Guest Post by Kim Creswell

Ingredients of a Great Thriller

Every now and then you read a novel that has you glued to the story because the action is moving at warp-speed and you're swept way not wanting to stop reading until you know how it turns out.  

The tension rises and you ride along with the characters feeling every blow right up until the climax.

In my opinion, the main ingredient in a great thriller is emotion. If you feel the story in your heart and gut then the author has done his or her job.

A great thriller is unpredictable. What if an FBI agent leading a murder investigation is the killer?

A great thriller has deadlines—the ticking clock. Will the FBI agent be caught before he kills again?

A great villain is a must-have in any thriller—a villain that stirs feelings of hatred, fear, disgust and sometimes empathy in the reader.

A main character who is worthy to fight the villain and hopefully win.

The setting and the action must also be believable for the reader because if the reader doesn't believe, the story will end.

In JET: OBLIVION the main characters, JET, Hal Decker and Angela Donahue are more than worthy to fight the villain, in this case, an al Qaeda terrorist cell working with the Sur del Calle cartel.

Each of the characters in the story have their own set of acquired skills. JET in her younger years spent time in juvenile hall then ordered to join the IDF, where she was recruited into the Mossad, and became an elite and deadly assassin. After leaving the Mossad she spent a great deal of time in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Hal Decker is a former FBI agent, elite sniper and an ex-marine. He's a mellow kind of guy with soft voice and has a serious vibe to him. People who meet him aren't sure if he is friend or foe. 

Angela Donahue is ex-US military intelligence (surveillance/reconnaissance) who worked intelligence operations in numerous overseas environments as well as in South and Central America. She's also the go-to-girl you call to help get you out of a hostile territory during a dangerous mission.

Together, they must beat the ticking clock—find the dirty bomb before it's smuggled out of Colombia and into the United States unleashing a deadlier attack at a second nuclear facility.

 As the story progresses, it's unpredictable, has deadlines, and a villain who evokes fear and  hatred combined with characters who are physically and emotionally worthy to battle the villain to the end.