Friday Feature Author Interview with Elise Cooper: The Lightening Rod by Brad Meltzer

Book Description

Zig and Nola are back in this follow-up to The Escape Artist.

Archie Mint has a secret that he is hiding from his friends and family. To the public, he looks like the perfect husband and father to his son and daughter and is known for his distinguished for his Military Career.

When Archie is shot in his own home things take a huge turn and we suddenly this man has been hiding military secrets nobody could have imagined.

Mortician Zig uncovers some things that were not meant to be found. He goes to the secret unit and uncovers things along with artist, Nola (who saved his life in the first book).

Following her trail, he finds a hidden military base that dates back to the cold war. He learns about a group of military people willing to hide things about the security and safety of the United States.

Zig is not sure who he can trust as many suspects seem to turn up dead. Will he and Nola be able to find and secure our safety of us?

Yes, we all know that Nola is in fact the actual lightning rod. You will not be able to put it down once you start. Surprises till the last page.

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Elise’s Thoughts

The Lightning Rod by Brad Meltzer mixes a suspenseful plot with unique characters. What starts off as a thriller whodunit, quickly transitions into a conspiracy theory. Meltzer’s been writing for 25 years but his books keep getting better and better.  This story has a game of cat and mouse, danger at every turn, and deep US government secrets.

The book opens with a car theft that quickly turns into a murder after Colonel Archie Mint is killed outside his suburban Pennsylvania home in a supposed home robbery. Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician who formerly worked at Dover Air Force Base, is called in to conceal Mint’s injuries for the sake of his family. But at the viewing, things happen that make him suspect that not everything is as it should be. When Zig spots Nola Brown at Mint’s funeral he becomes more suspicious. As a former military artist, Nola was called upon not only to paint historic events, but to spot critical things that others missed. Now, for unknown reasons, she’s hunting the people who killed Mint. During the investigation, it is discovered that Mint was connected to a hidden military facility known as Grandma’s Pantry, one of many US government top-secret warehouses across the country dealing with repercussions of a biological attack.

There is also the mystery of Rodney, Nola’s twin brother, who is looking for her. Although volatile, he wants to find her before some would-be-assassins known as the Reds.  Joining up with Zig is the only way he will find Nola, so he is also pulled into the investigation.

This story has it all, more plot twists, conspiracies, and action. Meltzer also writes children’s books that will include superheroes Superman and Batman.  But in The Lightning Rod, he has created his own superheroes that don’t have any super qualities but have super investigative skills that make for a super story.

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Author Interview

Elise Cooper: What gave you the vision to write this story?

Brad Meltzer: This idea started with my own fears. I hand my car keys to a valet. They take the car, hit the GPS button, and go to my house.  This is a robbery.  This is my fear every time I park my car. The story evolves from there, when it is not a robbery at all, but a trap. I really wanted to base the story on the characters, Nola, and Zig, who I am bringing back from the previous book, The Escape Artist. I have more to say about them including having Nola’s greatest secret come out.

EC: What is the theme of this book?

BM: It is a story about dysfunctional families.  Some of the new families we form can also be dysfunctional. Zig is someone who will never have what he wants most in the world, to have his daughter back.  Nola will never have her father, which is what she wants most. Neither will have what they want, but instead have each other.  Now each must build something in that space.

EC:  This is your twenty-fifth year as a writer?

BM:  Yes. Every day I think how I write things differently today.  When I was twenty-five, I used to write about those characters of that age.  When I got married, I started to write about married people.  When I had children, I stared to write kids’ books.  Now I am writing about someone who loves their daughter.  All I do as a writer is follow my own life and tell my own story. The reality is I never want to know the ending.  The best way to ruin a good story is to know the ending.

EC:  Do your characters take a journey with you?

BM:  I do not know if I am a better writer, but I am a more honest one. After I buried my parents, one of my heroes is a mortician. I cannot be more obsessed with death. I used to hide myself and hide from myself, and this book is about how the best secrets are ones that people hide from themselves.

EC:  How would you describe Nola?

BM:  Nola’s profession is based on a real job in the military.  Since WWI the army has a painter on staff who paints disasters when they happen, from Normandy to 9/11.  I love the idea that she is a strong thrill-seeking insane woman who races into disasters with paint brushes to tell a story.  She likes to fight back, does not play well with others, has a nobility about her, and fights for injustice. The psychological report on her is that she has RAD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, where she is incapable of attachments or loving relationships. The readers should challenge whether this evaluation is correct. She can handle murder and violence, but not kindness and personal tragedy.  This does not mean she can make a little progress.

EC:  Nola is a lightning rod?

BM:  There is a quote in the book that describes her as a gun and people must be careful around her because she will go off. Just as with a lightning rod, trouble does find her like a black cat.  I love that about her, and it makes it interesting.

EC:  Zig and Nola have different views?

BM:  She believes that to make sense of the world it should be grabbed by the throat and forced to make sense. Zig believes if there is more kindness and generosity in the world it will be a better place. They’re both completely right and both completely wrong.  It takes both things working together to make any real difference. Zig’s idea is completely naïve, but it is worth fighting for.  Nola’s idea is completely brutal, but it is worth fighting for. This is me, writing the two sides of myself, both the hopeful and cynical side of myself. Just like myself the characters need to do that job.

EC:  What about Nola’s brother Rodney?

BM: He is a walking question mark.  He was a bad kid but is he a bad adult?  Is he a villain or not?  For the first time I wanted to delve into the bad guy aspect. He is weird, socially awkward, with non-existent social skills, detailed, and on his own plane.  He has no filters, ferocious, and at times violent. The key part of him is that there is good Rodney and bad Rodney.

EC:  Rodney represents those who might consider themselves good but do bad things?

BM:  Sometimes people are in-between, not totally good, or bad. I put in this book quote, “We all have a person we were and a person we are. It’s never a straight line between the two – and its certainly never a predictable one.”  Every character in this book is designed around this quote and the quote in the beginning of the book by Carl Jung, “In each of us there is another, whom we do not know”.

EC:  What about the biological weapons?  You must have a crystal ball considering we learned about the US labs in the Ukraine?

BM:  The book has these secret warehouses across the country that deal with bioterrorist attacks. The US can bring these antidotes within hours to our doorstep.  The warehouses are hidden across the country, so nobody knows where they are. I want to go inside them.  I did not make up what is inside them. Grandma’s Pantry was one of those that has a national stockpile that would prepare us in case there’s a bio-terror attack, whether it’s smallpox or anthrax or anything else.”

EC:  Next book?

BM:  It will be a Nola, Zig, and Rodney book. It takes me a while to write, a couple of years at a minimum for sure. I will be writing children’s books, I Am IM Pei, I Am Dolly Parton, coming out in June.  Coming out in September I Am Superman, and I Am Batman. In January of 2023 will be a non- fiction book about a secret plot to kill Winston Churchill, Stalin, and FDR, a triple assassination.  It is titled, The Nazi Conspiracy.

THANK YOU!!

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