Today I have the pleasure of joining in with Mick Bose’s Shanghai Teng blog tour!

Many thanks to Emma Mitchell for the opportunity to take part.

Character Spotlight…..

Dan Roy

I originally intended Dan to be an English soldier. Specifically, an SAS man, who was trying to find his way out of trouble when a mission goes wrong. But I wanted him to tie in with an American corruption scandal, and a terrorist plot that originated there. It took time and some deliberation, but in the end, I envisaged Dan as the type of person who has spent most of his battling inner demons, like many soldiers do.
He was always going to have an American mother and an English father, but finally he became a fully American one. I saw his lonesome, brooding character as someone similar to an old western hero. The type who is disillusioned with the world, and wants to escape. I had a vision of a man on horseback, going through the deserts of western plains, with only the creaking of his saddle, and his ride, for company. Then I imagined him as a special forces soldier in the same situation. Left to die, and fighting back to clear his name.
Parts of Dan’s character was forged from my conversation with a soldier I met while waiting for the doctor. He was a Gurkha, in fact, and listening to his stories of training in the highest regions of the world – in Nepal, gave me an idea to base part of Dan’s childhood there. Gurkha’s have extraordinary fitness as they run up and down mountain slopes of the Himalayas. Dan did the same with his parents, who worked for United Nations, and were based at a Nepalese village while he was a teenager. Carrying a doko bag on his head, and scrambling up the hills in low oxygen environments was to give Dan a level of physical fitness far superior to his army contemporaries.
The training continued when he was chosen to join Delta Forces, similar to the SAS in England. Special Forces soldiers train very hard, and have fitness levels similar to professional athletes. They often speak foreign languages, and are skilled at surviving in extreme environments. Dan is fluent in Russian, and in his very first novella, he is based in a remote district of Afghanistan, where a Russian plot is discovered.
In the next novel, Hidden Agenda, Dan is in London, and he is betrayed.
He doesn’t spend too much time wallowing in the past however. Doing that would be counterproductive. He is a man of action after all, and as he falls into trouble, his natural instinct is to get out of it.
By the time “Shanghai Tang” comes around, Dan has faded to the far East. It is something he has always wanted to do. Personally, I have some experience of living in Asia, and that comes out strongly in the novel.
Dan is a physical man, and staying in shape came with his army training, the only training he’s ever had. In Hong Kong, it becomes natural for him to take up Muay Thai, or Thai Style Kick Boxing, similar to Tae Kwon Do. He enjoys the hard work, and slowly gravitates towards the underground blood sport tournament called the Kumite. It’s illegal, and the Triads are involved
in betting and collecting money. At first, Dan is treated with wariness, as there is no dearth of occidentals who join the Kumite, only to fail miserably. But Dan succeeds, and even gains himself a nick name – Ju Long, the Dragon Slayer.
To be honest, Dan finds peace in the far East. He is anonymous, a stranger in a sea of humanity. The open markets, the crowds, the culture, everything is easy to adapt to. People don’t judge him. Yes, he does fall into trouble, but he doesn’t go looking for it, it happens. He makes plenty of friends as well. There is a protective streak in his personality, and in the previous novel, The Tonkin Protocol, he helps a little girl called Maya.
In this book, his comes across a Chinese woman called Xei Wai-Ling. As he gets to know her, he finds out more about the Chinese way of life. He gets deeper into Chinese customs, how they think, in fact, how they run their country. Chinese have a very communal way of thinking. Individuals don’t really consider themselves separate from the rest of society. Privacy has a very different meaning in China.
As Dan discovers, there is a saying – An upright nail gets hammered down.
A lot of Shanghai Tang is about Dan getting to know the Chinese culture, and how he changes as a result of that experience.

Blurb:

Shanghai Tang – a fast paced and heart pounding action thriller from the wildly popular Dan Roy Series. A betrayed assassin is thrust into the secret life of Shanghai’s underworld. Dan Roy, ex Black Ops legend, is becoming a new legend in the infamous blood fight tournament called Kumite, in Hong Kong. He is carving himself a new life, when disaster strikes his loved ones back home. He gets a phone call, and he cannot deny Kimberly Smith’s plea for help. Not only is Kim’s life endangered, the rumbles of discontent have reached the White House… A devastating secret lurks inside the glamorous night life of Shanghai. Political interests are involved, and soon Dan finds himself in a ruthless and twisted struggle for survival. He gets help from Xiao WeiLing, A Chinese woman who is on the run herself. An ambitious Triad boss is making a bid to overrule the whole of Shanghai, and Dan Roy has become a thorn in his side. The Triads have help from the police, and all eyes are on Dan – alone in a foreign land. Get prepared for a white-knuckle ride from Hong Kong and Shanghai to the corridors of power in Washington, as we follow Dan on a terrifying adventure that could be his last. Will Dan meet his nemesis in the murky underworld of Shanghai? Or will he fight to live another day?

Buy your copy…..

About the author:

If you are enthralled by Lee Child, David Baldacci and mesmerised by Vince Flynn, then you will like Mick Bose. Mick Bose is a writer in London who can often be found jogging around the parks of Wimbledon, when he is not writing.

The popular and well received series about Dan Roy is a tornado of hard action and military secrets. A novella introducing Dan is now out, which is available to subscribers free at http://www.mickbose.com.

He also has a standalone thriller, Enemy Within, which is a nail biting, fast paced manhunt about a secret weapon that can change World War 1. It is also a gesture of respect to the 100-year anniversary of the Great War.