Why Brett Andrew Strange Says His Book, Across Latitudes Can Reach Beyond Espionage Fans
By Liam Walters
Readers who rarely pick up spy novels may still find familiar emotional ground in Brett Andrew Strange’s Across Latitudes trilogy. Although the series is built around intelligence work, political violence, and modern geopolitical conflict, Strange says he designed it to function equally as a love story, family drama, and examination of personal choice.
A former U.S. intelligence officer, Strange is the author of Against the Dusk, Beneath the Purple Dawn, and Eastern Light, which together form the Across Latitudes trilogy. He has also written Encounters: Six Short Stories. His research has taken him to more than two dozen countries. He has lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia and currently lives in San Francisco.
Across Latitudes follows Iraq-war veteran Paul Drake and Russian-born art curator Katerina Volkova across a story spanning 2017 to 2024. The action moves from New York City to Istanbul, California, Paris, Malta, Sicily, and the war in Ukraine.
The series has the architecture of an international thriller, but Strange says its emotional center is intentionally broader.
“I wanted to have the momentum of a thriller, combined with a sweeping love story, and a family drama,” he said. “None of the characters are invincible action heroes. They’re navigating imperfect choices and ordinary self-interest, which is a far more universal story than espionage alone.”
That emphasis on ordinary motives under extraordinary pressure is one reason the trilogy may appeal to readers who are less interested in tradecraft than in character. Paul and Katerina are not presented as flawless problem-solvers. Supporting characters, including a teenage Syrian refugee and a nine-year-old Ukrainian orphan, also widen the story’s perspective.
Strange’s close third-person narration moves among different minds rather than restricting events to a single viewpoint.
“Readers keep coming back to the close third-person perspective of the narrative – the way it gets inside the heads of the villains, protagonists, and even children, so you understand the drama from multiple perspectives,” he said. “That’s paired with a fast-thriller pace.”
The same approach shapes the trilogy’s aftermath. Strange is interested not only in whether characters survive dangerous situations but also in what survival does to them.
“The final chapters also deal with the aftermath of violence and war, and what comes next for the key players when they try to return to a normal life,” he said.
That question extends the story beyond the immediate suspense of intelligence operations. It asks what relationships, identities, and ambitions look like after people have been changed by conflict.
Strange’s professional background helped him avoid relying on what he considers exaggerated genre conventions. Asked what his intelligence and national security experience contributed, he cited the mechanics and psychological cost of the work.
“It gave me firsthand exposure to the real personalities and raw mechanics of intelligence work – the sacrifice, the deception, the psychological toll,” he said.
The author also says his characters are grounded composites rather than direct portraits. That lets him draw on recognizable behavior without turning the books into disguised biography.
“They’re composites, not portraits – but very deliberately grounded ones, including U.S. intelligence officers and people actively involved in Ukraine’s fight for independence,” Strange said.
Across Latitudes also gives readers a strong sense of place. Strange’s travel and research inform settings that range from Istanbul and Malta to the Ukrainian front. The complete trilogy edition adds referential footnotes for those who want additional factual context behind the fiction.
“The research behind the settings – Istanbul, Malta, the Ukrainian front – makes the danger tangible,” Strange said. “You’re not watching a thriller unfold from a distance; you’re standing inside it.”
The audio edition offers another route into that blend of action and interior life. Strange credits narrator Ryan Haugen with heightening the tension. “In audio, Ryan Haugen’s narration pulls that tension even tighter with dramatic flair,” he said. For listeners who prefer character-driven suspense but do not regularly read espionage novels, the performance may emphasize the emotional shifts and changing viewpoints that distinguish the series from a straightforward action narrative.
That mixture allows the trilogy to work on two tracks at once: readers can follow the immediate suspense while also considering how private relationships are reshaped by systems of power and conflict.
For readers outside the espionage genre, that immediacy may be the entry point. Across Latitudes uses spies, clandestine conflict, and political upheaval as its engine, but the larger questions are about loyalty, love, freedom, grief, and the difficulty of living with imperfect choices. Strange’s aim is not simply to reproduce the mechanics of intelligence work, but to show what those mechanics can do to the people trapped inside them.
For more information, please visit Amazon or Brett Andrew Stranges website.
