8 Seconds to Midnight

Well-developed main characters and plausible technical details help make a familiar plot fresh in Leifer’s thriller. In the near future, the United Islamic State, an ISIS-like group, activates sleeper agents planted 15 years earlier as part of a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. UIS leader Ibrahim al-Bakr’s influential ally in the Pakistani military, Gen. Ash Patel, the chairman of that country’s ordinance factories, has made it possible for UIS to steal enough uranium to make a 15-megaton bomb, a scheme that U.S. intelligence learns of through a CIA asset romantically involved with Patel’s deputy. As the clock ticks down to the fatal hour, America’s efforts to prevent the detonation are led by Cmdr. John Hart, a “physician, Navy Seal, and senior intelligence officer” who’s the president’s go-to person during national crises. Leifer keeps readers guessing as to whether Hart and his team will succeed, though his imagined future, in which UIS had already killed thousands at America’s busiest airports, is underdeveloped. Fans of Tom Clancy and the TV series 24 will be riveted. [em](BookLife) [/em]