Dear Reader,

Thank you for staying with the story, and I hope it interested you enough to continue with Harry and Lilah as they stumble through the dark secrets in their families. There are many, many secrets… tales of illicit romances, of vicious enmities, of brutal revenge. Political conspiracies extend across the planet… from the Americas and Europe to the Middle East, to India and China.

I’d like to take credit for the complicated plot which will follow, but it’s not entirely my doing. The world of our ancestors is rich with tales of such heroism that the men and women in the stories came to be called gods. You’ll be familiar with Iliad, Odyssey, and the Arthurian legends. There are stories from Asia… the Indian epic poem called the Mahabharata being one. The Monkey King from China captivates readers even today. Central and South American mythologies rival Greek counterparts in dizzying the reader with complicated love affairs, crossbred monsters, and supernatural beings.

I believe most of these stories have a kernel of truth to them. Perhaps there was a shepherd-prince who rescued a woman from a marriage she didn’t want, and their romance needed to be explained away as the work of an insulted goddess. Perhaps the outraged husband was merely an excuse for rivaling clans to go to war. Perhaps there were gods/mightier kings who kept the lesser mortals fighting and thus too busy to challenge them. Perhaps the common people who were losing life and limb in the war needed to be given a noble reason so they’d continue to fight. Perhaps plagues were explained away as a curse brought on them by the hated enemy. Or perhaps the poet simply wanted to add color to his creation, mistakenly believing his audience would understand literary devices.

These tales were taken to distant lands in oral form. Bards sang of wondrous deeds, of beautiful enchantresses, of magic. Battle scenes were described with great relish. Listeners wept over tragic heroes, applauded the downfall of adulterous wives.

Over centuries, metaphors and similes came to be thought of as literal facts. Ancient man’s attempt to understand evolution was interpreted as creation in a seven-day period. Tribes which lived off trees—perhaps built houses in them—were reimagined as actual monkeys. Also, when culture changed, the myths transformed to fit the norms of the society. The status of women in ancient India went from having an empress who ruled over the subcontinent to being told they were always to be under the command of a male relative. The heroines of the stories morphed into meek and devoted wives, illicit liaisons explained away as demons taking forms of legal husbands and tricking the ladies. Even the food habits weren’t spared. Perhaps some ancient physician’s worry about unsanitary meat led to the idea that pork was forbidden by God.

I would love to know exactly what happened in the stories which fascinate me. This cannot mean the layers which formed around the core aren’t important. Like tree rings, each of these layers represents the changes undergone by society. These are records of humanity’s evolution into its current form. Plus, there is literary value in the versions thus created.

Unfortunately, without knowing the central story, it is difficult to understand the changes wrought by time.

This brings me to what I was trying to say in this afterword: wading through one such tale with many versions, I realized I would never be able to get even a vague idea of what might have happened unless I knew something of the political and emotional landscape in which the characters lived. Obsessive research followed. It took me six years or so to gather enough information to reconstruct the plot, and I knew by then I wanted to put it in book form. Unfortunately, my findings weren’t sufficient to write a decent story. I didn’t—and still don’t—know what the world was really like. If I time-traveled to the Iron Age and took in a deep breath, how would it smell? I’m aware hunting for game was a common sport, but what did old deer meat taste like? You get the gist.

Yet something inside compelled me to share with the universe what I found. Shorn of the fantasy element, some of these characters are astounding examples of what mankind could be if it so chose, and I wanted to tell their stories. Well… I had the plot, and human emotions haven’t changed at all since the myths were created. Love, hate, envy, greed, grief… these things inform our actions. What I could do was translocate the saga I was working on to a world I did know. From this compulsion was born One Hundred Years of War.

So that’s it. I hope I managed to tell an entertaining tale with The Maltese Attack. You’ve already met Harry, the boy who would become God, and Lilah, the embodiment of knowledge. Temple is the chronicler of their story. I’m excited to introduce you to the Kingsley grandsons in The Manhattan Swindle, especially Alex… soldier, prince, the best of men.

Some points with reference to The Maltese Attack:

Desflurane is an inhaled anesthetic which acts fast. This is what the kidnappers used on Harry.

Mandrake berries smell like fresh tobacco. Its root can act both as narcotic and as hallucinogen. This is what was mixed in the milk offered to Harry and Lilah.

I’ve used the names of real Bedouin tribes, but the characters/tribe in this story have nothing to do with the actual tribe or its members.

If I may throw a challenge to the reader… let me know if you can tell which mythology this series is based on.

Sincerely,

Jay Perin

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