Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An intriguing thriller from a former NPR correspondent about a young reporter who must match wits with spies, assassins and a terrorist sleeper cell targeting the very heart of American power.
"If, on an early summer s night, you wanted to kill a man, how would you do it? Would you lay a trap, sharpen a dagger, uncork a poison? Personally, I ve always leaned toward the dramatic. But looking back, I wonder now if the events of last summer didn t begin with a quieter sort of murder."
So ponders Alexandra James, a beautiful, driven, yet troubled New England Chronicle reporter. She is assigned to cover the death of Thom Carlyle, son of one of the most powerful men in Washington. Just back from a year abroad, Thom falls from the top of a Harvard bell tower on a warm summer night. Did he jump, or was he pushed? For Alex James, who can get in anywhere, sleep with anyone, out-drink and out-shop her demons, it is the story of a lifetime. As she chases leads from Harvard Yard to the courtyards of Cambridge, England, to a clandestine rendezvous in London, to the inside of a nuclear terrorist network the intrigue seems to suit her. But nothing is what it seems. When she arrives back in Washington, DC, for a key interview that promises to tie together the leads she has puzzled out, Alex the hunter becomes Alex the hunted. An assassin is dispatched . Her laptop disappears . Her phone is tapped . And she begins to grasp that Thom Carlyle may have been killed to hide a terrifying conspiracy within the White House itself.
Former NPR Intelligence correspondent Mary Louise Kelly has turned her own real-life reporting adventures into fiction with this stylish spy thriller.
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