, a forgotten wasteland of swamps, collapsed shacks, and lost souls, he finds that the midnight attack on his home was simply an omen of what is to come. With his fate in the balance until the last second, Colson must navigate a trail littered with bloodshed and revenge.

To learn more about The Devil's Garden and Brady Christianson (and read excerpts from the novel), link HERE

Follow the book blog tour for this novel at Tribute Books 

The Devil's Garden by Brady Christianson
Two Harbors Press, Trade Paper, 9781938690167, 392 pp
Publication Date: November 11, 2012
To order this book via AMAZON link HERE