AN INTRODUCTION FROM TERENCE STRONG

Briefly introduce yourself

My name’s Terence Strong. I’ve been called a ‘seasoned international thriller writer’, as well as a few less-flattering things. I’ve certainly been around a while, seen and done a lot. I’ve taken readers to a lot of dangerous places and situations with a safe pair of hands. Africa, Middle East, the Arctic, Asia, South America, Russia and China.

Authenticity is a keynote of my stories, of which most have a military or espionage flavour. I believe I wrote the very first accurate SAS thriller long before McNab and Ryan. I love vivid characterisation, believable dialogue and sharply-drawn characters, especially women who are often neglected in the action-adventure genre. I like the geographic atmospherics to make you feel you are actually there.

I’m a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestselling Author and a member of the Crime Writers Association.

When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

Pretty early on. I was putting on my own marionette puppet plays around the time I joined the Lavender Hill Public Library (Clapham) at 8 years old. I soon discovered Boy’s Own thriller pilot hero Biggles, eventually devouring over 40 of his adventures around the globe.

At 11 I wrote my own heavily plagiarised thriller. All 16 typed pages of it! My best friend’s father, Peter Bayley, was in publishing and kindly went through it all with the dreaded blue pen in great detail. Editorially trashed. I should have been devastated, perhaps I was. But I was also inspired.

Having by then discovered Ian Fleming, Bulldog Drummond, Alistair McClean, Hammond Innes and other big thriller kings of the day, I wrote my first full-length thriller THE SWEET SMELL OF INTRIGUE as I left school at 16. I did nothing with it. But by now, I knew I wanted to be a thriller writer and foreign correspondent.

What inspired you to write The Tick Tock Man?

Many of my thrillers have featured a specific aspect of combat and survival. Arctic warfare, hostage negotiation, ship-hijacks, close-protection, anti-terrorism… This was simply the turn of the unsexily-named EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Operator. Dismantler of the dreaded IED – Improvised Explosive Device. They may be improvised in that they are hand-made, but certainly those I saw in Northern Ireland looked like professional factory products – and worked all too well.

I learned all this business visiting a specialist British Army training course in the UK and being shown around the EOD operation in Ulster by the unit chief, known as Top Cat. I was also privileged to have a former decorated operator as a private adviser. It is truly the most deadly cat-and-mouse game on the planet. You’ll laugh your socks off if you ever again see The Hurt Locker or Trigger Point – once you’ve read THE TICK TOCK MAN. You’ll find it an authentic helter-skelter ride you will never forget.

How would you describe The Tick Tock Man in 3 words?

POWER AT MAX

What are some current books you would recommend?

They’d probably be cookbooks. Sadly, because of circumstances I have little time to read recent fiction purely for pleasure. Most of my reading nowadays is for research. Rather than specific titles, some authors I have enjoyed and who have sometimes inspired me are: Graham Greene, Douglas Reeman, Bryan Forbes, Gavin Lyall, Harold Robbins, Geoffrey Jenkins and, of course, Gerald Seymour.