The Story Behind the Book

Since the story was going to be really fast-paced, I thought I could write it in nine months. I grossly underestimated how much research I would need to do, and the book ended up taking me two-and-a-half years to complete. I read many books, articles, and websites about the Secret Service. There are also some good documentaries out there. But the most valuable information was from memoirs written by former agents, which really helped me understand their lives in the USSS. The best books were Joseph Petro’s Standing Next To History, Dan Emmett’s Within Arm’s Length, Jerry Parr’s In The Secret Service, and Colonel Ray L’Heureux’s Inside Marine One.

In addition to understanding the Secret Service, I needed to understand the antagonist. My first thought was to incorporate history about the fall of the Roman Empire. I began by reading Livy and Gibbon. For anyone who studies Roman history, it doesn’t take too long before you come across Rome’s greatest adversary: Hannibal Barca. The moment I started reading about this Carthaginian General, I lost interest in Rome and instead focused on his incredible life. I had heard of him in a broad historical sense, but I soon began to realize that this man was really something special in world history. The more specifics I learned about him, the more I was captivated. In particular, the two books most valuable to my research were Theodore Ayrault Dodge’s Hannibal (1889) and Richard Gabriel’s Hannibal (2011). I decided that Hannibal’s tactics were so ingenious that if I created a villain that knew every recorded detail about Hannibal’s military campaigns against Rome, then I would have a good background for a villain who would take on America the way Hannibal took on the Romans.

Finally, I focused on the setting. I knew from my research that it’s much more difficult to coordinate a president’s protection when on foreign soil. I liked that idea. I’ve always been in love with Europe (especially London, Paris, Berlin, and Prague). One day I read an article in the February 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine titled Under Paris by Neil Shea, about the old Roman limestone quarries and the 180-mile tunnel system (including the catacombs) beneath Paris. I had no idea there was a massive tunnel system under Paris, and I was just as intrigued by this discovery as I was with the discovery of Hannibal Barca’s actions in history. As I researched more about these massive, cryptic tunnels filled with the bones of forgotten souls, all beneath one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world, I knew I had the final component for my thriller. Researching the Paris underground was tricky. I read everything about it that I could get my hands on, including specialized books I ordered from the gift shop at the Paris catacombs tour office, which I had shipped from Paris to my home in Denver. I also found a cool video on YouTube of someone who videotaped his self-guided tunnel tour with a helmet camera. This is what convinced me that I must see these tunnels for myself in order to write the book (I had previously been to Paris, but never into the tunnels). So I planned a research trip to Paris.

I was lucky to have two great travel companions for Paris: my sister, Casey, who was just finishing a dental residency at a hospital, and my old childhood friend, Paul Boyer, who was traveling the world and was at a surfing school in Portugal. The three of us met in Paris and spent a week soaking up the sights and enjoying the city, and we spent plenty of time exploring the public tour path of the Paris catacombs. The underground tunnel system is 180 plus miles with the remains of 6 million Parisian souls. Impressive numbers. The tour is 1.5 miles and passes the main catacomb section, known as The Empire of the Dead. We went early one morning and were first in line (which eventually wrapped around the city block), so that when the tour office opened we were the first into the catacombs. We raced through them as if we were characters in my book, with no one in front of us, and before long no one in sight behind us. It was an incredible experience, and invaluable for researching my story. I felt the temperature of the tunnels, the smell of the air, heard how sound echoed off the limestone (and didn’t echo off the walls of bones), and saw how the shadows moved and receded into the tunnel cavities. Filming is not allowed, but no one was around and I didn’t think the dead would mind if I broke a few rules in the spirit of living, so I captured a few moments of our adventure on video.

In the end, The Paris Protection ended up having more research go into its creation than any of my previous thrillers. This is partly because of how little I knew about its topics at inception, and partly because of how fascinated I became with Hannibal, the Paris catacombs, and the U.S. Secret Service—and how I could weave these elements into a thriller that captured the themes of patriotism and sacrifice for one’s country. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “I do the very best I know how—the very best I can…” And I can only hope that my best is enough—enough to be worthy of these themes—and enough to thrill readers.

-Bryan Devore

P.S. Click here to watch one of the short videos I took when inside the Paris catacombs.

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