Shift

A new caliber of thriller set at the collision of ’60s counterculture and the rise

of dark forces in world government. Heroes creator Tim Kring injects history with a supernatural, hallucinogenic what-if.

 

Set in the crucible of the 1960s, Shift is the story of Chandler Forrestal, a man whose life is changed forever when he is unwittingly dragged into a CIA mind-control experiment. After being given a massive dose of LSD, Chandler de­velops a frightening array of mental powers. With his one-in-a-billion brain chemistry, Chandler’s heightened perception uncovers a plot to assassi­nate President Kennedy.

 

Propelled to prevent the conspiracy of assassi­nation and anarchy, Chandler becomes a target for deadly forces in and out of the government and is pursued across a simmering landscape peopled by rogue CIA agents, Cuban killers, Mafia madmen, and ex-Nazi scientists…all the while haunted by a beautiful woman with her own scandalous past to purge, her own score to settle. Chased across America, will Chandler be able to harness his “shift” and rewrite history?

 

Combining the nonstop style of Ludlum with the sinister, tangled conspiracies of DeLillo and Dick, and featuring cameos from Lee Harvey Oswald to Timothy Leary to J. Edgar Hoover, Shift is a thriller guaranteed to be equal parts heart-stopping and thought-provoking.

"At the start of this unsuspenseful alternative history thriller from TV screenwriter and producer Kring (Heroes) and Peck (Body Surfing), 1,963 people see an apparition of an oversized flaming boy in the Dallas sky at 11:22 a.m. on December 30, 2012. These numbers correspond to the year, month, and day of President Kennedy's assassination. Flashback to Cambridge, Mass., in October 1963: an attractive woman in the pay of the CIA seduces Harvard grad student Chandler Forrestal, a nephew of Truman's defense secretary, so she can slip him some LSD. The Company believes the drug allows those who take it to access a secret part of the brain known as the Gate of Orpheus. The authors score points for originality in mixing LSD with the events and usual suspects, including the Mafia and J. Edgar Hoover, leading up to Dealey Plaza and the fatal day, but their implausible hidden history of how the world works never coheres. (Aug.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright PWyxz LLC)

From Kring, the creator of "Heroes," and Peck comes a new caliber of thriller set at the collision of 1960s counterculture and the rise of dark forces in world government. "Shift" is part one of the Gate of Orpheus trilogy.

"From acid induced mind control to covert operations in Cuba, from a missing nuclear weapon to mass hallucinations, SHIFT runs a gamut that your inner conspiracy theorist will find delightful and provocative...reading SHIFT is like fighting a featherweight boxer. Always moving, constantly on its toes, it peppers you with small punches until, eventually, you succumb and it delivers the knockout. But oh, what a fight, and certainly one that is enjoyable and frenetic from start to finish...For an engaging romp through the ’60s that never were, look no further than SHIFT."--Book Page