With each riveting new thriller, author G.M. Ford garners more critical praise for the breakneck, revved-up, nonstop style that has catapulted him into the upper echelon of contemporary crime writers. Now he returns with his most harrowing novel to date—based on an incredible but true unsolved case—as he plunges his dark and complex protagonist, disgraced journalist Frank Corso, into a lethal morass of revenge and conspiracy.

The nightmare began a year ago with the curious and unfortunate death of a delivery driver—blown to pieces. With a little prodding from the media, the terror spread, burning a bloody swath from East Coast to West.

Bodies are piling up as a series of deadly bank robberies rocks the L.A. area. Where federal agencies see nothing but the random hand of a bomb-tossing lunatic, rogue journalist turned bestselling author Frank Corso sees the tracks of something more sinister—something with a motive and a message. And it's not going away.

Forced to work within the system, Corso and research assistant, Chris Andriatta, are never-theless ready to pull out all the stops to halt a time bomb of terror. But the closer they come to a maniac, the more a shocking and devastating truth comes to light—that the fuse to the horror that has killed many times over and will kill many times more may have been inadvertently lit by Frank Corso himself.

G.M. Ford delivers an edge-of-your-seat thriller that's gritty, harrowing, timely, and explosive—as past and present, fact and fiction crash head-on. You will be . . . blown away.

Chapter One...

"The head landed over there."

Corso turned and watched the guy trace an arc in the sky with his finger.

"Right where that red Honda is parked," the guy said.

"Where was Marino sitting when the bomb went off?" Corso asked.

This time the guy pointed to the area in front of Corso's boots. "Right there. See? There where the pavement's been patched."

"I don't see anything."

"You have to look close," the guy said. He pointed. "See the little rectangle there?"

Corso bent at the waist. In the gathering gloom, he couldn't make out the supposed patch in the pavement, so he dropped to one knee and used his hands. He found the outline with the tips of his fingers. Traced it. Maybe five feet by three. Done very neatly, as if by a landscaper rather than a road crew.

"Didn't even need to be fixed," the guy said. "Didn't have a mark on it."

Corso looked up. The guy was in his middle thirties, working on a potbelly. He needed a haircut almost as badly as the herringbone sport jacket needed a trip to the dry cleaners. Other than grooming problems, however, Carl Letzo seemed like a pretty nice fella . . . more or less what Corso had come to expect from small-town newspaper reporters. What he hadn't come to expect, however, was for small-town newspaper guys to meet him at the airport. Especially when he hadn't told anyone he was coming.

"It was like the spot had cancer or something," Carl said. "Something that needed to be cut out before it could spread. Something to be expunged . . . you know, so the body could get about its business."

Corso rose from the pavement. He dusted off his hands and looked around. Something about these places out on the edge. A sense of whiteness . . . a sense of the void . . . of something vast and impenetrable just beyond the horizon. He'd felt it before, many times, that sense of impermanence. Like the place was a line of demarcation rather than a home . . . a sentinel rather than a respite . . . like the only thing left to those who stayed behind was to witness the passing of the parade.

"So, Carl," Corso began, "I appreciate you bringing me down here and all, saved me a bunch of time, but ahhh . . . just for the record, how was it you knew I was flying into your fair hamlet here?"

"Dorry."

"Who's Dorry?"

"Your publicist."

"Ahhhhh." Corso exhaled. It all made sense now. He'd changed publishers since his last book. Taken more money than he once could have imagined and run like hell. Hadn't occurred to him they'd assign him a publicist. He made a mental note to call his new editor . . . Greg was it? . . . yeah . . . at night . . . at home.

"So . . . you were here when it happened?"

Carl pointed at the Bank of Commerce, in whose parking lot they now stood. "Right there by the corner of the building. That was as close as they'd let me get."

The one-story rectangle of a bank was only slightly more adorned than the pavement had been. The lack of pizzazz seemed determined to convey a sense that these people were not wasting your money, or theirs either, for that matter.

All that remained of the surrounding trees were the black trunks set in the frozen grass and, spread above the ground, the gnarly, arthritic remnants of branches, quivering in the early-evening breeze.

To the west, the sky was leaden, backlit, as if somewhere in the reaches of the heavens a long-shuttered window had been opened, announcing to the senses . . . before the first scent of salt air . . . before the first crab shack . . . announcing that terra firma was about to end and that, like it or not, Plan B was about to become the order of the day.

Corso checked his watch. Four-ten and the late-fall light was already slipping into the lake for the night.

G.M. Ford is the author of five previous, widely praised Frank Corso novels, Fury, Black River, A Blind Eye, Red Tide, and No Man's Land, as well as six highly acclaimed mysteries featuring Seattle private investigator Leo Waterman. A former crea-tive writing teacher in western Washington, Ford lives in Seattle and is currently working on his next novel.

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