The Ninth Day

At the start of Freveletti’s exciting third thriller featuring ultra-marathoner and chemist Emma Caldridge (after Running Dark), Caldridge runs into trouble while searching for night-blooming plants on the Arizona/Mexico border in the form of Eduardo La Valle, a powerful Mexican drug lord, who chases and captures her. A dire situation worsens after La Valle learns she’s a chemist and demands that she save his blighted marijuana fields outside Ciudad Juarez from a disease that’s also killing the “expendable” workers. Literally under the gun, Caldridge struggles to understand and find a cure for the ravaging disease. She also plots to escape, aided by fellow captive Oswald Kroger, an MIT dropout who like Caldridge ran afoul of La Valle’s gang, but her attempts to do so are thwarted, and ironically, serve to make her wanted for various crimes in the U.S. The stakes rise after La Valle decides to use the blighted marijuana to spread the virulent disease in the States. Caldridge’s grit, ingenuity, and courage should win her new fans. (Oct.)