Young adult fiction
Terpening began his first novel (
In Light’s Delay) while an undergraduate at the University of Oregon in the late 60s, where he also worked as a features reporter for the
Oregon Daily Emerald. He completed his second novel (
The Echoes of Our Two Hearts, unpublished) as a graduate student at Berkeley. A third novel,
The Turning, was released in 2001 and serves as the first volume in this trilogy of young-adult novels.
In Light’s Delay is the story of a young man’s quest for self-discovery and love in the mid-1960s. The novel depicts the experiences of Doug Herman and his friends over the course of ten nights, at different times and places, as it follows Doug from the family farm in Oregon to a series of adventures in Italy, Mexico, and back in California.
The Turning, a coming-of-age tale, tells the story of Artie Crenshaw, a teenager with an abusive father. At his job one night, Artie decides to postpone going home, and the events that follow as a result of this decision cause him more trouble but ultimately help spur his progression towards manhood. Karen Hoth, writing in the
School Library Journal, praised the “well-written story,” proclaiming the characters “well developed” and the book itself “touching.” The book was selected for inclusion on The New York Public Library’s
2002 Books For The Teen Age List, the “best of the previous year’s publishing for teenagers,” by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association for their
Top Forty Young-Adult Novels for 2001, and by Appleton North High School (Appleton, Wisconsin) for their
Top 25 Recommended Reading (2002).
Suspense
Inspired by the suspense fiction he was reading (notably Clive Cussler, Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins, and David Morrell), Terpening began work on a thriller while teaching at Loyola University of Chicago, where he used the Chicago Public Library for technical research (
Cloud Cover, unpublished).
Storm Track
His first published thriller,
Storm Track (New York: Walker & Company, 1989), was inspired, in part, by Cussler’s
Mediterranean Caper. As part of the research for this book, Terpening became a certified scuba diver.
Storm Track tells the story of a commercial oil-field diver, working on a jack-up off the coast of Tunisia, where his wife is killed in a terrorist attack. William C. McCully (Park Ridge Public Library, Illinois), writing in
Library Journal, praised the thriller’s “non-stop action” and “breathtaking pace,” as well as its settings in Italy, Sicily, Malta, and Tunisia. And Suzy Smith, author of
The Afterlife Codes,
The Book of James, and
Ghost Writers in the Sky, in
The Write Word, called Terpening “the next Ken Follett.”
League of Shadows
Terpening’s second thriller,
League of Shadows (2005), was a contemporary novel of intrigue with an extensive back story that takes place in Italy during the Fascist Era. The historical scenes depict the efforts of three spies in 1943 to infiltrate Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s secret police, the OVRA. Decades after that intrigue went horribly wrong, an unknown enemy begins to hunt down the former secret agents, and their one hope for survival is an ex-cop obsessed with his mission. The Midwest Book Review called the novel “an addictive read, weaving together human drive, determination, and betrayal into a gripping whole”, while Lucille Cormier, in
The Historical Novels Review, said that “You can race through this suspense thriller riding the whirlwind of drug busts, jungle guerrilla attacks, gun fights, assassinations, and love affairs right into the breathtaking climax. Or, if you are disciplined enough, you can turn each page slowly and savor the extraordinary visual and historical detail Ron Terpening has painted into his complex story. Either way, you are in for a treat. This is a book to add to every collection of historical fiction.” Joel Tscherne (Cleveland Public Library) noted in
Library Journal that this is a novel that “fans of Jack Higgins’s thrillers will enjoy.”
Tropic of Fear
Influenced by movies such as Costa Gavras’s
State of Siege (1973) and books such as Robert Stone’s
A Flag for Sunrise (1981), Terpening turned for his next thriller,
Tropic of Fear (2006), to South America. Barbara Conaty, writing in
Library Journal, noted that “this thriller takes readers deep into the politics of Paraguay.” She thought that Terpening “imbue[d] his main characters with psychological depth, infuse[d] the book with local color galore, and fashion[ed] a deft plot.” As for the plot, two Americans, a hydrogeologist from Arizona and a professor of German from Yale University, both visiting Asunción but originally unknown to one another, are inadvertently drawn into the middle of a conspiracy to overthrow the Paraguayan government. The male protagonist’s occupation came in for discussion in the
Arizona Water Resource magazine. The editor wrote:
Taking popular entertainment as a measure one might likely conclude that those laboring in the hydrology and water resources field lack glamor, sex appeal and heroic qualities. Has any such character ever figured in plots on stage, screen, television or in books, to save the day, solve the mystery, woo the heroine and ride off into the sunset, or even to add spice and interest to a story?Those who have noted this lamentable omission will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that Tropic of Fear, a recently published thriller, features a hydrogeologist as a worthy protagonist.
In an interview published in
Liens, Legami, Links Terpening noted:
When I was a kid, my father told me about an accident that happened while he was working on Grand Coulee Dam in Washington. (At the time, Grand Coulee Dam was the world’s largest dam.) One day, a crane operator failed to see him, swung a quarter-ton bucket of wet concrete into his side, and knocked him off the dam. He managed to reach around in midair, grabbed the bottom rim of the bucket, swung out with it, and when it came back in dropped into the middle of a patch of fresh concrete.My own “felicitous fall” took place when I was working on a new gym for Portland State College (now University). I was three stories up, walking along scaffolding with a bucket of clip-ties in my arms when I happened to step on a plank that went only halfway between two platforms. I woke up a few moments later, sixty feet below, lying on the concrete floor. I had landed on the bucket, which cracked three ribs, but that and the hard hat I was wearing saved my life.Years later, when I sat down to write Tropic of Fear, a political thriller set in South America, I thought of those experiences. They became part of the background of a secondary character, “Dink” Denton, a former roughneck, ex-Apache helicopter pilot in both Panama and the First Gulf War, now undercover in Paraguay as a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In a
Booklist review, David Pitt commented on “small flaws in the plot,” but observed that the “brisk clip” and pace of the action overcame that flaw. Christine Wald-Hopkins, a reviewer for the
Tucson Weekly, noted this novel’s affinities with the earlier
League of Shadows, pointing out that the “malignant confluence of internal and external forces in contemporary Paraguay . . . has its own fascist resonance.” And the Midwest Book Review concluded: “Vivid, descriptive, imaginative, and chilling in its presentation of the lengths human beings will go to dominate one another,
Tropic of Fear is an exciting thrill ride from first page to last.”
Nine Days in October
In 2007, Terpening published a contemporary international suspense thriller,
Nine Days in October, “his most successful fictional foray into the murk of international crime.” Jonathan Pearce (California State University, Stanislaus-Stockton), writing in
Library Journal, says that Terpening “gets his latest book off to a slam-bang start in Rome with a botched heist by terrorists. During the robbery, a visiting American professor is wounded and his daughter kidnapped, possibly for ransom.” Set in 1988, as competing government security organizations are preparing to welcome both the Soviet premier and the U.S. president to Italy, the novel’s complex plot, Pearce says, “revolves around a... professor's attempts to find his child while he is unknowingly trapped in an assassination scheme involving rogue CIA agents, venal U.S. executives, Soviet oligarchs, and corrupt Italian security officials.” He concludes that “The reader roots for a weary Italian security officer to do his job better than the villains do theirs. The author's research is evidently extensive, the writing competent, the suspense gripping, and the characterization of beastly adversaries and noble protagonists effective. The sense of place is bolstered with such an abundance of native vocabulary and street and building names that Italophiles will feel right at home.”
In an interview conducted by
Contemporary Authors, Terpening said: “My desire to create imaginary worlds through fiction springs, as I suspect it does for most writers, from a love of reading. From early grade school years, when I was given my first books (most still in my library today) and when I lived one house away from the public library in Gresham, Oregon (where I spent most of my free time), to the present, when I teach Italian literature for a living, my addiction has been not to candy, rock 'n' roll, TV, drugs, sex, or gambling, but to the book...both as an artifact and as a source of delight, a distraction from the constraints of life. A good book carries you away and never lets you down.”
Terpening has also reviewed over 125 novels (mostly suspense) for
Library Journal.
