Paladin Will Travel, 507 Broad Street, Lake Geneva, WI (2026)

05/15/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VII, Chapter I
The world did not explode as a whole, only the microcosmic life I'd built so cleverly yet haphazardly in embracing real-life espionage and social exchange began to shiver and tremble. My life of many braided and living fibers was harshly strummed by the nearly invisible but punishing hand of the CIA. Loaded with iodine, pulled back from a disappearing island, and deliberately reassigned immediately to nautical service up in the Arctic wasn't causing overload...it was overload itself. My arrival in Nome, Alaska, alone at a closed bar, where cleanup becomes a soothing balm of relief. How many layers of my onion-like life must be painfully laid back before any true progress or accomplishment can be allowed to surface...

It has taken a monumental effort, dragging bruised and sometimes broken parts across shoals, given the appearance of fine lips of moving sand, to reach up and make the attempt to edit, design, assemble, and print volumes V and VI to continue the saga has been like staring up into the curl of a closing wall of solid tsunami wave, facing into it and plunging forward. If you like this series and what came before, then throw your heft into this fight to rise to the surface and survive. Buy any or all of my books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, SmashSwords, or order direct: James Strauss, 507 Broad Street, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 53147

The only ‘accidental’ discharge or ignition of an atomic device on U.S. soil in the history of nuclear weaponry had come to be blamed on me. Not the United States Navy, which was present; not ex-Navy Seal Marcinko, who was present; and not my control officer, who was also distantly present. The ...

04/30/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter ###III
This is the last chapter of volume VI and the next chapter will begin volume VII.
The mission goes as planned but does not stick cohesively together. Peter Kohler is out of it and then back in, which was hard to accommodate until it happened to me. The event occurs but not conventionally, and the island becomes a place of mere memory and washing sand and sea. I am more than wounded as some plans went far astray from what was expected, and my own state, following detonation, was not one allowing for full recall...only reconstruction from the memories of others, which are not always accurate, either by accident or design. This last chapter concludes volume VI, leaving more mystery which will be investigated deeper as next week's first chapter of the new volume will demonstrate.

Please consider purchasing all the first four volumes as Chuck struggles to get the fifth and now sixth volumes printed and distributed. This series is unlike anything I've ever read, much less written, and has more priority or even classified information than is likely good for me...but it's my birthday on the 30th, and I'm now old enough not to care. You will want to have this collection and then review it when you come across other data that makes the unbelievable events of my life totally believable.

I was on the stern of the Princess, lying across the stern stoop cushion stretching from one side of the hull to the other, a vortex of gentle winds blowing across my body. The aroma of sea brine and the faint, tiny drops of moisture created by the boat’s passage were the only similarities to […...

04/23/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter ###II

All the horsepower, naval power, money, time, and energy come to the line of departure as the twin Lamborghini-powered Princess makes its landing on Murder Island. As expected, things begin to happen automatically, as Tony hinted they would, and the plan to take care of the errant abandoned device is set up and prepared for detonation. The tensity is sharp, but its edge is placed against a nearly opaque surface. The time to cut the cord or set it off has arrived.

Los Alamos National Laboratory was the facility to which enriched elements were shipped from the Oak Ridge enrichment facility in Tennessee. The gas centrifuge plant is the single largest structure on the planet where all enrichment is performed for atomic or nuclear weapons in the hands of the Unit...

04/18/2026

BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY. Short Story by James Strauss

The game, or rather games of espionage, are not those as portrayed in movies. The home office keeps secrets from field forces and agents, as do the field agents from the home office analysts. This story is about some of those secrets and how field agents both survive and come to trust or distrust one another. This story is not one of fiction, but of a living reality apportioned equally with adaptive capacity and action, while also delivering the pain of lost honor, trust, and friendship. To be a surviving field agent, one must have the absolutely most valuable ability...to possess perseverance. The night comes and stays, but only perseverance many times allows for having the absolute knowledge that dawn is coming once again.

Arch Patton stood on the roof of Hotel St. Gotthard, the only hotel less than half a kilometer from the train station, and overlooking the Bahnhaufstrasse.

04/09/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter ###I
The intensity of the 'double blind, double secret' mission becomes ever more evident with Kohler becoming a part of the mission. A man in complete violation of the Agency's rules about civilians accompanying active agents on missions. The device becomes real and its retrieval or destruction becomes more arcane by the minute, with everyone wanting to be involved with the mission but wanting also to be a safe distance away should things go catastrophically wrong.

Given the data provided by Peter Kohler, there was no way I could call in a dust off on the island, as I’d planned, using the Huey Cobras. The ‘tube’ that led down into the underground or underground sand repository below the island had to be fragile at its topmost entry. The penetrating round...

04/01/2026

IF YOU GO AWAY...
Op/Ed
By James Strauss

The price of combat in war is not truly understood nor believed if explained by those who went. Television series, war movies, and the slanted military and mass media news continue to disguise the true cost to those who are sent or choose to go into such armed conflict. From actual engaged combat on the ground, there is literally no return, either from ending in a body bag or becoming psychologically killed off to become more of a zombie or a shredded version of what was once a real, thinking, caring, and loving human before engagement. Here is my story and the result, which, if you go, will be your very own.

Opinion/Editorial IF YOU GO AWAY… The country of the United States heads into a ground combat war in the desert, a desert portrayed in Hollywood style in the old Gary Cooper movie called Beau Geste. The setting will not be far off, sand and mountains, and viciously murderous enemies killing his fe...

03/28/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter XXIX
The preparations have been made for the odd mystery of a mission, that some seemed to know bits and pieces about but not the whole story. I wanted the whole thing to be called off, so I waited with some anxiety for the final phone call, which wasn't even made to me. I had to call Toney and get the news, which was another oddity. 'Stand-off distance' was the phrase I'd heard my father use when he'd gone out on the Kukui Coast Guard ship from Oahu to observe the Johnson Island tests so many years before. Every other human, and almost all the physical assets the Navy could bring to bear, would be some distance away if things went wrong. Those on the mission would never know if it went wrong. We'd simply be vaporized before our senses could even register that we were dead and gone. The Murder Island event I'd started out wanting to be a part of was now filling me with dread.
All the books out there today are drawing down more money than I pay to have them and send out, even autographed. The ones I send out on the orders of readers are well worth their price, at least in my opinion. Thanks for whatever you do as it all sure helps this adventure continue.

I wanted to have a part in loading the boat, simply because if I knew where things were being placed and an emergency came up, then there’d be no delay in getting to what was needed. Not that the entire mission wasn’t just a rolling emergency. But, even more important than that, I had to […]

03/19/2026

EGRESS, Short Story by James Strauss
Dedicated to Jean Auel

The fictional events of an intrusive, violent CIA mission gone very wrong and ending up very successful, but badly, depending upon one's perspective. The entire story is fiction, or at least the names of those involved are, as some of the actions you will read have forever-punishing complications for survivors. It was a harrowing and "Eiger Sanction" time, and the wind coming up over high cliffs, while standing on the top edge looking down, takes anyone right back who might have been there.

The 14 books I have published are selling, and I hope you will take advantage of getting autographed copies while the autograher is still here to sign them. And my great thanks if you do.
Semper fi,
Jim!

EGRESS A Short Story By James Strauss The decision was the fastest and most fateful he had ever made, but living with the result was going to be problematic, even if the life he had left was to be very short in duration. Josh stood with his back pressed into the hard, cold granite. He […]

03/15/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter XXVIII
The preparations brokenly assembled in planning gain momentum with the very surprising and unlikely entry of Marcinko onto my team, as his experience, vastly different than my own begins to pay dividends as the real objective of the mission is revealed but not in sufficient enough detail to lay out everything we should, but will not, know before kicking off from the line of departure. The understanding about why the DEA and the U.S. Navy want to be as distant as possible from any physical effects is explained and understandable to men and women who have been in real combat. No one in their right mind wants to snuggle up to an armed hydrogen bomb. The active part of the mission now begins. Murder Island looms on the horizon.

Thank you all for purchasing my books. The value of signed books has zoomed up with some of them going for over a hundred dollars used and signed. Not many of those with remarks are on the market. Some people must have realized that I have to be in my eighties to be writing these. Get an autographed copy of any or all the books.

I called Tony, and before he could say a word, I read him the riot act about his inclusion of Marcinko on the mission in any way. “You done now?” was all he responded with. “I breathed in and out deeply. Marcinko and the others, including the clerical staff, had gone off to Sadie’s Restauran...

03/07/2026

THE COWARDLY LION, Volume VI, Chapter XXVII
The last planning and supply stages kicking off the Murder Island Mission begin to be completed, as the CIA funds everything requested without question. The surrounding players make appearances looking to feather their own nests, although not at any real expense to anything but the mission's seemingly unlimited budget. I begin to feel queasy about entering into a mission without understanding yet what it is truly all about, only being able to guess that it has something to do with a 'broken arrow' or nuclear device under the control or possession of someone or something not authorized to have it.

It was the water; I finally figured it out. It wasn’t the clear, fresh aroma of the mid-Pacific that swirled around the island chain of Hawaii—in those waters had been the clarity, the slightly salty sense of crystal purity, and a welcoming temperature that seemed to draw one down into the inter...

Paladin Will Travel

05/15/2026

04/30/2026

04/23/2026

04/18/2026

04/09/2026

04/01/2026

03/28/2026

03/19/2026

03/15/2026

03/07/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category