Todd Moss, formerly the top American diplomat in West Africa, draws on his real-world experiences inside the U.S. Government to bring to life the exhilaration—and frustrations—of modern-day foreign policymaking. The Golden Hour was originally inspired by the August 2008 coup d’état in Mauritania when Todd was dispatched by Secretary Condoleezza Rice to negotiate with the junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

After Todd left the State Department at the end of 2008, he created Judd Ryker and started writing, in the early mornings before his kids woke up, a novel about an army takeover in Mali. In a twist of fate, just weeks after Todd completed the first draft of The Golden Hour, the real President of Mali was overthrown in a coup. Within days, the northern half of the country was overrun by Tuareg separatists and Islamist extremists, a threat to Africa and the world that was only ended by a French military invasion in early 2013.