Colorado-based thriller author Terry R Bacon has been many things. A soldier. An intelligence agent. A teacher. A business founder. But crime fiction has always been a part of his life and now he’s devoted to writing stories that not only bring intrigue and excitement into our lives, but that get us to think a little about the world around us and what it is to be human.

In 2024, he introduced us to blues musician Sonny Marshall and Detective Kat Hastings in Storm Warning, a thriller that brought the pair together, so to speak. Now, Terry has returned with his sophomore novel, Storm Damage, a book that’s full of action but that also has a whole range of interesting strings to it, that the music-loving author plucks along the way. It begins with some violent incidents where apparently normal, peaceful people go berserk and commit mass murders. During one of these episodes Kat is injured, and it spurs Sonny try and find out why these killings are happening, and stop them if he can.

All sorts of issues are raised in the book, and there’s plenty of action alongside Sonny’s not-so-legal investigation, but most of all Terry’s an author who wants us to relate to and connect with his characters. We invited him to join us here on Crime Fiction Lover to tell us more about the thinking and inspiration behind Storm Damage, which is available now digitally and in print.

What are crime fiction lovers going to lover about Storm Damage?

What makes an ordinary, decent person suddenly turn into a mass murderer? That’s the mystery at the heart of Storm Damage. When a series of inexplicable killings rocks Northern California, Sonny Marshall, a blues musician with a knack for finding trouble, sets out to discover who’s behind them. With his lover, detective Katrina Hastings, he follows a trail that leads through the criminal underworld, technology that enables horrifying possibilities, and a killer with plan even greater than mass murder. There’s plenty of action, a few surprises, some dark humour, and characters worth caring about. And Sonny has some demons of his own to fight.

Who is your protagonist, Sonny Marshall? What inspired him and how have you developed the character?

Sonny Marshall is a blues musician, a skilled martial artist, and a guy who can’t walk away when someone needs help. He’s smart, resourceful, funny, sometimes reckless, and has a habit of getting himself into situations most sensible people would avoid.

I wanted to create a protagonist who wasn’t a cop, a private detective, or an ex-CIA operative. Sonny makes his living playing the saxophone, but his experiences growing up gave him a powerful sense of justice. He studied martial arts and became determined never again to stand helplessly by while someone was being hurt.

What is he up against in Storm Damage?

Sonny is fighting several battles in Storm Damage. The main one begins when seemingly ordinary people suddenly become mass murderers. A banker shoots up a flea market, a woman drives her car into pedestrians, and a man attacks diners in a restaurant. Sonny and his girlfriend, detective Katrina Hastings, discover that someone is experimenting with a designer drug that turns people into homicidal maniacs. The killer is intelligent, methodical, and nearly impossible to identify. Worse, the murders may be rehearsals for something much bigger.

At the same time, Sonny’s close friend Ari Kirakosian becomes the target of professional assassins with international connections. Sonny gets drawn into that conflict, too, putting him at odds with Kat, who believes justice must operate within the law.

And there’s a third battle, a very personal one. Sonny is addicted to painkillers, and Kat forces him to confront an addiction he’s been unwilling to acknowledge. So he’s fighting some dangerous people, but he’s also fighting himself.

Tell us about his connection with Detective Kat Hastings and why he’s driven to avenge her shooting?

Sonny and Kat met in Storm Warning, when they worked together to find a young girl who’d been kidnapped years earlier. They went through hell together, nearly losing their lives, and somewhere along the way, they fell in love. Kat is a tough, dedicated detective with a fierce sense of justice. She understands Sonny’s compulsion to help people in trouble because she shares it.

When Kat is shot trying to stop a mass murderer, Sonny is devastated. He’s accustomed to being the one who protects other people, and this time he wasn’t there. He can’t undo what happened, and the man who shot her is already dead. But Sonny needs to know why an ordinary banker suddenly went berserk and started killing strangers, and make sure no one else suffers what Kat and the other victims suffered. For Sonny, that’s what justice is about.

How have you handled the action and violent scenes, and what will the experience be like for readers?

There’s plenty of violence in Storm Damage, but I’ve tried to make it realistic rather than sensational. When someone gets shot, it isn’t like the movies, where the hero shrugs off a bullet and keeps fighting. People get hurt. They bleed, suffer, and sometimes die. And those who survive often carry psychological wounds long after their physical injuries have healed.

I want readers to feel the confusion, fear, and adrenaline of a violent confrontation, so I provide enough sensory detail to help readers feel like they are there. Sonny is highly trained in martial arts, but he knows that even a skilled fighter can make a fatal mistake. The action scenes are fast, sometimes brutal, and often unpredictable – but they are never sensationally vivid. 

Most importantly, the violence has consequences. It changes people, affects their relationships, and sometimes forces them to question what they’re willing to do in the name of justice.

What bigger themes did you want to explore?

One of the themes I wanted to explore is the difference between justice and the law. Kat is a police officer. She believes justice should be served cold, through investigations, arrests, trials, and punishment under the law. Sonny respects that, but he knows there are times when the legal system can’t act quickly enough to prevent innocent people from dying. Sometimes justice must be served hot.

That creates an interesting tension between two people who love each other and share the same moral convictions but don’t always agree about how far someone should go to stop evil. And it raises a question I want readers to think about: When the law can’t protect innocent people, what are we justified in doing ourselves?

It’s interesting to see a blues saxophonist become a crime fighter. Is there a blues soundtrack to the story?

Absolutely. Music is a big part of Sonny’s life, and blues and jazz run throughout the novel. He’s a professional saxophonist with the Storm Lake Blues Band, and readers get to spend time with him in recording studios, rehearsals and clubs where the band performs. There are references to great blues and jazz musicians, their songs, and the history of the music.

But music is more than background entertainment. Sonny thinks like a musician and uses his musical knowledge to help solve the mysteries. Jazz improvisation requires you to listen carefully, recognise patterns, anticipate what comes next and respond to the unexpected. Those same skills make Sonny an unusually perceptive investigator. He notices things other people miss and sometimes makes connections that wouldn’t occur to a conventional detective.

There’s a juxtaposition having a protagonist who is dependent on drugs and the wider designer drug problem that he’s facing up to. What role do drugs play in the story?

I’ve been fascinated by CRISPR gene-editing technology and the possibilities it opens up, both good and bad. It has enormous potential for treating diseases and improving human lives, but like many powerful technologies, it raises troubling questions about what might happen if someone uses it for evil purposes. That’s where the idea for Storm Damage began.

Drugs alter the way our brains function. Some produce euphoria, others hallucinations, paranoia, or aggression. I began wondering what might happen if a brilliant psychopath could develop designer drugs that did more than make people high. What if he could manipulate brain chemistry to turn ordinary, decent people into mass murderers? And what if those murders were merely experiments leading to something far more horrifying?

There’s an interesting parallel with Sonny’s dependence on oxycodone. He knows drugs can control people’s lives because he’s struggling with that himself. He’s fighting an addiction while hunting someone who deliberately uses drugs to rob other people of their free will.

That raises one of the questions I wanted to explore: How much of our behavior is really under our control? And what happens when someone discovers how to take that control away?

What are some of the crime books and/or authors that have inspired you, why, and what are you reading at the moment?

My love of crime fiction began with the classics – Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe. They taught me that a good mystery is more than a puzzle. It’s about human nature, motives, secrets, and the things people will do when pushed to extremes. I also admire Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Chandler and Hammett, especially, showed me how a detective story could have a distinctive voice, memorable characters and a gritty sense of place.

Among contemporary writers, I enjoy Robert Crais and Michael Connelly, but James Lee Burke is a particular favourite. Burke’s prose is extraordinary. He creates a powerful sense of place, and his characters are complicated, flawed people who struggle with questions of morality and justice. That’s the kind of depth I admire in crime fiction.

I’m also a big fan of British and Scandinavian crime writers, including Ann Cleeves, Peter May, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Lars Kepler and the Swedish writing team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. I enjoy the atmosphere, psychological complexity and social commentary in their novels.

At the moment, I’m reading CJ Box, William Kent Krueger and Paul Doiron. All three write compelling mysteries set against wonderfully realised landscapes. I like crime fiction that gives me interesting people and places to explore, not just a murder to solve.

What’s next for Sonny Marshall, and what’s next for Terry R Bacon?

Sonny Marshall isn’t finished getting himself into trouble. I’ve started work on the third book in the series, Storm Front, which will bring Sonny back for another mystery. I enjoy writing Sonny because he’s an interesting mix of intelligence, courage, humour and recklessness. He doesn’t go looking for trouble, exactly, but he has a remarkable talent for finding it. And once he’s involved, he can’t walk away.

I’m also writing a new thriller, The Book of Kilcannon, which I expect to release this winter. It’s quite different from the Sonny Marshall mysteries. Set in a dystopian America in 2044, it follows a Canadian physician who enters a repressive, theocratic state and becomes entangled in a dangerous resistance movement. It’s a story about freedom, religious extremism, courage and the price people pay for their convictions.

Storm Damage is out now and you can grab a copy using our links below.