I’m thrilled to share that my next book, The Favor, is the first novel in the new Detective Adamik series. Many of you met Juraj Adamik in The Archangel (the Matt Moretti–Han Li thriller), where he stole just about every scene he was in. Now he finally gets the spotlight to himself.

Juraj Adamik is a Prague homicide detective with a perfect clearance rate—an achievement made all the more remarkable because his boss routinely hands him the coldest, most tangled, “unsolvable” cases in the city. He is unlike any detective you’ve met before, and I can’t wait for you to watch him work. He doesn’t just march to the beat of a different drummer; he brought his own orchestra.

The final manuscript is (at long last) almost ready to go to my editor for final review and evisceration before publication. It’s taken far longer than I anticipated, largely because the book ended up at roughly 140,000 words. For context: The Forgotten clocked in at about 45,000 words, The Puppeteer at 132,000, with the other novels falling somewhere in between. This one demanded an extra five months of writing because the story simply refused to stay inside the lines I originally drew for it. And honestly, that’s my favorite part of writing. You sit down with an outline in hand, thinking you’re in charge, and then the characters grab the wheel and drive you somewhere entirely different.

The sheer scale of The Favor is part of what made it grow. The opposing forces colliding in this book include the Iranian army and navy (and their leadership back in Tehran), the Prague police, the U.S. and Iranian embassies in Prague, the NSA, the Department of War, the White House, Mossad, various scientists, and multiple dissident factions. Every group has skin in the game, and every group pushes the plot forward. Keeping all those plates spinning required more pages than I expected—but it also made for a richer, more explosive story.

As I’ve said in earlier blogs, I’m really just the stenographer. I start with a loose outline, but I’ve never once managed to follow it precisely. The characters decide where they’re going, and my job is to run behind them taking notes. In my defense, I do know how every book begins and how it ends. The road between those two points, much like the Road to Hana in Maui, is anything but straight—full of blind curves, breathtaking views, and the occasional bout of carsickness—but it’s always worth the trip.

So that’s where things stand. The Favor is almost ready to leave the nest. I’ll keep you posted on the exact release date once my editor finishes sharpening her red pen.

Thank you, as always, for coming along on these winding roads with me. I think you’re going to love Juraj Adamik as much as I do.