Bestselling author Rick Campbell, whose all-new thriller Blackmail is set to come out this June, just signed a new two-book deal with his current publisher, St. Martin’s Press.
According to Campbell’s agent, John Talbot, who confirmed that a new deal has been reached, the contract does not include Blackmail–which means readers can, at the very least, expect three more novels in the author’s popular Trident Deception series, with the next books coming out in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Campbell, a Navy veteran who served for more than thirty years, has an impressive resumé that includes tours on four nuclear submarines, time spent at the Pentagon, and the Undersea Weapons Program. According to the bio on his official website, while onboard his last submarine, Campbell was “one of the two men whose permission was required to launch its twenty-four nuclear warhead-tipped missiles.”
In other words, Campbell has a ton of been-there-done-that experience, making his books far and away the most authentic in the genre. He is to submarine thrillers what Brad Taylor is to military thrillers, and his novels have only gotten better over the course of his short writing career–which started in 2014 with The Trident Deception, a novel Booklist called “the best submarine novel since Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October.”
Blackmail, which follows last year’s Ice Station Nautilus, is set to hit bookstores on June 27th, 2017. Check out the plot details below:
The U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the Western Pacific Ocean is severely damaged by a surprise salvo of cruise missiles. While the Russian government officially apologizes, claiming it was the result of fire control accident during a training exercise, it was instead a calculated provocation. With the U.S. Pacific fleet already severely under strength, the Russian President decides that the US response is a clear indication of their weakness, militarily and politically, and initiates a bold plan.
Political unrest is spreading through the Eastern European states. The Russian Northern Fleet moves swiftly in the Mediterranean Sea, the Russian army is moving west to the border, and Russian Baltic and Black Sea Fleets are mobilized. In one bold strike, the Russian army moves to reoccupy a large number of the industrialized areas of the former USSR, while blockading the vital sea passages through which the world’s oil and natural gas transit. To make matters worse, Russia’s Special Forces have wired every major oil and natural gas pipeline with explosives. If the U.S. makes one move to thwart Russia, they’ll destroy them all. The U.S. is risking disaster if it acts, but the alternative is quite possibly worse. Torn between the unthinkable and the impossible, the only possible move―to launch an attack on all fronts, simultaneously.
We recently received an advance copy of Blackmail, so check back in a few weeks for our official review. In the meantime, fans anxious to dive into Campbell’s next thriller can pre-order it here, or anywhere else books are sold.