It is a dream come true for me.

A mixture of North Carolina public affairs and North Carolina books.

Only rarely does a prominent North Carolina public figure write a book that promises to be a success and maybe even a bestseller.

Now it is happening twice.

First, there is North Carolina’s Secretary of Transportation Tony Tata. Tata, a retired U. S. Army general and former Wake County schools superintendent, writes under the name A. J. Tata.

foreign-and-domestic-book-coverHis latest, Foreign and Domestic, hit the bookstores last week.

It is an international terrorist spy thriller. The action begins in Afghanistan. Army Capt. Jake Mahagan has led a Delta Force team on a mission to capture a turncoat known as the American Taliban.

“Move over, Tom Clancy,” says Fox News about Tata and the new book.

The mission is a failure. The American Taliban gets away and Mahagan loses his best friend and partner. Then Mahagan kills a captured high-level Taliban operative.

As result, he leaves the Army in disgrace with the strong possibility of a dishonorable discharge hanging around his neck.

The action shifts to North Carolina, where Mahagan grew up and now seeks to hide from the federal agents on his trail. He spends his time on five-mile swims in the sounds near Manteo and communing with endangered red wolves in the nearby forests. The animals seem to recognize Mahagan’s Native American ancestry and treat him like a brother.

Not far away, a rogue military contractor is operating a complicated smuggling operation involving top-secret communications equipment and long-lost pirate gold. They use “ghost” labor, actually captured Taliban fighters, diverted from military prisons. They have a connection to the American Taliban, whose terrorist activities on American soil solidify the need for the contractor’s expensive services.

Mahagan seizes the opportunity to clear his name and get revenge for the loss of his friend. His determined heroics reminds one reader of Jack Bauer of the TV program “24” and another of best-selling author Lee Child’s heroic character Jack Reacher.

To me, he was just a tough North Carolina James Bond.

Whatever other character he might evoke, Jake Mahagan takes Tata’s readers on a wild ride with gun and knife fights, high-tech weapons, a parachute jump into the open ocean for action on the high seas, and lots of deception and dead bodies. All of it leads up to a surprising and satisfying ending.

SOG-E-188x300In the second book, Sea of Greed, N. C. Court of Appeals Judge J. Douglas McCullough and co-author Les Pendleton tell the real story of how an abortive marijuana smuggling operation on the North Carolina coast led to the downfall of Panama’s dictator General Manuel Noriega and the U.S. invasion of that country. McCullough had a big role in bringing hundreds of drug smugglers to justice. The story, however, focuses on the audacity and careful planning of the smugglers and how their carelessness led to their downfall.

As McCullough takes readers from the smugglers’ off-loading operations in North Carolina, to the marijuana distribution center in Detroit, to the high altitude lovemaking in the private jet of the smugglers, to Noriega’s private estate in Panama, he does something that Tata does not try to do.

His story rings true as it entertains.

Therein lies another story. It is the story of the book, which McCullough wrote and first self-published unsuccessfully several years ago. Instead of giving up, he got help and got a publisher.

The result is well worth his efforts.

Both books give readers something special: good stories with lots of North Carolina connections, written by people who work for us every day in their day jobs.