Synopses & Reviews
As he lies, bound and hidden, on the floor of his abductors' SUV, Carroll Monks is only dimly aware of the bizarre series of high-profile murders sweeping across the nation. What he thinks about instead, as they travel for hours deep into the Northern California wilderness, is that the face of one of his abductors belongsto his own son, Glenn long estranged and living (the last Monksknew) on the streets of Seattle.
The vehicle finally stops. When Monks is untied and steps out, he sees he's been brought to a remote off-the-grid community where paramilitary training and methamphetamine make for combustible, uneasy bedfellows and that Glenn has fallen under the spell of a disenfranchised countercultural sociopath known simply as Freeboot, who claims that a revolution of the people is already under way. Monks is appalled by Freeboot's violent histrionics and Manson-like affinity for the hidden messages buried within Lennon and McCartney lyrics, yet acknowledges that he hears echoes of his own feelings when Freeboot speaks about the disintegration of workers' rights, the escalating differential between the haves and the have-nots, and the slap-on-the-wrist justice doled out in cases of billion-dollar corporate malfeasance. Could this well-armed madman actually have his finger on the pulse of the underclass?
The reason Monks has been abducted, he soon discovers, is Freeboot's own son, a four-year-old boy who is deathly ill a conundrum for Freeboot, whose distrust of institutional America (hospitals included) borders on the psychotic. Monks, an ER physician, has been brought in to care for the boy, but he can see immediately that the boy's condition is acute and that onlyimmediate hospitalization will save him. When Monks's pleas fall on deaf ears, he fashions a daring escape during a snowstorm, with the young boy slung across his back and brings the wrath of a madman down on himself and his family, culminating in a diabolically crafted revolution a re-creation of Hitchcock's The Birds, but with human predators, unleashed on the town of Bodega Bay, California.
Review
"An absolutely riveting read ... McMahon ... creates a terrorist so authentically motivated that he quickly becomes touchingly real." Chicago Tribune
Review
"Action-packed ... [Monks] must join an extensive manhunt ... before a "revolution" takes place. San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Poised to break out." Daily News
Review
"'Helter Skelter II'....McMahon's story and prose are fired straight from the hip." Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"Crisp and fast-moving....McMahon is a skillful writer." Washington Post
Review
"Both fascinating and frighteningly real ... McMahon pulls off the virtually impossible." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"A thought-provoking thriller... chillingly real and believable, making the story all the stronger and more frightening." Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"A blood-drenched battle of wits and will . . . McMahon's story and prose are fired straight from the hip . . . Slam-bang!" Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"Creating a believable villain is the hardest work in the artistic world . . . which makes Neil McMahon's success . . . so stunning . . . In McMahon's assured hands, the duel between the rational, scientific doctor and the fascinating, frightening Freeboot . . . is an absolutely riveting read." Chicago Tribune
Review
"REVOLUTION NO. 9 spins off the thrills and twist like a tilt-a-whirl--it's part Stephen King and part John Sandford, with a dash of ER thrown in for good measure." Tim Dorsey, author of CADILLAC BEACH
Synopsis
In this latest offering from the acclaimed author of To the Bone, an ordinary man a father and doctor becomes the final obstacle to a charismatic cult leader's fiendish plan for revolution.
Synopsis
The revolution has begun . . .
Across America, the wealthy, important, and powerful are
dying, the targets of a charismatic madman's murderous wrath.
Homegrown terrorism has once again reared its hideous head
to strike at a nation that was looking elsewhere.
Bound and blindfolded on the floor of an SUV, Dr. Carroll Monks knows nothing of the countercultural sociopath called Freeboot, his drugged-up, paramilitary community in the Northern California wilderness, or his plans to unleash a nationwide blood tide. But a dying child whom the abducted emergency room physician must save is waiting in the outlaw's hidden compound -- as well as a shocking revelation that could shatter Monks's private world. And now an impossible escape is the only option, before Freeboot's diabolically crafted "revolution" destroys Monks, his family, and every last resident in a small coastal town.
About the Author
Neil McMahon studied premed at Stanford and was later a Stegner Fellow there. He is the author of three previous Carroll Monks thrillers and a new stand-alone novel set in Montana where he lives with his wife to be published in 2006.