Melissa leaves the brief but explosive meeting fuming and cursing the colonel. She’s got a fiery temper and not much of a filter. No sooner does she get into her room — which is heavily secured — than she is immobolized face down on her bed by a mystery assailant. Neither she nor the reader have any idea of his identity — a secret revealed only at the end of the team’s “service” at the as yet unknown location. The assailant knows quite a bit about Melissa — in disturbing detail. The reader learns several disparate pieces of information in the brief exchange between Melissa and her captor when he allows her to speak. She never sees his face.

He claims to be a member of the “Group” – the faceless assemblage that is the real authority behind whatever it is that’s going on.

Colonel Ferguson wasn’t enthusiastic about external involvement on the as yet unrevealed project.

The assailant claims to be interested in Melissa’s welfare. His crytpic explanation: “it’s about debts.” He tells Melissa the only person she can trust is Brian, but she’s in no mood to believe him.

He leaves a “token of affection” for her — an access card that will override the security protocols and grant her access into any room in the facility that doesn’t require a palm or retina scan. For emergencies only, he cautions. He nevertheless threatens to kill her if she moves from her position on the bed and leaves the room in the next three minutes.

Melissa obviously has issues and a history with someone very dangerous and unpredictable. Is she at all trustworthy or completely selfish?

The main focus of this chapter is Colonel Ferguson. The bewildered and irritated team, still unsure of why their services have been commandeered by the government, get an up-close-and-personal lesson in how a pecking order is established. After being challenged by Deidre Harper, the colonel explodes like a drill sergeant (“The room fell completely silent, [...]

Another critical character is introduced in this chapter: Father Andrew Benedict. We get the distinct feeling that Father Benedict has a special interest in Brian, though we aren’t sure why. He’s a good-natured priest who is aged by spry. Father Benedict was modeled in some respects after Father Malachi Martin. The best and most telling [...]

Brian meets two important characters in this chapter: the talkative, effusive, unflappable and unfiltered Malcolm Bradley and the sassy, opinionated Deidre Harper. They are both African Americans and both very smart. They will both turn out to be important alliances for Brian in addition to team members on the as-yet-undisclosed secret project they find themselves [...]

Chapter 7 is designed to give the reader a bit of an ominous feel for Brian’s situation, as yet unrevealed to him and the reader.  We learn he is at a location that is oppressively secured. The Bill of Rights doesn’t exactly apply. The chapter ends with the reader’s curiosity piqued (as is Brian’s) at [...]

This is a chapter that was not in the first edition of The Facade. I added it because of subsequent ideas about the sequel. In Chapter 6 we witness the murder of Father Mantello in the library of Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican Observatory — by the same sort of being who killed the linguist at [...]

This chapter provides a hint of the spiritual conflict in The Facade, when Neil Bandstra says to Brian, “You’ll hear things … learn of things that will make you wonder about God’s interest in our world … and about whether God is really who we thought He was.”  This will ultimately refer to the “extraterrestrial [...]

In this chapter we are introduced to Neil Bandstra, Brian’s only real friend from his college days and now a high level DC bureaucrat, and Colonel Vernon Ferguson, a career Air Force officer. The purpose of this chapter was not only to introduce these two important characters, but also to telegraph their participation in a [...]

Chapter Three of course is our introduction to Melissa Kelley. Her specialties are were American Studies with a focus on right-wing religious-political cults and militia groups. I thought I’d give you some bibliographic notes on how those fields relate to The Facade and (potentially) the sequel. Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White [...]

The introduction of Melissa Kelley. She had all the features I find most attractive, in a albeit superficial sort of way (green eyes, the red hair (in the “Scully cut” bob), but complemented by a real attitude problem. You can tell right away she’s filled with rage at something and doesn’t make much of an [...]