Straight From the Mouth of Soren Paul Petrek, Author of Wolves At Our Door

Wolves at Our Door is the immediate sequel to Cold Lonely Courage.  I wanted to revisit my protagonist, Allied super-assassin Madeleine Toche.  In Wolves, Madeleine and her mentor Berthold Hartmann go after the Nazi Atomic Bomb project in a bid to keep the Nazis from turning their inevitable defeat into absolute victory and world domination.  Hartmann, a German Jewish war hero

from WWI, and Madeleine’s mentor and trainer, take on the SS infiltrating the notorious Dora concentration camp whose Jewish slave labor is used to build V-2 rockets, soon to be fitted with operational atomic warheads.  In writing Wolves, I was able to entice my French publisher, Editions Encre Rouge to sign the entire Madeleine Toche series in English and French.  Although an Indie publisher, Editions Encre Rouge is distributed by the giant publisher Hachette.  The Madeleine Toche series is for sale in 60 countries in English and French.

Overall my inspiration comes from the desperate need for more action adventure, thriller and military-themed novels featuring women as the heroes.  There are hundreds of real-life examples from history where women played the pivotal and essential roles in successful military and clandestine campaigns.  I wanted the world to recognize these obscure heroes, so many of whom lost to time, will never have their stories told.

In mainstream literature and films, the female characters are so often stunningly beautiful, indestructible and dominant.  Real heroes are usually must act alone, with only their courage and sense of what’s right and wrong to guide them.

Here’s an important quote from the officer who recruited women for the British Special Operations Executive in WWII:

“I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be.  In my view, women were very much better than men for the work.  Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.”
—Captain Selwyn Jepson, British Special Operations Executive Senior Recruiting Officer, World War Two.

About the Author

Soren Petrek is a practicing criminal trial attorney, admitted to the Minnesota Bar in 1991.  Married with two adult children, Soren continues to live and work in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Educated in the U.S., England and France Soren sat his O-level examinations at the Heathland School in Hounslow, London in 1981.  His undergraduate degree in Forestry is from the University of Minnesota, 1986.  His law degree is from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota 1991.
Soren’s novel, Cold Lonely Courage won Fade In Magazine’s 2009 Award for Fiction.  Fade In was voted the nation’s favorite movie magazine by the Washington Post and the L.A. Times in 2011 and 2012.
The French edition of Cold Lonely Courage, Courage was published January 2019, by Encre Rouge Editions, distributed by Hachette Livre in 60 countries.  Soren’s contemporary novel, Tim will be released along with the rest of the books in the Madeleine Toche series of historical thrillers.
His latest book is the historical action adventure novel, Wolves at Our Door.
Website: https://www.sorenpetrek.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SPetrek_Toche44?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soren.petrek