When Hack’s cover artist Jonny M. was having a conversation with his friend, black standup comedian Dévyan DuMon, Dévyan went into a comic riff on racial matters and kept giving Jonny openings to join in. Jonny, being a wealthy, entitled lily-white, dude knew there was no goddamned way that he could say a word on the subject and curled up into a self-conscious pretzel, to Dévyan’s conspicuous amusement.
Hack loved hearing about Jonny’s anguish and wrote this Cold War espionage thriller to immortalize it. It sold well in Berkeley.