"The beginning of the first chapter of No Prisoners started as a proposed short story entitled ‘Golf Lynx’ – like many stories based on Leon Cazador’s cases, this title was a play on words. Leon finds a body in a golf course sand bunker. The ending was more or less envisaged as well. Inevitably, when I was asked to write a second Leon Cazador novel, I immediately opted for these scenes to be incorporated. So all I had to do then was plot and write the (considerable) middle!
If a series of novels was going to work it was clear that Leon needed a personal assistant or secretary, a sounding-board, someone who could become his sidekick. Some years ago he had worked with an undercover cop Carlota Diaz. She seemed like a likely candidate. For this book and the next, then, Carlota would play a prominent role.
The storyline for the intended short story had been about pedophiles, a particularly nasty group of individuals. Though Leon had no children, he had a niece, so would have dreaded her falling into the clutches of such people. As he becomes sucked into this dark world he declares to Carlota that he had no intention of taking any prisoners: that’s how strongly he felt.
I’ve started writing the fifth (and final) novel in a co-authored Floreskand fantasy series, this one entitled Tarakanda; our pen-name is Morton Faulkner."
- Nik Morton
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