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Author Brad Thor Remembers Fallen GI
Bestselling author Brad Thor named a heroic character in his latest novel Brad – not in a display of ego, but in honor of a police officer who was killed last year while fighting in Iraq.
Thor wanted to assure readers that he didn’t cast himself in his novel "Takedown,” so he added a note at the end: "While I did not have the pleasure of knowing Marine Sergeant Bradley J. Harper, I hope in some small part the character I have created in his name lives up to the high standards I know he set for himself." The story began with a fundraiser last summer at a meeting of the Naval Special Warfare Foundation - a counter-terrorism conference in Virginia Beach, Va.
At the event, Thor said he would sell the naming rights to a character in his new novel to the largest contributor, the Virginian-Pilot reports.
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Virginia Beach Police Chief Jake Jacocks Jr. and other officers pooled $500 to make a bid on behalf of Bradley Harper, who worked for the Virginia Beach Police. But J.J. Marie, president of a Maryland boat maker, made a bid of $5,000. Then Marie met Jacocks, and the chief told Marie how he wanted to honor Brad Harper. "When I heard about it, I wanted it to be Brad Harper," Marie said. "I did not want someone to get it and name it after their brother or son-in-law." So Marie relinquished the naming rights to Jacocks.
Thor based his Harper character on what the real Bradley Harper stood for. "There is no doubt that he is one of the good guys in my book," said Thor, author of "The Lions of Lucerne,” "Blowback” and other thrillers. Harper's widow Kendra hasn’t yet read the novel and said it is still hard to talk about her husband. "It is wonderful that they thought about Brad," she told the Virginian-Pilot. "He was just a great, honest, hardworking and very patriotic man. He did everything the right way." In the final sequences of the novel, Brad Harper is the last of his team to survive. "For me as the author," Thor said, "the survival of the Brad Harper character represents the triumph and survival of the ideals he represented."
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories |
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