Jane Hawk—fiction’s most relentless, resourceful, stunning new heroine—continues her battle against a murderous conspiracy in the riveting sequel to The Silent Corner.

“No time to delay. Do what you were born to do. Fame will be yours when you do this.”

These are the words that ring in the mind of mild-mannered, beloved schoolteacher Cora Gundersun—just before she takes her own life, and many others’, in a shocking act of carnage. When the disturbing contents of her secret journal are discovered, it seems certain that she must have been insane. But Jane Hawk knows better.

In the wake of her husband’s inexplicable suicide—and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals—Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment. But these ruthless people bent on hijacking America’s future for their own monstrous ends never banked on a highly trained FBI agent willing to go rogue—and become the nation’s most wanted fugitive—in order to derail their insidious plans to gain absolute power with a terrifying technological breakthrough.

Driven by love for her lost husband and by fear for the five-year-old son she has sent into hiding, Jane Hawk has become an unstoppable predator. Those she is hunting will have nowhere to run when her shadow falls across them.

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of the publisher.

FBI agent gone rogue Jane Hawk continues her relentless search for the shadowy organisation behind the death of her husband and the terrifying threats against her son. Yet more despicable acts are perpetrated against innocent people by a seemingly lone wolf home-grown terrorist in a close-knit Minnesota community.

Local sheriff Luther Tillman refuses to believe such a despicable act could have been carried out by a mild-mannered, much respected special needs teacher and digs into the life of the suspect, fuelled on by the FBI and Department for Homeland Security shutting him and his office out of the investigation. His discoveries led him to a town fully populated with people under nano-tech control. An inevitable collision course with Jane is inevitable given her trail of the senior members of The Arcadians leads her to the same pseudo-community.

Once again, Koontz has succeeded in creating a fast paced book thanks to short, pacy chapters and characters that as a reader I felt I could really invest in. New characters including Luther Tillman are highly likeable, while the villains of the story are utterly loathsome but not in a Disneyesque way. They were believable but utterly arrogant and self assured. 

The story twists and turns towards its conclusion, unveiling layers upon layers that change the direction and dynamic of proceedings. Discovering there are more books in the series is a wonderful gift knowing I have more of Jane Hawk and her unwavering drive to uncover the truth yet to come.

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