(gently ominous music) (typewriter dings) (typewriter clatters) - I am Brad Thor, and my book is, "Dead Fall."

(gently ominous music) There is a rogue Russian military unit.

They've gone AWOL and they're committing horrific war crimes in the interior of Ukraine, because all the able-bodied men are off fighting the war.

While these guys are rampaging through the countryside of Ukraine, committing horrific war crimes, an American aid worker goes missing.

Now, America can't send in troops, because then Russia will say, "You've committed to the war.

We're now at war with the United States."

So the US says, "We've got one guy, we'll send our top spy into Ukraine."

And they give them one assignment, "Find her, if she's dead or alive, we want her back.

And then we want everyone responsible for taking her to pay."

And so that's what happens.

My main character, Scot Harvath, gets sent over, America's number one spy, to find her, bring her back and make the bad guys pay.

(gently ominous music) - I gotta ask about bad guys.

You've got some really, really bad guys in this.

What makes a believable bad guy?

- In really well-developed bad guys, you can actually relate to them a little bit.

They make sense.

What they're doing makes sense.

And they're a product of their environment, right?

So particularly with "Dead Fall," it was important to me to do the backstory of the guy who takes this mercenary unit and kind of peels off from the Russians, and says, "We're not gonna listen to Moscow anymore.

We, this is, it's a candy store in Ukraine."

- [Jeremy] Sure, sure.

- "There's no law and order.

We can go take whatever and whomever we want, so we're gonna go do that."

But to explain why that would appeal to this guy and the people working for him, you had to do his backstory.

And so that's why I wanted that.

And I call him the colonel in this because I'm a big fan of "Apocalypse Now."

And so there was Colonel Kurtz in that movie.

So there is a little bit of that Marlon Brando character in the bad guy in "Dead Fall."

- I think so many times in these books, if you don't have that believable bad guy, they just don't sing as well.

- Yeah.

- Brad, thank you.

- You're welcome.

- This is really enjoyable.

- My pleasure, thank you for having me, Jeremy, - And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."

I'm Jeremy Finley.

Remember, keep reading.

(typewriter dings) - [Brad] I signed for an ex-special operations person and I said, "What do you want me to sign?"

And he said, "Stay in the fight."

So there is this mentality of you're never out of the fight.

I really like that.

And when this gentleman said, "Sign it, "Stay in the fight" and think about- you really should do that in all your books."

That's where "Stay in the fight" came from.

(gently ominous music)