AN INTERVIEW WITH RYAN M. HOLT, AUTHOR OF TOMORROW COMES THE BULLET
A Profile of Ryan M. Holt, Author of Tomorrow Comes the Bullet
by Nat Lohry
Originally published in volume 47 of On Art’s Hills
Ryan M. Holt’s study is a manifestation of his mind: curated chaos. The air is a civilized blend of incense, old paper, leather, and the sharp, dark aroma of the espresso he is slowly sipping.
This is a polyglot's library. Teetering stacks of Roberto Bolaño, Umberto Eco, and Patrick Modiano novels compete for space with science fiction novels by Neal Stephenson and Iain M. Banks. A vintage Italian poster for a Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West leans against a bookshelf housing a serious collection of theological texts.
He sits opposite me in a double-breasted suit of navy corduroy and a pair of gold-rimmed, round spectacles that seem both academic and whimsical. He's a polymath in the truest sense: a trained classical tenor, a literary scholar, a fragrance connoisseur, a film critic, and a passionate advocate for the life well-lived. If you’re one of the many who follow his Analyze This, Mister Bond social media profiles, you know him as an eminent analyst of all things 007 and the broader realm of spy fiction.
Now, he has built a spy of his own. Soon, Ryan M. Holt will publish his debut novel, Tomorrow Comes the Bullet. It's the first in an eight-book series, The Vagabond Cycle, a project he has been quietly constructing for over a decade. I sat down with him on his home turn to discuss his move from critic to creator.
NAT LOHRY: You run Analyze This, Mister Bond, a social media project dedicated to 007 analysis. After a career of deconstructing the world’s most iconic superspy, why build one of your own?
RYAN M. HOLT: I wanted to write the sort of novels that I want to read.
I dreamed of writing a spy novel as a young boy (and even have the early attempts to prove it). These ideas have always been with me, always in need of an outlet. There is something peculiarly fascinating to me about spies, these strange human beings who drift in and out of the shadows of history, adopting false identities while navigating the ambiguities and ethical compromises of global power.
And, for my tastes, the contemporary spy genre has become increasingly thin. The lush, vital strangeness the genre had in the 1960s and 1970s, when things like The Prisoner or The Quiller Memorandum or Shibumi could emerge as cultural artifacts, has faded away. The modern thriller tends to feel like a prefabricated house. It's efficient, but you wouldn't want to live there.
The power of a Fleming or Deighton yarn lay in rich texture and character. A good spy novel is about creating a space, an atmosphere, where human anxieties and longings can play out in a deadly game.
NL: Tell us about your protagonist, Silas Thorn, and The Vagabond Cycle.
RMH: Silas Thorn, who uses the codename Vagabond (hence the name of the series), is my attempt to create a kind of philosophical agent. We've had a glut of blunt instruments and brooding bureaucrats. Silas Thorn is in the lineage of characters like Patrick MacGoohan's John Drake: a clever, skilled man who had as much intellect as brawn.
Thorn is a man of no nation, working for a clandestine group, the Obscurati. The Obscurati emerged in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was a moment when humanity stared down the barrel of cataclysm. The Obscurati have devoted themselves to staving off threats of extinction-level events.
In our current moment and the near future, the adversary is no longer the nuclear state. It's become the unchecked, hubristic momentum of our own technology, which is rapidly reshaping culture, consciousness, and power. Thorn encounters these threats in liminal spaces, the cracks that exist between nations, which may be the only place true history is ever made.
NL: The first book, Tomorrow Comes the Bullet, starts with an art forgery ring?
RMH: I am fascinated with the subject of art forgery. What is the difference between a masterpiece and its perfect copy? At the heart of Tomorrow Comes the Bullet lies the question of authenticity and replication. What happens to art and language in a world where they can both be synthesized through pattern recognition? When technology has its way with humanity, with the language of the past still be intelligible to human descendants of our future?
I don't want to suggest the book is too serious or overly thematic, it's a spy fantasy very much in the the outrageous vein of Fleming, but I hope readers can enjoy an adventure with a dash of philosophy.
NL: Your followers know your passion for fragrance and sartorial matters. How much of that sensory detail is on the page?
RMH: We live in an age that is terrified of genuine, cultivated, idiosyncratic pleasure and style, especially in America, where there’s still a strong Puritanical streak, some strain of austerity and conformity, that goes back this nation’s early days. I have instinctually resisted that from my earliest days.
But to bring that back to the matter of writing: our stories have become too ruthlessly economical and austere. Our escapism is too content with too little, too afraid of lushness. To experience pleasure is to connect with our physical humanity, the nervous system itself. It’s something to celebrate for its own sake.
Silas Thorn, like me, believes that pleasure, true aesthetic appreciation, is a form of nourishment. I hope I’ve been able to bring some of that into the page.
NL: One last question. After over a decade of work on The Vagabond Cycle, you’re finally approaching the moment where it will be given over to an audience. What is the one thing you hope readers feel when they close Tomorrow Comes the Bullet?
RMH: I hope they feel satisfied, in the way that a great meal of excellent food and provocative conversation is uniquely satisfying. I hope it's an experience that lingers and leaves them impatient for the next volume.
Tomorrow Comes the Bullet, the first book in The Vagabond Cycle, launches in 2027.
