Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Inside Ring

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Inside Ring

Michael Lawson was raised in Pueblo, Colorado and attended college at Seattle University, receiving a degree in engineering. On leaving college he went to work for the US Navy as a nuclear engineer, spending approximately thirty years working for the Navy's nuclear power program. Some of this time was spent in Washington D.C. but most was spent at a large naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.

At the shipyard he managed a number of different organizations related to overhauling nuclear powered submarines, cruisers, and aircraft carriers, ending up as a member of the government’s Senior Executive Service and as the top civilian at the shipyard responsible for navy reactor plant work on the West Coast.

He is married, lives in the Pacific Northwest and describes himself a a private person who when not writing, "mostly just goofs around."

The Inside Ring, was selected by The Seattle Times as one of the ten top thrillers of 2005 and is currently being published in ten countries.

His second book, The Second Perimeter, also starring Joe DeMarco, was published in hardcover a couple of weeks ago to very positive reviews.

He is currently working on his third and fourth books which "involve terrorism and some very bad people helping a man get elected President."

Interesting fact: The Inside Ring was one of the first, possibly the first, thriller to be centered around the Department of Homeland Security. However, it's certainly not the last - there are now a veritable slew of novels set in the USA's newest department, which was formed in 2003 from a number of formerly independent groups such as immigration, the secret service, border security and the coastguard.  The official headcount of the DHS is in the region of 180,000 person headed up by Michael Chertoff who took over from Tom Ridge in early 2005.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to The Inside Ring. It originally ran in June 2005 and has been updated for the August 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.