What Would You Do To Save Someone You Love?
An interview with Alabama author Robert Bailey about his new thriller The Boomerang.
In a departure from his legal thrillers, Robert Bailey’s political thriller The Boomerang (out today) asks the question: What would you do for the people you love the most? President Lionel Cantrell has terminal cancer and is given a cure ominously dubbed “the boomerang,” under the condition that he cannot share the knowledge of its existence with anyone. When Cantrell’s childhood best friend and Chief of Staff Eli James’ daughter is also terminally diagnosed, James confronts Big Pharma’s lobbyists and is left with more questions and suspicions about his best friend than answers. In a race against the clock and the government coverup, James is forced to sacrifice all that he has for his daughter, balancing secrets of his own along the way.
Robert Bailey is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Boomerang, the Jason Rich series, the McMurtrie and Drake legal thrillers, the Bocephus Haynes series and The Golfer’s Carol. He is also a civil defense trial lawyer in Huntsville, Alabama, where he resides with his wife, kids and beloved menagerie of pets. Haley Roberts spoke with Bailey about his genre shift as well as his ties to his home state of Alabama.
Haley Roberts: Many of your previous books are legal thrillers. What inspired you to stray into the political realm?
Robert Bailey: The Boomerang is a books that’s about seven or eight years in the making for me. My dad and my wife both had cancer around 2016 and 2017, and I had two book ideas coming out of that, since writing is like therapy to me. The first was The Golfer’s Carol, which is an aspirational novel that I wrote to mourn my father’s death and to celebrate my wife’s recovery. Then, there was The Boomerang, which is more of a fast track where The Golfer’s Carol is a slow song.
The Boomerang basically envisions a cure for cancer. I spent a lot of time in waiting rooms with people waiting for scan results, and there’s a lot of anxiety. People talk and ask questions about if there’s something more. Why isn’t there something more? Of course, there are conspiracy-type questions about if the government would give us a cure. I don’t believe that stuff, but I heard enough of those questions to inspire the story. I think people desperately want to believe that there’s more, so that personal experience really inspired me. Once I had it, the juices really started flowing. Then, it became a bigger and bigger thing through geography and through the chase elements. It is political in nature, but I think the key question really asks what you would do to save someone you love, and that’s the quest that Eli James goes on in the story.
HR: The Boomerang deals with increasingly relevant and heavy issues that contribute to a greater narrative. What do you hope readers take away from these?
RB: I think we all ask questions about that kind of stuff. For me, writing fiction is always about the characters and people involved. I thought with Eli’s daughter having cancer that this is the kind of thing that every human being is touched by. I already had been touched by that myself. As you delve into the highest realms of leadership and politics, which, granted, this is a fictional conspiracy I dreamed up, I wanted to create the bad guys in the story and figure out the reasons why they might behave the way they do such as the monetary reasons and the reasons for the cover up that becomes bigger than the actual thing. To explore the story from both ends of it was stimulating to me, and I hope it will be for others.
At the end of the day as a writer, you’re trying to entertain the readers. You never want to forget who they are. Readers like to read about people. I’m a reader, and I like to read about people in really difficult circumstances that are able to use their own skills to overcome those circumstances. That’s what Eli, Dale and the family do in this story, and they come together to do it.
HR: This story is full of diverse dynamics ranging from father and daughter all the way to chief of staff and president. How do you think these relationships contribute to the narrative?
RB: I think they contribute a lot. The tension between Eli James and Lionel Cantrell is certainly amped up, because they grew up in this little town called Lick Skillet, Alabama, together, and they grew up with big dreams that they achieved. I think Eli feels like he’s being betrayed by his best friend, and Lionel is very much in a difficult situation where he chooses his own self-interest. You sympathize and empathize with Eli, but I think you understand where Lionel is coming from as well.
Also, the family dynamics are so important. My wife, Dixie, grew up in New Mexico and had this incredible extended step-family. A lot of the inspiration for that part of the book comes from the way she was taken in and even the way that I was treated as the stepson-in-law. I feel like the family takes care of its own in a crisis, and that’s what happens here. Of course, you’ve got the specter of Nester Sanchez, who is the classic bad guy that gets to be the good guy. He has this love for a woman that’s lasted his whole life, and his devotion to her and to his state drives him to do things that are questionable and arguably bad. But he does them for the right reasons.
I think all of that plays a big role in the story. When it all comes together at the end, it hits different. That’s what it’s all about to me. It’s a slow burn to the end, and you hope by the end that the people don’t want to finish it but instead want it to keep going. That’s the books I’ve always loved the most, and I hope people feel that way about mine.
HR: All of your stories have a connection to your home state of Alabama, even this one that primarily takes place in D.C. and New Mexico. Can you talk about your strong sense of home?
RB: It is my home. A lot of the time, the setting of a place is like a character in and of itself. When I can bring you places like Lick Skillet or Page & Palette in Fairhope or The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville and give you an Easter egg for Alabama, even if you aren’t from here and are just familiar, it’s a way to connect you beyond the page. It’s an Easter egg for me, too. I grew up playing baseball in Lick Skillet, and I remember the Fourth of July game. The way the story starts is personal to me, and it helps me sort out the creative flow a bit. When Frank and Eli James are talking at The Donut Hole in Destin, which I’ve been to a hundred times, I think it adds some authenticity to the story and puts the reader in there. They’ve been there and can smell and taste it. It’s always something I’ve enjoyed about other writers that I like to read. When they add a little detail that puts me further into the story, I can identify with it.
HR: What’s next for you? Do you have any new projects coming soon?
RB: Right now I’m working on another legal thriller that will return to my roots a little bit. It’s in the same universe where Jason Rich and Bocephus Haynes live but with a new character who is a mediator that gets involved in mediating a really impossible situation with personal stakes for her. I hope it’ll be a crowd pleaser. It will certainly be more of a Southern legal thriller. After that, we have another explorational project, and I also left a little bit of meat on the bone with The Boomerang. I’d love to explore what happens next, so we shall see with that.
The Boomerang by Robert Bailey comes out on May 1, 2025.
