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Desert Heist: A Thriller by Alex Dekker
The obvious movie comp for this book and its main character, Nate Wilde, a former Green Beret who becomes an archeologist, is Indiana Jones. I’ve seen a lot of readers reference that and it’s not wrong. It’s a good fit in terms of thrills and history and adventure. It’s also a huge compliment and it’s well-deserved. But while Indy has a rotating cast of friends who help him out at various times in his quests, the one thing that I think separates Desert Heist from that (and takes it up a notch in terms of being a fun book) is that this story is really about a group of guys, ex-military brothers and best buds, who back Wilde all the way on his personal mission.
Their friendship and loyalty to each other is my favorite dynamic of the book and it’s why the Indy comp isn’t entirely a perfect one. For me, if we’re going outside of the literary world, Desert Heist is Indy mixed with the A-Team and a dash of The Expendables.
You’ve got intense research, a real historical mystery and enough fact/fiction to keep you invested in the treasure hunt, while there’s also great characters, one-liners, relationships cracking and mending and, of course, the search for the lost city of Ubar in Saudi Arabia with all of our characters’s lives on the line.
I had a blast reading this book, and through our good buddy David Brown, I got the opportunity to do a behind-the-book Q&A with the author, Alex Dekker. This is a cool interview (no spoilers). Check it out and then buy the book below!
ONE
FINKEL: In one of the early scenes of the book, you have Nate taking a jog through Boston from his apartment near Boston University south of the Back Bay. I grew up in Boston and my favorite literary character ever, Spenser, from the Robert B. Parker series, jogged/ran through that area so many times in books. Was that a run you’ve made personally? An homage to Spenser (if you read those books)? Love the scene. How did you map it out?
DEKKER: I love Boston. It’s such a unique city with so much history. One of my favorite ways to explore when I get to a new place is to go on a morning run, and that’s where this scene in the book comes from. I have run all around the areas described but the specific route in the book is tailored for where Nate Wilde lives, where he went to college, etc.
TWO
Wally and Nate’s bar fight scene is one of my favorite “guys being dudes” moments in the book. We know the men are friends and were in battle together and we see them catching up in earlier scenes, but watching them get in a bar fight and have each other’s backs with no hesitation grounded them in civilian life. Felt real. Was this based on any scraps you got into back in the day haha? Did you know you needed a bar fight scene somewhere in the book?
Haha, no comment. Seriously though, being part of an elite team, whether it’s a Special Forces ODA, SEAL platoon, or anything else, you become very close with your teammates. The team sort of develops its own personality, and there is no difference between having each other’s backs in a firefight or a bar fight. Nate rushing in to help his buddy is instinctual and reflective of real life. Also, part of the culture is fighting hard and partying hard, and there are plenty of times that the partying gets a bit more kinetic than anticipated.
THREE
I had not personally heard of Ubar or the “Atlantis of the Sands” lost city. Obviously most people have heard of Atlantis and Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt, but part of your job in this book was to both introduce Ubar and its potential importance then have Nate “discover” it. I thought you did a great job using the other characters like Wally, Tim and Shane as proxies for what readers might be asking as they learn about it. Was that your plan from the start so it wouldn’t feel like one long exposition for the reader? When did you first hear about it?
Absolutely. While I wanted the action in Desert Heist to be authentic, I also wanted the history to be grounded in reality as well. That means introducing historical facts and reinforcing them along the way so that the reader can put the pieces of the puzzle together along with the characters. While I find history fascinating, it doesn’t necessarily hold everyone’s attention in the same way, and so I needed to find interesting ways to do that. Involving other characters who don’t have an academic background as a stand-in for the reader helps spread that cognitive load and make it more relatable.
FOUR
I’m a big fan of foreshadowing things in books and delivering on them later. Without giving anything away, one of your characters is an MMA fighter and he taught the main female character, Ana, a few things that came in handy later at a pivotal moment in the book. Was that planned? Or did you write your way into it while you were putting the book together? Like you realized, “you know what would be cool here?”
That was planned. It’s great to have a moment where a character rises to the occasion, but it’s even better if you can trace that moment back to a moment in their character development that you had the opportunity to be a part of and to witness. There are a few other instances like that in Desert Heist. And because I am also such a big fan of foreshadowing, there are other things within the book that hint towards what is to come later in the series.
FIVE
Towards the climax of the book we get a classic hero vs. villain knife fight. Were there any fights in movies or other books you drew from for inspiration for that? It’s a real test of strategy and skill for Nate and it moves quickly. I love the internal monologue of what Nate’s thinking and going through. What was your biggest challenge writing it?
The challenge in writing a scene like this is that it’s on the page, not on the screen, and so you need to have enough detail to let the reader envision the fight in their own mind, but not so much that you lose their attention. That fight in particular drew from many places, including much of my own training. Nate is a thinker and he analyzes things at a remarkable pace. We see him do this throughout the book while solving the various elements of the historical mystery entangled with the modern dilemmas, but in this fight his ability to combine his analytical mind with his warrior instincts is the focus.
SIX
Last question: I’ve seen this book compared to Indiana Jones and a few other adventure movies and we’re clearly set up for a series, which is great. Did you have the title Desert Heist from Day 1 or did you toy with anything else before you settled on it? I’d imagine you could have gone a few directions given the history and the topic and the region.
I love writing these books. It truly feels less like work and more like a hobby that I’m fortunate enough to do, and when I sit down to write, the story just flows out. The same is not true of the title. Desert Heist was not the working title, but one that I eventually arrived at. You are absolutely right that it could have gone many different directions, but in the end Desert Heist was the one that I felt fit best for the subject and tone of the book.
I know a lot of you play fantasy football and you have your own traditions about selecting your draft order, but I think this one is my favorite so far. It combines three things I love: benching and competing and ripping on your friends for being soft haha.
And I gotta say, for a group of old school friends playing fantasy, the number of guys putting up a respectable number of reps of 225 is very impressive. I’ve been in the same fantasy league with my good friends for almost 25-years now, and outside of me and my buddy Seth, I don’t know if we have two other guys in our 12-team league who could do 225 even once at this point (besides Jess who can crank 305 easy). But this fantasy league below has a bunch of true meatheads in it. In my league we’re all near 50 and these guys are in their mid-30s, but still, well done:
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Thanks for reading - Jon
Jon Finkel is the award-winning author of Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage, 1996: A Biography, Hoops Heist, The Life of Dad, Jocks In Chief, The Athlete, Heart Over Height, “Mean” Joe Greene and more. His books have been endorsed by everyone from Mark Cuban, John Cena and Tony Dungy to Spike Lee, Kevin Durant and Chef Robert Irvine. He has written for GQ, Men’s Health, Yahoo! Sports, The New York Times and has appeared on CBS: This Morning, Good Morning Texas, Good Morning Chicago, and hundreds of radio shows, podcasts and streams. Jon was recently profiled in The New Yorker about the awesome community he’s built around his Books & Biceps newsletter. They describe him as “a gym rat’s Reese Witherspoon”. Reply to this email for any media requests. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Midlife Male and a Top 10 US Masters Swimmer in the 50 and 100 butterfly.
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