Family Money

Alex Mahan, the narrator of this suspenseful thriller from Zunker (the David Adams series), is grateful to his father-in-law, Joe Dobson, for investing $5 million in his Austin, Tex., software company three years earlier. Now, to help his daughters, ages five and seven, appreciate their family’s good fortune, Alex decides to take them and his wife, Joe’s daughter, to Mexico to do volunteer work at an orphanage. Joe and his wife go along. One day, while Alex and Joe are grocery shopping, three young men abduct Joe. The police tell Alex to expect a ransom note soon, but no such note materializes, and Joe winds up dead in a car fire in what was likely “a ransom situation gone wrong.” Back in Austin, Alex starts looking into Joe’s finances and uncovers irregularities in the $5 million investment, which was wired from an account in the Cayman Islands. The deeper he digs into Joe’s past, the more Alex fears for his family’s safety. The action barrels along to a shocking conclusion. Zunker knows how to keep the reader hooked. Agent: David Hale Smith, InkWell Management. (Feb.)