Brad Meltzer’s big secret REVEALED!

Brad Meltzer has a secret.
He has lots of secrets.
Secrets are how he makes a living.
He recently shared one of his biggest secrets with me. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you some background. Although I haven’t met Brad in person, he first called me several years ago while he was doing research on his book “Heroes for My Son.” He was looking for information about The Lone Ranger and at the time I was the owner of the Lone Ranger Fan Club.
Having never heard of him, I popped his name into Google and became an instant fan. Today we are friends. We occasionally chat by email and Facebook and last Friday by phone. Granted, it was set up as a media interview as he is on a nationwide book tour promoting “The President’s Shadow.” It’s the third book in his Culper Ring trilogy.
Meltzer is a prolific author with several thrillers, children’s books, non-fiction books, comic books and more to his name. This is in addition to being a television star who is working on his second series for the History Channel.
Meltzer is America’s nooks and crannies historian. He has a knack for taking trivial bits of history and combining them with real, secret places in the Capital, White House and national monuments and telling wild, mind-blowing stories that blend fact and fiction and leave you wondering which characters you can trust and believe.
He does all of this by using mundane people like archivists and congressional staffers and aides. Using the first-person narrative for his protagonists, Meltzer is able to plant doubts and plot twists in unique ways. The main protagonist in the Culper Ring series is Beecher White who is an archivist at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Beecher joins the Culper Ring at the end of the first book, “The Inner Circle.”
The Culper Ring is a real spy network created by George Washington and used to help him win the Revolutionary War. In Beecher’s world, the ring is a secret society that serves to protect the presidency (not necessarily the President). Beecher’s exploits continue in “The Fifth Assassin” and again in “The President’s Shadow.”
The main antagonist is a would-be presidential assassin named Nico Hadrian. Like the real-life John Hinckley, Nico became a patient in a mental hospital after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in an attempt to assassinate the President. He is accompanied by the ghost of the first lady, whom he did kill.
What makes Meltzer’s books so fascinating is his insider’s knowledge of the workings of the Secret Service and government facilities such as the National Archives and the White House. The degree of detail Meltzer uses makes it seem like he’s spilling national secrets. The truth is, the information he shares comes directly from the Secret Service and former Presidents.
“The Secret Service has been helping me for 16 years,” he said.
An army of professionals share “secret” details with him. He has forged relationships built on trust. They show him secret rooms and passages and share stories so real and bizarre that they become plot twists in the novels. An agent told Meltzer that the covert details in his books can easily be found by terrorists or any other conspiracy group out there.
“That’s their way of saying ‘you’re not that smart, Meltzer,’” he said.
He said in 16 years he has never broken his word or shared privileged information. He does learn the weird stuff by asking, “What’s the craziest moment that nobody knows about?”
“Agents are just like anyone else. They get tired of turning on TV or going to the movies and seeing it all wrong,” Meltzer said.
He carefully vets information with his sources to make sure everyone is comfortable with it before it goes to print. They always are because Meltzer’s novels are a work of fiction.
“A novel is just a lie that masquerades as the truth,” he said.
One of the underlying currents of the books is Beecher dealing with the loss of his father, just like Meltzer. “It’s not just Beecher’s journey, it’s very much my journey,” he said.
Fatherhood is important to Meltzer. It’s what led him to write “Heroes for My Son,” “Heroes for My Daughter” and his series of “I am …” children’s books based on different historical figures.
“I got tired of my own kids looking at reality TV stars and thinking that’s their heroes,” he said.
His books about Abraham Lincoln, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and others “always tell the stories of them when they’re kids – who they were when they were nobodies.”
He said it serves as inspiration. “This is what we’re capable of on our very best days,” he said.
On his best days, Meltzer is like Beecher, although “Beecher is far smarter than I am … more dangerous than I am.”
And that brings us to Meltzer’s big secret. The books aren’t about Beecher. They’re about a character introduced in an earlier fourth book called “The Book of Fate.”
“As for Nico, it’s always been the story,” he said.