"The Proxy Assassin": "Book Three of the American Spy Trilogy"

October, 1948. Former OSS agent Hal Schroeder is back polishing his bar stool at The Harbor Inn in Cleveland when he gets a surprise invitation from Frank Wisner, who heads the CIA's new covert ops division. Hal is whisked off to Wisner's Maryland shore retreat and introduced to a brace of Romanian royals, including the scarily beautiful Princess Stela Varadja, a direct descendant of Vlad Tepes Draculea. Then Wisner pops the question. Would Hal consider parachuting into a remote mountain camp to meet with the leader of a group of Romanian anti-Communist guerrillas? Hal has already survived two previous suicide missions and a third does not appeal. 'But I told Frank Wisner I would need a few days to think it over. I had some D.C. sightseeing to do.' As it turns out Hal Schroeder gets to do a lot more sightseeing than he bargained for. A journey that brings the American Spy Trilogy to a surprising conclusion.

John Knoerle was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1949 and migrated to California with his family in the 1960s. He has worked as a stand-up comic, a voiceover actor and a radio reporter. He wrote the screenplay for "Quiet Fire," which starred Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, and the stage play "The He-Man Woman Hater's Club," an LA Time's Critics Choice. He also worked as a writer for Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." Knoerle's first novel "Crystal Meth Cowboys" was optioned by Fox TV. His second novel, "The Violin Player," won the Mayhaven Award for Fiction. Knoerle has just completed "The Proxy Assassin," Book Three of "The American Spy Trilogy." John Knoerle currently lives in Chicago with his wife, Judie.