In Honduras, in particular, Hillary Clinton as Obama's secretary of state was instrumental in legitimizing the coup's subsequent death-squad regime.
I figured if I write a modern thriller but spliced in the DNA of a classic western - the drifter who comes into town with secrets - I could do something interesting with both genres. Westerns are also an incarnation of the classic knight errant tale, the lone warrior with a moral code, and I love those types of stories.
Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
You can tune your guitar funky, and something's gonna come out. There's no secret to it - either you got it, or you don't.