Roderick Brooks' New Thriller Weaves NYC and 1989 Mets Team Into Fictional Tale of Real-Life Lockerbie Bombing

As the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing approaches, a fictional account of loss, grief and retribution around the terrorist incident debuted in paperback and eBook this week on Amazon in the U.S., Great Britain and Europe. (Find on Amazon)

The thriller "A Judge, an Irishman and a Hot Dog Vendor go into a Bar..." by Roderick Brooks, weaves a multi-layered tale of revenge around actual history in this case, the loss of Pan Am Flight 103. The Boeing 747 was en route to New York from London on Dec. 21, 1988, when it exploded in flight, killing all 259 passengers and crew, along with 11 on the ground in the small Scottish town.

"Lockerbie was a significant escalation in anti-American terrorism," says Brooks, a former air force officer and journalist. "Both in its callousness and surgical focus. Many would agree, in hindsight, that Lockerbie should have been the beginning of the War on Terror. That's the underlying premise of my novel."

Woven into the fabric of real-life events, "A Judge" sees the National Security Council of incoming president George Herbert Walker Bush secretly joining with Great Britain, France and West Germany to combat terrorism in the wake of Lockerbie. They combine forces in a covert Interpol operation called Olympiad, which sets out to disrupt global terrorist threats and bring death to their doorstep.

"New York is as important a character as any in the book," says Brooks, who confesses an affinity for the city. "As are the 1989 Mets. Hell of a team. The games depicted in ("A Judge") are accurate, inning by inning, which was fun to research and work into prose. That's the thing about historically accurate fiction. Once you go down that path, you need to stick with it."

Brooks is currently working on a second installment of what he intends to serialize as history-connected adventures around the Olympiad characters. With the working title: "One Cold War Spook says to Another" - his second novel should be available through Amazon in Fall 2014.

SOURCE Roderick Brooks