'60 Minutes' segment the spark for thriller

The seed of a novel can be planted in manifest ways: a casual remark, a small piece in a daily newspaper, a magazine article, a striking experience — each germinating in the imagination.

For debut novelist John Thompson, whose "Armageddon Conspiracy" recently was released by Harbor House, it was an installment of TV's "60 Minutes."

"I was watching an episode one night about a kindly looking grandfather type who had retired as president of an insurance company, in Nebraska I believe," says the part-time Charleston resident. "Then he had taken over a group who collected money to send to Israel. But only to those Israelis who would never, under any circumstances, brook peace with the Arab world. He was asked if, basically, he was trying to perpetuate war, and replied, 'Yes, I guess so.' "

"The reason? Because if we have peace in the Middle East, then Armageddon will never come. He said it without any guilt or conflict, and it was just unbelievable. I thought 'There's a story there.' I'm very disturbed by Muslims and Christians who are so tribalistic that they use religion to create barriers between people; this notion that they're God's chosen and everybody else can go to blazes."

In the thriller "Armageddon Conspiracy," ultrafundamentalist Christians plot to frame an innocent man in the process of pilfering a billion dollars and attempting to kill the president of the United States. Framed for murders he didn't commit and falsely accused of a massive theft, one-time Wall Street golden boy Brent Lucas is on the run.

He has little choice but to turn to his former fiancee, Maggie DeVito, a cop assigned to a federal anti-terrorism task force. She agrees to help, but Lucas still must survive long enough to thwart a bizarre alliance of Christian and Muslim terrorists who dream of igniting the fires of Armageddon.

If Thompson's observations seem well-detailed, his narrative fluid for a first-time novelist, it's because it's not really his fist time.

"I wrote three much more literary novels," says the author, who spent 25 years as an investment banker in New York before retiring to write full time. "Finally, two different agents convinced me that while publishers responded well to my writing, an unpublished writer could not sell the kind of book I was trying to write. Not in today's market."

They urged him to write thrillers. Thompson started with the characters, two of whom would be in deadly conflict, then injected his story with a markedly visual style. But the book required more than background and inspiration; it was the product of considerable revision, with a concern for what his characters are actually doing and saying.

"One thing I find when I edit is that I go back and try to read the manuscript very fast. When you have characters saying things that sound like you're putting words in their mouths that are not consistent with the person you've created, you have to go back and make the words organic for that character. In the course of seven or eight drafts, you pick out the bad language and unconvincing dialogue."

Thompson, who divides his time between Charleston and a mountain home in Hawley, Pa., is married to Julia Forster, director of development for Spoleto Festival USA, and is actively involved in his local community. Thompson has chaired the board of one of the nation's leading children's hospitals and served as interim headmaster of a private school.

He serves on the boards of a local private school as well as the Lowcountry Initiative for Literary Arts and the executive committee for the Medical University of South Carolina Foundation. He is also a founding trustee of the South Carolina division of the charity Donors Choose.

But it is that quarter-century as an investment banker that most informs his novel, setting the table for many of the book's machinations.

"When you work on a trading desk for 25 years, you definitely meet some pretty individualized characters who become great fodder for writing. The environment is one of a lot of cynicism from very smart people who tend to be self-absorbed. It's a great tool box for a novelist."

At the moment, he has a second thriller, "The Hong Kong Deception," nearing completion, and a third, "The Baghdad Vendetta," in the planning stage. Not that he has relinquished his dream of resuscitating those earlier literary efforts.

"There's a possibility that at least one of them might come back," he says, wistfully. "If I become a successful enough writer, I might try. It's my dream, but I'm not holding my breath."

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.