In his retirement years, Duffy Dyer has written three spy novels following a character named Conor Thorn, who embarks on solving mysteries set in the World War II era.
The Torch Betrayal was his first novel. Next, he wrote the Ultra Betrayal, with his third in the series, The Unquiet Genius, now available for readers. Dyer said he researches unsolved historical events and uses them to inspire his storylines.
"Yeah, you know for all three books, I look back in history I look for inspiration for story ideas, so I buy a lot of memoirs and history books.”
An Italian Physicist went missing in 1938, and Dyer used this as the premise for The Unquiet Genius.
"He left suicide notes. But no body was recovered. There were a lot of rumors that he retreated to a monastery in Italy. He was also seen having popped up in Central and South America. So, I built a story about what happened to that particular scientist."
The story centers on this scientist's knowledge of nuclear physics and the chase by the Allied Forces and the Nazis to find him and elicit his skills to build a nuclear bomb.
Dyer said the spy Conor Thorn has a few more adventures he will add to the book series, but he's also got other ideas he’s working on.
"I think that there's a few other stories in Connor Thorns' back pocket that could come to light, so maybe another three or four. I have another idea for a series that I'd like to start working on that involves an uncle of Conor Thorn, who's a New York City detective and so I have that on the drawing board so to speak.”
You can meet Dyer at Dolly's Book Store on Main Street in Park City at 3 pm on Saturday, March 19. He'll be there to sign copies of The Unquiet Genius.
