5 Things You Should Know About Zrada by Lance Charnes #5Things

Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer, and Jeopardy! contestant, and is now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response, and maritime archaeology, though not all at the same time. His Facebook author page features spies, archaeology, and art crime.

Lance is the author of the DeWitt Agency Files series of international art-crime novels (The Collection, Stealing Ghosts, and Chasing Clay), the international thriller Doha 12, and the near-future thriller South. All are available in trade paperback and digital editions.

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5 Things You Should Know About Zrada

1. Zrada is based (loosely) on a real story. In 2005, thieves stole 24 paintings from the Westfries Museum in the Netherlands. The paintings ended up in the hands of a far-right Ukrainian militia in 2015. The museum tried to negotiate a “finder’s fee” (ransom) for the paintings but couldn’t conclude a deal. The Ukrainian SBU security service eventually returned four of the paintings to the Westfries in 2016; a private collector handed back a fifth artwork. The rest are rumored to be in Russian mafiya hands.

2. Carson, the heroine, has already appeared in two novels (The Collection and Stealing Ghosts) as an accomplice to Matt Friedrich, that series’ lead. She’s the muscle of the duo. Zrada is her first solo outing. Readers who discovered Carson in those two books will find out a lot more about her in Zrada, which should explain why she is the way she is.

3. Carson, a disgraced Toronto police detective, is based on several women I’ve known in the military and the police. Being a woman surrounded by all that macho can lead to extreme adaptive behaviors. Carson became one of the guys: she downplayed her femininity as much as possible and tried to work out, swear, drink, shoot, and fight just like (or better than) the men around her so it wouldn’t occur to them to hit on her. It didn’t work, but she gained skills she can use in her new line of work.

4. All the towns the characters visit are real places, as are nearly all of the specific places in them. In most cases, they really look the way I describe them. I used satellite imagery from Google Earth to see what the land and foliage looked like in spring 2016, when the story is set.

5. Galina – the Donbass native Carson hires as a guide – participated in the 2014 battle for Ilovaisk, one of the most brutal military actions in Europe since World War Two. She lost her husband and a big piece of herself on that battlefield. She’s every bit as tough as Carson, but in a different way and for different reasons. Galina bears an abiding hatred for everything Russian and a thirst for revenge, both of which become problematic as the story progresses.

Book Description:

Two priceless paintings. Two million euros. A civil war. What could go wrong?

The DeWitt Agency assigned disgraced ex-cop Carson a simple job: carry two briefcases of cash to swap for two artworks stolen from a German museum. Except nothing’s simple in the Donbass, the breakaway Ukrainian region overrun by militias, warlords, and bandits.

After a brutal zrada – betrayal – Carson finds herself alone and hunted forty miles behind the front lines with half the money, one of the paintings, and a huge target hung on her back. The militia behind the exchange thinks she blew up their deal and wants the money and her hide. Her co-workers were in on the double-cross. And the Agency can’t send help into the hottest war in Europe.

Carson’s never been one to wait to be rescued. She hires Galina – a tough local with a harrowing past and a taste for revenge – to help her cut through every checkpoint, freelance army, crooked cop, and firefight between her and the West. But the road to safety is long and poorly paved. A vengeful militia commander, a Russian special-forces operator with an agenda, and her own ex-colleagues have Carson in their crosshairs.

Carson’s life is now worth less than a suitcase of money or paint on a plank…but if they want to take it from her, she’s going to make them pay.