Bill Jr. asked Bill Mesce Jr.:

Endeavour Press has reprinted two of the books from your WW II trilogy originally published by Bantam -- THE ADVOCATE and OFFICER OF THE COURT -- but not the third book, THE DEFENDER. It seems to have been replaced by A COLD AND DISTANT PLACE. Why the switch?

Bill Mesce Jr. Bantam and I had always viewed the novels from different perspectives. I thought of them as war dramas, while Bantam considered them legal thrillers. The first two novels -- THE ADVOCATE and OFFICER OF THE COURT -- had enough of both that it was never a problem, but Bantam and I had a major disagreement over the creative concept of the third novel, including that I wanted it to be the series finale, and Bantam wanted the series to continue on. In the end, to make the book conform to Bantam's needs, the manuscript was cut by 50-60% and the ending rewritten to allow for further sequels. For the most part, the bulk of THE DEFENDER consists of a trimmed version of the original manuscript's second act framed by vastly cut down versions of the first and third acts.
Although there would be no further entries in the series, this wasn't a matter of who was right and who was wrong. As evidenced by the reviews for THE DEFENDER, this truncated version works quite nicely; it just wasn't the story I wanted to tell.
When Endeavour Press approached me about reprinting the series, I agreed on the proviso that I could replace THE DEFENDER with something which restored most of the edited material. This is A COLD AND DISTANT PLACE.
I don't honestly know if COLD/DISTANT will work for people who haven't read the first two novels, and I can only hope that those who did think well of this final installment. That remains to be seen. For myself, however, my satisfaction comes from finally giving the series a true finale, completing, for the first time, the arc of one man's journey through the war.

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