"The Helios Conspiracy"

Jim DeFelice’s new book, The Helios Conspiracy (Tor/Forge), received a starred review from Kirkus, who called it “complete success with its appealing investigator, rapid-fire dialogue and convincing storytelling.”

He is the co-author of American Sniper, the New York Times number one best-seller.

DeFelice applied the Page 69 Test to The Helios Conspiracy and reported the following:

If you opened to page 69 in The Helios Conspiracy, you’d get a little information about the murders that drive the main character of the book, Andy Fisher. It’s there that he learns that there’s been a second suspicious death, a discovery which starts him on the road to uncovering (duh) a conspiracy to sabotage a planned satellite solar energy system.

But more to the point, you’d learn something critical about “Fish” – who hates to be called that, by the way.

Andy is in California, and unfamiliar with the local terrain, asks his informant where they can meet to talk. Someplace with food and coffee, he adds.

It’s very late, far past the time when Starbucks and its ilk have shut down the espresso makers. So the informant is hard-pressed to make a suggestion.

“The only place I can think of is the Throwback Diner,” she tells him finally. But then she warns, “The coffee’s not good – it’s always burnt and acidic.”

“Sounds like the gods’ nectar to me,” he answers. And for once in the book, he’s not kidding. Fisher is a connoisseur of bad coffee – the more putrid the better.

I don’t know if that would sell The Helios Conspiracy, but it does sum up Andy, and one of the subthemes of the novel – the world needs more places where you can get a cheap cup of coffee and an over-generous piece of banana cream pie.

Learn more about the book and author at Jim DeFelice's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Leopards Kill.

Writers Read: Jim DeFelice.

--Marshal Zeringue