First Strike

Bestseller Coes piles disaster on top of disaster in his melodramatic sixth thriller featuring CIA operative Dewey Andreas (after 2015’s Independence Day). Several years in the past, Mark Raditz, the deputy U.S. secretary of defense, decided to invest $2 billion from a secret fund in Tristan Nazir, a jihadist who wanted to create a Muslim state based on the American political system, in the hope that Nazir will bring some stability to the Middle East. That gamble backfired, as Nazir ended up the leader of ISIS. Things get even worse for Raditz in the present when Nazir takes Raditz’s ex-wife and daughter hostage and demands a massive resupply of weapons in return for their safety. Meanwhile, Dewey goes on a perilous mission inside Syria to hook up with an American consulate official; the official is in touch with a highly placed source within ISIS who claims that the terrorist group has been funded and armed by the U.S. Fans of the Die Hard movie franchise will find the swift pacing and escalating threats and complications to their taste. [em]125,000-copy first printing; author tour. Agent: Nicole James, Chalberg & Sussman. (June) [/em]