Bookpleasures.com is honored to welcome award-winning authors, editors, and multimedia creators Michael McKinley and Nancy Merritt Bell as our guests. 

Nancy Merritt Bell is an acclaimed playwright, journalist, editor, and producer whose international awards, like the Inspiration Prize at the Centre Pompidou and honours at NYU’s August Moon Festival, showcase her distinguished career, inspiring admiration in our audience. 

With a career spanning theatre, television, and film, Nancy has developed over 20 TV series for CBC, BBC, and Disney, adapted literary classics for the screen, and edited more than 20 books across genres. 

As Director of Development for BookGo, she has shaped acclaimed memoirs and thrillers, and her journalism has appeared in major outlets worldwide. 

Michael McKinley is a journalist, author, screenwriter, and filmmaker whose books—including the best-selling Hockey: A People’s History and the NAACP-nominated Willie: The Game Changing Story of the NHL’s First Black Player—have earned critical acclaim. 

He has written and produced documentaries for CNN, NBC, and the Discovery Channel, and his thrillers, including The Glamour of Evil, blend deep research with gripping storytelling. 

Together, Michael and Nancy bring decades of experience in storytelling, investigation, and creative collaboration, making them uniquely qualified to discuss the themes, research, and inspiration behind their latest novel, The Glamour of Evil: A Maddie Lynch Mystery.

Good day, Michael and Nancy, and thank you for taking part in our interview.

Norm: Maddie Lynch is a secular woman thrust into the heart of Vatican intrigue. What inspired you to make her a journalist and TV producer rather than a priest, nun, or intelligence agent? 

How did her profession shape the way she sees—and challenges—the world of the Vatican?

Michael: Good day, Norm, and thank you for your invitation to talk with you! Maddie Lynch originally was a guy in an earlier draft, and it was Nancy’s great idea to make “he” into a “she.”

In doing this, an entire world opened up, mainly because of the role of women in the world’s major religions. They are often pushed to the side, so this gave us an opportunity to bring a woman to center stage. 

We kept Maddie in a world we know, TV, and with a perspective we know, secular, to launch her into the world of religion. 

She, of course, can impersonate a nun, and she does, but in making her secular it opened up different dramatic landscapes for us to explore, and so she does. 

Nancy: Thank you, Norm. What inspired the creation of Maddie with a career as a journalist and TV producer–rather than a nun, or spy, or even a banker– is that a journalist is a kind of spy. 

They dig into worlds most people are locked out of and find the truth, hidden or buried or lost. Michael worked as a journalist right out of college – Oxford that is–winning loads of awards. 

I also worked as a ‘journo’, on the safe side, in reviews–which got me into books! Also, prior to being a journalist, Maddie was an academic in Oxford– doesn’t that also sound like Michael??? 

To me a great academic is also a spy; they dig into books and histories, letters, and more, and find out what was happening ‘back then’ and so understand what is happening right now. 

Maddie does that, she investigates: she has to unlock a secret from World War 2, to… well I can’t give too much away…. And so Maddie as a journalist, and as an academic, can also understand the Vatican has an enormous place in history, and along the way has buried many secrets…

Norm: The novel explores how evil can be “glamorous”—attractive, even seductive—when wrapped in power, faith, or charisma.

Can you talk about how you wanted readers to experience this “glamour” through characters like Reagan Clark or Victor Franchi? Were there real-world figures or events that influenced your portrayal of charismatic leaders masking dangerous agendas?

Michael: This is a great question. Reagan Clark has a complex history, and now her political life is colored by her bellicose Christian fundamentalism. 

I think that we have seen the effects of fundamentalism, which always seems to bring violence, in our world much of late, and so that certainly influenced our take on Reagan. 

As for Victor Franchi, one of the interesting things that happened under the papacy of Pope Francis was that he opened the Vatican’s Secret Archives to scholars and historians. 

In particular, he opened the part that the Vatican had shielded for decades, documents relating to events that took place in World War II, so from 1939-1945. 

We saw a chance to dive into this archive, fictionally, and reveal a reality or two that is reflected the Vatican’s actions, and those of the United States, after that war. Victor Franchi is the product.     

Nancy: Yes, great question, Norm. I think Michael will get A+ on this test! I hope I’m not too far behind! 

The glamour here is power and how seductive it is. With power, you can get anything you want– a person, a yacht, a political position, a holy war. It is more valuable than money. 

As for the character Reagan Clark, I think her political life is informed by her conversion to Christian fundamentalism. I feel she was previously trapped by Catholicism and its idea of women, which cut out for her a smaller role as a lawyer. 

Now as a Christian fundamentalist, she can do anything and everything to defend her faith and her politics, as they are one–even if her actions are immoral. She is on the Machiavellian side of her faith; even murder is justified by her faith. 

If the character of Reagan is inspired by any real person, I would say yes, for me, yes. She is a female politician who is a ferocious political animal, and just barely human. I won’t say who it is, but she is on the outs with the current president.

As for Victor Franchi, he is a complicated figure and I am still figuring him out. He is a wild card, an outsider priest and yet very connected in the Vatican. He is also very much about power, but where Reagan is front and center, Franchi is working backstage. 

And his Vatican contacts allowed him to dig way back into the Vatican’s Secret Archives. He opens ancient works that show what the Church had once been and had done, and he sees the Church for what it is now–far less powerful.

He could make the Church powerful again… but should it be? He makes us ask very dark questions of the nature of the power of the Church.

Is Franchi based on anyone living or dead? Not any one person. But characters like Franchi make me love working with Michael. He amazes me when he comes up with the darkest characters.

Not ‘dumb darkness’, like the kind of character who is violent for the sake of violence, but smart darkness. Like Franchi.

Norm: The book delves into the Vatican’s financial history, Nazi gold, and WWII ratlines. How much historical research did you do, and what surprised you most in your findings?

Were there any historical details you wanted to include but felt were too controversial or speculative?

Michael: The idea for the book came when I was making a film about the Vatican a few years ago and was there, doing research. I learned that they had a spy agency. 

When I learned that the dedicated Nazi hunter Dr. Simon Wiesenthal called it “the best and most effective spy agency in the world” I took notice! 

And so, that’s when the research began on all aspects of Vatican espionage, and their financial history, as well as their activities during World War II. 

We did not feel anything was too controversial, but we wanted to make sure that it was all possible, in other words, could have happened within the historical context we had researched. 

Nancy: I love the question and it gets to the core of the book: Maddie is looking for missing money, stolen from the Vatican. To find out who took it, Maddie–journalist that she is–looks into where the money came from. 

And, if our lead character is digging into history so are we, and so is Michael. 

While making a documentary about the election of the Pope, Michael came to understand the Vatican had a spy agency. Then, while writing a magazine article, he investigated the Vatican’s bank in a piece called God’s Banker. 

It is a piece that certainly inspired this book, the first of the new Maddie Lynch spy series. Through research and interviews, Michael learned that in the old Vatican banking days, around WW2… no one was watching the money too closely. 

It was shocking to me to hear that! But as a point of fact it opens the door to a lot of possibilities storywise, about Nazi gold, where it came from, where it went. 

Much more is known about the ratlines and how in fact the Vatican, through a network of churches, helped Nazis escape. 

The Vatican feared, not the Nazis, but the growing power of the Soviet Union– the Godless Soviet Union, which would be a huge threat to the power of the Church… Yes, Power–part of the glamorous allure of evil.

For me this goes to the core of the book and the deep appeal of this spy series: Maddie uncovers secrets and exposes mysteries on behalf of the Vatican. 

While doing it she uncovers the mysteries of the Vatican itself–what did it know about the Holocaust, and when, and why didn’t the Church do more–if they did anything at all.

Norm: The Society of Blessed Urban II is a fictional group, but it echoes real-world religious fundamentalism. How did you balance fiction with the sensitivities of portraying extremist Catholic groups? 

Do you see parallels between SBUII and current religious or political movements today?

Michael: Indeed, the Society of Blessed Urban II is fictional, but it is based on so much that exists on the far-right borders of the Catholic church today. 

There are still many elements in the church who would happily subscribe to SBUII, and by representing their fictional aims, we wanted to present their very real dangers, which exist in all fundamentalisms, because the operating essence of all is that you are right. 

Everyone else is wrong, and when it gets pushed to the extreme, not only are you wrong but no longer worthy of life because of your inferiority to those who believe that they have a monopoly on the truth.  

So we didn’t really try to balance anything with those guys, because they are our villains, and as such, needed to be such.

Nancy: Is the Society of Blessed Urban II fictional? I think it could be another name for the Knights Templar. Richard I, aka Richard the Lionheart, led what I see today as a kind of religious cult, during the Third Crusade. (His pal Godfrey of Bouillon led the First Crusade in 1096-1099, and became the first ruler of Jerusalem! It all began with a call from Pope Urban II!) 

I applaud Michael’s reply: the Society is just one of many, too many, far-right groups within the Catholic church today. By fictionalizing them we get inside and can express the potent danger of these groups, and others like them, rising at the extreme borders of other faiths–like Reagan’s own faith.

They didn’t need to be balanced; we are not representing a real group in history. But they needed to be real, gripping and believable characters. 

Norm: Maddie’s father’s death is a key motivator for her. How did you use her personal history to deepen the novel’s themes of legacy, truth, and justice? 

Was it essential for you that Maddie’s journey was as much about healing and confronting her personal history as it was about solving the mystery? 

How does her personal growth deepen the novel's exploration of legacy, truth, and justice, making her story resonate more with readers?

Michael: Maddie follows in her murdered father’s footsteps by being a journalist, and in her journey, she wants to discover what really happened to him in the military conflict in Lebanon. 

We hear, these days, the term “the fog of war” being used a lot to explain things that don’t seem foggy at all, but Maddie believes she can lift the fog about how her father really died, and in doing that, find peace by finding truth. 

And then she will have to decide what justice that truth demands. We wanted to send her on the journey as a way to heal, and in Book 2, she will discover that the journey continues, and much more healing is needed.

Nancy: I’d like to say that Maddie’s loss of her beloved father puts her in a profound state of grief. She’s also just finished grad school, ended a long relationship, and is in a job she doesn’t love–with a Boss from Hell. 

When we meet her she is utterly, personally, psychologically lost. Add to that she is not a person of faith: she is not a practicing Catholic. I think that ’lostness’ we know and readers will connect with.

And yet the church calls upon her: the Vatican needs her. This is not what Maddie thought would happen, that she’d find ‘meaning’ in her life through the Church. But in helping the Vatican, Maddie also may also find out what happened to her father, how he was killed. 

To do that… and I love this part… Maddie becomes like her father. She taps into her memories of him and his journalistic skills; she is driven by his sayings about interview techniques, how to use silence to draw out conversation. 

She finds at a certain point she is actually finishing his unfinished work–which many have led to his death. And so, by Maddie confronting her own truth and grief, she is on the way to solving the mystery of her father’s death.

Her personal growth is marked by becoming relentless and fearless. And as she grows, I think readers will grow more attached to her: we’re on a journey with her, to help the Vatican, and as she becomes a spy, a brilliant and very moral spy, not blindly obedient to the Church, and who is also very much a woman.

Norm: How did you decide on the diverse locations-New York, Rome, Oxford, Dublin, and Jerusalem-and what unique atmospheres or themes did each bring to the story? 

Were there particular challenges or rewards in portraying these settings to enrich the narrative and its global scope? Was there a location that was especially challenging or rewarding to write about?

Michael: One of the pleasures of writing about the Catholic church is that it is global. So, the story demanded a global reach, and as we have had the pleasure of visiting all the places we write about, and which are relevant to the story, we loved exploring the world through our characters. Of course, in doing so, we had to be conscious of political realities in places, and not to engage in them with arguments pro or con, but to engage in their reality as Maddie would see it and then let her navigate it.

Nancy: I would love to say we picked our favorite destinations, and when this book is made into a miniseries–which we hope it is–we get to go there! But there is more than hope here and travel plans. 

The cities are some of the world’s power places and religious hubs, and also academic centers. They each bring, on the surface, their tourist-based charms and beauty. That is part of the draw for readers, but Maddie goes behind the scenes. 

So in New York City, the book begins inside an old church. Later, in Rome, the story takes us into the Vatican offices, even into the dressing room used by priests–places where the work happens, where secrets are buried and uncovered. 

There were challenges in getting well-known places ‘right’, and not ‘oversetting the scene’... In a few chapters, for instance, the story is set inside Saint Peter’s– we could have gone on for pages describing the art–or how the light falls so divinely on the marble floor. But we didn’t! 

If there was a location that was especially challenging and also rewarding it was also inside a church, an ancient church in Jerusalem where the evil characters conduct a secret meeting. 

It is a frightening chapter, but it had to be made real and human–even if the characters don’t seem fully human.

Norm: The novel critiques institutional corruption in the Church, government, and media. How do you see journalism’s role in holding powerful institutions accountable today?

Do you think Maddie’s approach—blending investigation with personal courage—is still possible in today’s media landscape?

Michael: It is our aim to correct all that is wrong with today’s journalism through Maddie and her work. I have worked as a journalist, and I am appalled at the quality of a lot of so-called mainstream journalism today. 

Some of that is the result of oligarchical owners wanting to curry favor with the government, which is not new, but needs to be countered, and is being countered by many writers on Substack. 

So, it’s interesting to see how the media today is being influenced by the people, when it comes to things like the Jeffrey Epstein files. That call for justice was not media driven, but popularly driven, and the media followed.  

Perhaps they will be reminded in this that, too, can and need to lead. There are still great, courageous journalists out there trying to find the truth, and there are still dark forces trying to stop them, and that’s what we’re up against, and so is Maddie. But we go on because that’s what we have always done. Tyrants fall in the end.

Nancy: Through Maddie and her work as a journalist, we see that journalism ‘can be owned’ by some rich person or conglomerate, and we also see her struggle for her own independent reporting. 

To do that she has to dig, she has to fight and be brave, and she has to be willing to face the truth whatever it is. I know that because some of my inspirational forces are journalists, like Rachel Maddow and Christiane Amanpour, and even Nellie Bly.

How do I see journalists holding institutions accountable today? I think it is harder and harder with the government and the judicial system being able to suppress documents and information (as in the Epstein and Maxwell trials). 

Reporters have to be relentless. They may have to step outside their own institutions, outside of NPR, NBC, etc., which always have some financial and political affiliation, to get the facts.

Norm: The theme of “truth vs. power” runs throughout the book. How do you think the novel’s message about truth resonates in an age of misinformation and conspiracy theories?

What do you hope readers take away about the cost of seeking truth in a world that often rewards silence?

Michael: If you value yourself, then you value the truth. Which, of course, is not true if you’re a malignant narcissist. But it is true if you want to leave the world better than you found it. 

The amount of lies that assault us each day can only continue for so long, as reality and truth have a way of coming forth to expose them. 

We see it happening now, when dealing with the lies about how well our economy is doing, and people see the reality in front of them that it is not doing well. 

That’s what I mean: you cannot hide behind lies forever, and one way or another, the truth will out. As for conspiracies, well, some of them are true, and some of them are not, and the challenge is to sort them. 

Nancy: I love the question. How do I think the novel’s message about truth resonates today, in an age of misinformation and conspiracy theories? Readers will see in the book that the characters in power, or who seek power, use lies to attain and keep their position. 

They buy and sell the truth as a weapon against their foes. In this power game the public is left to consider ‘who do they believe’ not ‘what do they believe.’

 I think this will resonate strongly for today’s readers as we all question where we go for the truth: is it to certain leaders? Newspapers? NPR? TikTok? Do we seek the truth without, or within?

I hope readers will see that seeking and speaking the truth is worth it, whatever the cost. Silence doesn't change anything.

Norm: The character of Victor Franchi is revealed to be the son of a war criminal. How did you want to explore the idea of inherited guilt and the weight of history?

Do you believe individuals can escape the sins of their ancestors, or are they always shaped by them?

Michael: I think we’re all held by our history, and even by trying to escape it, we’re shaped by it. Victor Franchi is the son of a very bad man, and so is that nature or nurture? 

I think it is very hard to escape a terrible parent, and those who have done so deal with it all their lives, even if they find a safe haven. 

My own history is as an Irish-Catholic Canadian-American whose grand-uncle murdered a British Army officer in Northern Ireland. I lived in England for five years, and I never wanted to kill anyone. 

So my own history was present, in that I knew what had happened between the country my father was born in and the country in which I was living, but I also had my own aims to fulfill, as a result of what kind of life my very peaceful father had given me. So that’s what I mean about being shaped by our history, as it will always be part of the story. 

Nancy: The character of Victor Franchi remains fascinating to me. He is the son of a war criminal, but like Maddie his life is dominated by the ghost of his father, and by that guilt. 

And also like Maddie, he means to finish what the father had started. But that is not a good thing!

Do I believe individuals can escape the sins of their ancestors, or are they always shaped by them? Well, here I have to show my cards: my mother was a therapist so I grew up with a very psychological understanding of human nature. 

And in the same way, if we don’t understand history, we are bound to repeat it, if we don’t understand our ‘pathology’ we are trapped by it. 

Throughout the Maddie Lynch series, readers will see Maddie awaken to her father’s past, her own inheritence and its terrible cost, and chose it – or not.

Norm: The novel warns against religious fundamentalism across faiths, while also promoting interfaith dialogue. How did you approach portraying Islam and Muslim characters without resorting to stereotypes?

What do you hope readers learn about the importance of Muslim-Christian dialogue from the book?

Michael: I am very interested in the Peoples of the Book. Judaism produces Christianity, and Islam comes out of both. So that’s the governing principle of all—we’re all connected. 

In dealing with Islam, we wanted to deal with humans who had a particular view of the world. If you get that right, you avoid a stereotype, and so that means asking what it is they truly want. 

What do fundamentalists truly want? To be right. They believe that they are, but it’s not enough. They have to inflict their “rightness” on others, so in our engagement with interfaith dialogue we were careful to pay attention to creating characters who wanted what they wanted for reasons that made sense to them and their story. We hope that readers realize that Muslim-Christian dialogue is a good thing. We’re all on the same planet, and we need to speak to each other, and help each other to live well.

Nancy: I’ve always been interested in World Religions. I grew up Unitarian and that meant Sunday School was learning about other faiths: we’d go to synagogues, to mosques, to churches. I grew up seeing the connection of us all as a human family, and how our faith informs the best of ourselves. 

We wanted that connectedness to be alive throughout the book. And so, for instance, in creating Maddie’s pal, who is Muslim, the character is also gay, hardworking, has no interest in fashion, and has a sweet tooth–she’s very human! 

So are other Muslim characters, and Catholic and Jewish characters. That is how you avoid a stereotype, by bringing in complexity and contradictions to your character which are powerfully and wonderfully human.

We hope that readers will see how the Muslim-Christian dialogue is necessary. Even if there are impasses and disagreements, as long as you are talking, there is a conversation, then there is hope– and the possibility of a real and lasting peace.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and The Glamour of Evil: A Maddie Lynch Mystery?

Michael: Please visit our WEBSITE  to find out more about us and our company. 

We started BookGo to help writers get their stories out there, and in doing so, got Glamour out there as well.

Nancy: Yes, and please ask your favorite indie bookseller to carry the book!

Norm; As we conclude our interview, the book ends with a message about vigilance against extremism and the importance of personal courage. What do you hope readers will do—or think—after finishing the novel?

If there were a sequel, what new challenges or themes would you want to explore for Maddie?

Michael: There is definitely a sequel in the works, and in it, Maddie must be even braver as she goes forward and deeper into her own story. Vigilance against extremism is very important as it’s the only way we find peace in our world.

However, since we posit that evil really exists, as that is what Maddie discovers, then we know that this conflict will continue between good and evil. Until we turn the whole show over to AI, and ask it to create world peace, which it will do by wiping out all the humans! 

Nancy: Yes, there is a sequel in the works! In our forthcoming books, we'll see Maddie grow as a character and a spy, coming to terms with grief, and also letting love into her life. 

Yes, Maddie will have to face work-life-spy balance! She will also take on more mysteries surrounding the Vatican; how Popes are made and unmade, how the Church relates to other faiths– and other governments. 

The series will also look at the nature of Good and Evil, and how the Church can do good work in a very turbulent century.

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