Here's how it happened: author Michelle Gagnon was having dinner with a veteran FBI agent. They were discussing domestic hate groups -- domestic terror outfits like the one that spawned Timothy McVeigh.
Gagnon's FBI alumni friend told her that the thing he found most frightening was the fact that groups like that had doubled in size over the past decade, but that since 9-11, the resources previously used to watch them had been reallocated to foreign terrorism.
So now there were twice as many of those guys out there, Gagnon's friend said, "and no one is watching them. And now all these groups share the same agenda: they're all anti- immigration. My biggest fear is that someone will manage to galvanize them."
Somewhere in all of that, a light bulb went off, the muse struck and Gagnon went to work. The book that resulted is fictional FBI agent Kelly Jones' third novel and it's in stores this month. "In The Gatekeeper," says Gagnon, "someone does galvanize them. And the resulting terror plot, if it succeeds, would mark the worst attack in American history."
The title comes from a Clinton-era border security operation centered around San Diego called Operation Gatekeeper. Says Gagnon, "According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the goal of Operation Gatekeeper was 'to restore integrity and safety to the nation's busiest border.' However, the success of the operation was debatable. I wanted to link the title to the immigration issue, since that's the heart of the story. Plus it was darn catchy."
She's right: as a title, The Gatekeeper is darn catchy. More than that, though, it brings into focus something that many Americans fear more than anything else. At the same time, it provides a stellar showcase for Gagnon's talents, a writer whose sweet face and artsy CV don't provide much in the way of a hint towards the muscular thrillers she's been delivering since The Tunnels, her 2007 debut.
If there's one thing Gagnon hopes readers take away from The Gatekeeper, It's a "genuine sense of urgency," the author says. "In the United States there is frighteningly little monitoring of low level radioactive waste, much of which could be used to build a dirty bomb. Numerous sources are lost or stolen every week, dozens a year in Texas alone. This is not a good thing."
Since, as Gagnon herself points out, there is little in her background that would seem to push her towards writing a story of this nature. "Especially with regard to scientific knowledge," says Gagnon. "I was way out of my comfort zone. But I enjoyed the challenge, and was fortunate to have physicist Camille Minichino, forensics expert D.P. Lyle, 'bomb guys' Michael Roche and Richard McMahan, and a friend in the CIA who all provided background information and vetted the manuscript."
As if a tough-as-nails thriller wasn't enough, Gagnon has cooked up a contest to give away a Macintosh laptop computer to visitors who enter at her personal http://www.michellegagnon.com Web site prior to December 31, 2009.
"I decided to give away a big ticket item," says Gagnon with her typical candor, "because it tends to attract more attention. When I was promoting Boneyard I gave away a Kindle, and some independent booksellers were understandably not pleased. This time, I figured that a laptop is something everyone can use to write a manuscript, surf the web, pay their bills, whatever. Bill Gates might not be thrilled, but aside from him I think I'm safe."
Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine and a contributor to The Rap Sheet. Her fifth novel, DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE, will be published St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne January 2009.
