Interview with Chad Boudreaux, author of Scavenger Hunt
It gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Chad Boudreaux, whose debut novel Scavenger Hunt is published on January 31, 2023.
First of all, tell us about Scavenger Hunt. How did you come to write it and what experience of your own prompted it?
I had the amazing opportunity to work at the Main Justice Building in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. at an early age. If you’re an American lawyer, this is one of the top legal jobs. Everything about the place held me in awe. There was one thing, however, that I couldn’t figure out. Why were there eight flights of windows at Main Justice but only seven floors? My search to answer that question led me to write the book. And after I found the secret staircase to the eighth floor, the rest was history.
The hero, Blake Hudson, is an attorney for the Justice Department who works in the Main Justice Building. Please tell us more about this place and its crucial role in the story.
The Main Justice Building is one of the most important buildings in the United States. Most tourists in D.C. flock to the FBI Building, which is right across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Main Justice Building. But the FBI Director reports to the DOJ. The U.S. Attorney General, the most powerful lawyer in our country, offices on the fifth floor of Main Justice, along with the U.S. Solicitor General, who argues all cases for our country in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Main Justice Building is the place to be for high level action, but the beautiful architecture and artwork inside the building are unavailable to the public. My novel takes you inside.
You yourself came to work in the Main Justice Building at the age of 28 in September 2001, right before the 9/11 attacks. What can you tell us about that experience and how it changed your life?
9/11 changed everything. I went from being a trial lawyer who argued tort cases to a terrorism litigation expert protecting our country from another attack. Don’t get me wrong: arguing tort cases on behalf of the United States is still fantastic work. But I enjoyed more working with law enforcement and the intelligence communities on confronting the biggest threats of our time against some sophisticated enemies.
How did you come to help manage the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 along with Special Master Kenneth Feinberg?
The U.S. Congress passed the Victim Compensation Act of 2001 (9/11 Fund) and required that the DOJ administer it. Working on behalf of the DOJ, I played a meaningful role in creating and managing this unprecedented program. Soon after the program’s inception, the U.S. Attorney General appointed Ken Feinberg as Special Master, and he did a fantastic job under immense pressure. We had to create a program from scratch, and we faced numerous, never-before-seen policy, management, and legal challenges. What’s more, Ken not only had the herculean challenge of convincing people to waive their legal rights and enter the 9/11 Fund, but also he had the unenviable, daunting task of putting a price on life. There’s a Netflix movie called “Worth” where Michael Keaton plays Ken. It’s an impossible role to play because Ken is one of a kind, truly a Special Master that kept our country together at a crucial point. To be sure, working on this program with Ken and others was a highlight of my career.
In what way have these historic – and tragic - events contributed to your decision to write Scavenger Hunt?
Historic and tragic attacks require communities to revisit how they fight terrorism. That’s easier to do in most authoritarian systems of government than it is in a constitutional republic underpinned by democratic principles. In the U.S., the push and pull of terrorism policy creates enormous tension. There’s tension between the public and its leaders; tension among leaders of different countries; tension among leaders at different levels of government; tension among different political parties and persuasions; tension among different branches of government; and tension within the same branch of government. The list doesn’t end there. The conflict is endless, and it’s real. When I wrote Scavenger Hunt, I wanted to place Blake Hudson right in the middle of these tensions. At the time, I had no idea how he’d respond. We know now that he found himself in many terrible predicaments, and on January 31, we’ll see how he fares.
At the age of 32, you moved from the Justice Department to Homeland Security, as a top advisor to the homeland security secretary. This must have been a significantly different role, especially as the agency had only just been set up. How did that experience influence you?
Working for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was my hardest and most rewarding job. Period. The nature of the job was different. My role was Deputy Chief of Staff of an entity with a $40 billion budget and 200,000 employees, and it wasn’t a legal position. Instead, it was my job to support the Secretary on whatever issues occupied his day or week, and that could include many things. In creating DHS, the U.S. Congress cobbled together 22 federal agencies into one behemoth agency, so it was less mature and institutionalized than DOJ, and the mission to protect the homeland was gigantic—spanning, for instance, terrorism, hurricane relief, and all facets of immigration.
During that time, however, DHS was a laboratory for creative thinkers, and it had a significant influence on me. I remember, for example, the first time I flew in a Blackhawk helicopter with U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) to apprehend certain migrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico. My limited participation in that event influenced me greatly. CBP had apprehended about 3o migrants, including several men about my age at the time, whose dreams of starting a new life in America had just been crushed. Observing that human aspect made me more compassionate, I would hope, about the plight of many of the migrants.
You are uniquely qualified to write about the hidden world of intelligence and military operatives. Where does fact stop and imagination begin?
First and foremost, my goal with writing Scavenger Hunt was to provide my reader with a realistic but entertaining story. You certainly will learn something about how intel and military communities work, but if that’s your primary aim, then there’s plenty of good non-fiction on the book racks. If you want to meet and follow interesting characters who work within realistic frameworks but oftentimes challenge the possible, then you will enjoy Scavenger Hunt. Stephen King once said that the more you have believable characters, the more you can challenge your reader’s imagination. There’s nothing in my book that’s impossible. You may, however, stumble across the improbable from time to time. That’s what makes it fun. And if I’ve done my job creating credible characters and a realistic framework, then I’m betting you will grant me a license to be imaginative with my world.
Blake Hudson, your protagonist, is assigned to infiltrate a group of maverick counter-terrorist agents, whose existence is kept secret so they can avoid or evade the law. What happens to Blake after the group disbands?
Blake does exactly what most of us would do. He worries and paces and overanalyzes his conundrum. At some point, though, he realizes that while once he was the hunter, now he is the hunted. You will need to hold on tightly for this one.
Tell us something about the colourful characters, the friends and antagonists that Blake encounters. Is there anyone he can trust?
Blake says, at some point, that the only one he can trust is his Great Dane, Judge. Judge is the only real character in the book. He was my dog when I lived on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and worked at the DOJ. I also will highlight Blake’s infatuation interest in the book, Natasha Hensley. She is described as “a shadow, the best shadow in the business.” She’s someone you’ll want to meet.
In the States and other countries, it’s sometimes hard for the public to sift and distinguish between “fake news” and the facts. What is the place of fiction in this world?
Authors, including novelists, need to be honest with their readers. You can be political (although Scavenger tries not to be), and you can make some honest mistakes from time to time (I’m sure I did). But I don’t believe that writers should intentionally distort facts in furtherance of their views. Put differently, fake news is fine so long as the reader knows it’s fake, and then he or she can decide what to make of it and judge the work on its merits.
How important is the legal aspect of Scavenger Hunt and your experience as a lawyer?
The legal aspect and my experience as a lawyer are very important because much of the conflict in the novel stems from actual legal tensions, and if I didn’t have a solid understanding of the legal framework and how things work at DOJ, then I couldn’t portray the basics of the story. To be clear, Scavenger Hunt is a thrill ride, not a legal treatise on terrorism jurisprudence. Most readers, though, will learn some of the legal tensions as they hunt scavengers around Washington, D.C.
You mention several agencies in relation to the book: the DOJ, Delta Force, NSA, DIA, and CIA. What can you tell us about these groups and the tensions between them as they work to fight terrorism and other threats to national security?
Some will disagree, but I believe each of these U.S. agencies is the best at its narrow area of focus, and so this would be my dream team if we could throw the rulebook out the window and create a clandestine group to thwart terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. (If we were chasing scavengers on water, I probably would have included a character from SEAL Team Six.) I also believe, moreover, that the risk tolerances of the different agencies—DOJ is risk averse, for instance, whereas Delta Force is risk favoring—drives much of the tension. That’s certainly the case in my book. Many of these agencies are also tribal and don’t want other agencies interfering with their work, and that creates tension; so the idea that you could bring them together for one common operation always fascinated me.
The quintessential British spy movie is Bond, though it’s important not to forget the work of writers like John le Carré and Alistair Maclean. Is there a quintessential American spy movie, and does Scavenger Hunt follow the pattern or break the mould?
Americans love Bond. We love that he’s debonaire with British charm, and we love the Bond formula that drives each of the movies and works just as well for Craig as it did for Connery. As far as I’m concerned, Americans do not have a quintessential spy movie that rivals Bond, just like we don’t have our own detective fiction like Sherlock Holmes. That said, I’m a big fan of the first three Jason Bourne series and most of the Mission Impossible movies. I also like a brainier TNT miniseries called The Company (2007), which relates to spycraft during the Cold War.
As it relates to Scavenger Hunt, I think it sets its own course but is probably patterned most like Robert Ludlum’s books. My publishing company runs artificial intelligence on its books, and when they ran it for Scavenger, my writing style was similar to Ludlum’s and my storyline had threads and patterns most similar to Michael Crichton’s.
What thriller writers would you recommend and who do you enjoy?
I recommend Robert Ludlum, John le Carré, Tom Clancy, and Brian Hosp. Hosp, who endorsed Scavenger Hunt, writes clever crime novels that take place in Boston but that sell best in London (perhaps because they are heady like Sherlock Holmes). I also really enjoy non-horror thrillers by Stephen King (best character developer in the business) and earlier novels by Brad Meltzer.
If Scavenger Hunt was made into a movie, who would you want to direct it, if you could choose any film director living or dead?
Sydney Pollack. And my pick for producer would be Trent Luckenbill, my friend from DOJ (we were two of the youngest at Main Justice) who left D.C. and legal practice to produce Sicario and La La Land.
Preorder Scavenger Hunt
About Chad Boudreaux:
Before becoming Executive Vice President & Chief Legal Officer of the nation’s largest military shipbuilder, Chad Boudreaux served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he advised Secretary Michael Chertoff on almost all significant matters facing the newly established Department. Before working for Homeland Security, Boudreaux served in several high-ranking positions at the U.S. Justice Department, where he was hired the night before the September 11, 2001 attacks. During his time at the Justice Department, Boudreaux focused most of his time on matters relating to terrorism and homeland security. Boudreaux graduated from Baylor University in 1995 and from the University of Memphis School of Law in 1998, where he was Managing Editor of the law review. Chad lives in Hampton Roads, Virginia, with his wife and four children.
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