Interview: September 11, 2025
Detective Isaac Bell faces the horrors of the Great War while battling a mysterious anarchist group intent on bringing brutality to the shores of America in THE IRON STORM, Jack Du Brul’s latest thrilling adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series created by Clive Cussler. In this interview conducted by former publicity executive Michael Barson, who was Cussler’s primary publicist at G.P. Putnam’s Sons from 1999 to 2015, Du Brul talks about incorporating iconic figures into his stories, the importance of research to ensure that every detail is accurate, and why he loves writing historical fiction so much.
Question: Among the delightful cameo appearances in THE IRON STORM are ones by a young FDR, Winston Churchill, and the star Western novelist Zane Grey. You must have a great deal of fun incorporating such iconic figures from that period into your stories.
Jack Du Brul: You forgot Ian Fleming's father, Valentine!
It is a lot of fun finding historical characters to pepper throughout the Isaac Bell novels. I think my favorite was having a young Eliot Ness help Bell escape a sinking ferryboat in the Hudson River.
My original hope for THE IRON STORM was for Admiral Dewey of Spanish-American War fame to give Bell a lift from the Canary Islands, but this book takes place shortly before his death. I'm not sure how I stumbled onto Zane Grey, but when I discovered that his passion beyond writing was fishing and spent time on charters deep into the Atlantic, I knew I had my man.
Q: When it comes to incorporating all of that early 20th-century weaponry that appears here, like the battleship Saarland, the German gun Krupp FK 96, and the Rolls-Royce Falcon V12, how do you manage to keep everything so accurate?
JDB: Research, research, research. I was inspired by 1980s technothriller writers like Tom Clancy, who shoehorned in a ton of technical information about weapons systems and tactics into their stories. This gave the books a level of authenticity that swept readers along like they were caught in a torrent.
I've always believed that authenticity is the key to good storytelling. If the reader believes the stories you make up, they will enjoy them all the more. I write mostly in the afternoon, so the mornings are dedicated to research.
If I know I have a technical scene coming, I will memorize, albeit temporarily, as much information as I can so it flows naturally onto the page and hopefully puts the reader next to Bell as he battles the Red Baron in the skies over the Western Front, or repels a charge of German stormtroopers from a machine-gun position inside the British lines.
Q: In a related question, how are you able to portray what it was like to be living in the British trenches during the height of the First World War? And what exactly happens inside a destroyer after it’s hit by cannons from a battleship? You make it all so vivid and realistic.
JDB: Realism is the name of the game when writing historical fiction, and in order to do that, a writer needs to know his subject backwards and forwards. I had spent time at the Imperial War Museum in London, and they had a reproduction of a trench to give a sense of scale. With that firmly in mind, and a lot of research material digested, I let my imagination channel everything I'd learned into scenes as vivid as I could make them, but without many of the more gruesome details. This is a Cussler book after all and strictly rated PG.
Q: The Isaac Bell series is historical fiction, but you also have a lot of experience writing contemporary adventure fiction. Do you find that one area is closer to your heart than another?
JDB: That’s an interesting question. I'd have to say the historical stuff keeps me more interested because I like being humbled about how much I don't know about a subject as I start to research it. I was never really a strong student, except when it came to history. It comes alive to me, off the pages of a book, so I can see, hear and smell what the author describes. I think that's one of the gifts that allows me to write. Also, in a historical novel, I don't need to come up with a contrived reason why someone doesn't just use their cell phone to get out of a tight jam.
Q: Are you working on a strict timeline in the Isaac Bell series, or are you empowered to move around in that first quarter of the 20th century as your fancy (and story opportunities) dictates?
JDB: Justin Scott, who had written this series before I took over, had Isaac bounce around over a 25-year span or so, and there is no reason why I can't too. But I've kept the timing of my books linear, starting from 1912 for THE TITANIC SECRET through 1917 for THE IRON STORM. That's not to say that a future book won't jump back a few years if a particular plot should come to me.
Q: You are approaching the period when Isaac Bell could conceivably run into one of the first great hardboiled detectives: Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, who ruled much of the 1920s in Black Mask magazine. Are you ever tempted to have Bell match wits or even team up with another detective?
JDB: I hadn't thought of that. I'm a huge Hammett fan, and I'd love for Bell to walk through the door of the Spade Archer Detective Agency some day. I believe there was a prequel to THE MALTESE FALCON establishing that Sam Spade's partnership with Miles Archer started in 1921, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for a collaboration someday.
