My next read --and the novel the media-military complex don't want you to hear about, much less read:
Story last updated at 12:49 a.m. Saturday, February 5, 2005
McCoy pens 'politically incorrect' book about enemies in our backyard
By NIKKI PATRICK
Max McCoy has found the enemy, and he's right in our backyard.
At least, that's the premise of the Pittsburg author's latest thriller, "Hinterland," published by Leisure Books.[*]
In the book, a white separatist group, headquartered in the Ozarks, plans a spectacular cataclysm that they hope will bring about Armageddon. And they just might be able to accomplish at least part of their plot, because they have a stolen nuclear weapon.
"This is a politically incorrect book," McCoy said. "The bad guys are among us, instead of from a different culture."
McCoy will discuss the real conspiracies that served as the background for the book at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Pittsburg Public Library.
The main character of "Hinterland" is Andy Kelsey, an investigative reporter who has been trying to do a story on the group but has been unable to even get an interview with Abraham Smith, patriarch of the group.
That all changes when Kelsey is robbed, beaten unconscious and left on an Arkansas backroad, and awakens to find himself inside Camp Covenant, the group's stronghold. From that point, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the group's plans, and knows he has the story of a lifetime - providing he can live long enough to write it.
McCoy admitted that Andy Kelsey "is pretty much me, but not really me."
Like Kelsey, he grew up in Baxter Springs, and became fascinated with the town's history as the former world headquarters of the Apostolic Faith Movement.
Like Kelsey, McCoy is an award-winning reporter. Working at The Morning Sun and later at The Joplin Globe, he won first place investigative reporting awards from the Associated Press for "The Killing Season," as story about a pair of missing teen girls from rural Oklahoma, a double murder and a serial killer on Texas' death row.
He also won first place awards in investigative reporting from the Missouri Press Association for "Ordained by Hate," an investigation into white supremacists in the Ozarks and the Christian Identity Movement, which holds that Anglo-Saxons are the true chosen people of the Bible, that modern Jews are the biological children of Satan and that a cataclysmic war between good and evil will break out in the near future.
McCoy was also one of the first journalists to link the Aryan Republican Army, bandits who robbed more than two dozen banks in the mid-1990s to finance a race war, with the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, Okla.
For a time, the robbers had a "safehouse" in Pittsburg. The leader was Richard Guthrie, assisted by his childhood friend Pete Langan.
"They were big fans of Jesse James, so they wanted to establish a hideout on the Missouri-Kansas border," McCoy said. "Jesse was never in Pittsburg, but they thought it would be close enough anyway."
The gang got very good at what they did. "They were one of the most successful bank robbing gangs in history," McCoy said. "They hoped to finance a race war in the United States.
He can't prove, but believes, that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, had connections with the gang and may have driven the getaway car for some robberies. "McVeigh told his sister, Jennifer, that he had helped rob some banks," McCoy said.
He wrote a detailed account of the Aryan Republican Army and its actions for the December 2004 issue of Fortean Times, an internationally distributed magazine published in England.
He has done extensive research on these groups and traveled gun show circuits. He owns firearms himself, but said he has heard some disturbing things.
"I've heard that every family should own a 50-caliber rifle of a particular type, because the rounds they fire are the only ones that will penetrate the body armor used by federal agents," McCoy said. "That bothers me."
He noted that many of the extremist groups have kept quiet since 9/11 "but they're still out there."
The author is now thinking up further adventures for Andy Kelsey, and for Richard Dahlgren, Pittsburg-based underwater investigator who is the main character of "The Moon Pool."
He's also researching an article on Wichita's BTK killer for Fortean Times.
McCoy's talk Monday will be open free to the public, and he will have copies of "Hinterland" and his last thriller, "The Mool Pool," available for purchase. Anyone wishing additional information may call the Pittsburg Public Library at 231-8110.
[*] amazon.com |
