publishers-weekly

Dellosso__ cleverly plotted second Jed Patrick novel (after 2015__ Centralia) finds the Afghan war vet hiding with his wife, Karen, and their eight-year-old daughter, Lilly, in a cabin in the Idaho wilderness. Two months earlier, two CIA agents gave him a thumb drive containing __very damaging piece of information about the Centralia Project,_ the exposure of which threatens to cause a __candal that would be talked and read about for decades to come._ Then one day Jed returns to the cabin to find Karen in tears. She tells him that three armed men burst into the cabin asking for the thumb drive, but she didn__ know where it was. The men took Lilly, and vowed they would return for Karen. More shocks follow. Meanwhile, CIA technician Tiffany Stockton discovers a plot to control Jed__ mind in a sophisticated update of The Manchurian Candidate. Can she stop him from becomes an unwilling assassin? Dellosso expertly misdirects readers, but they should be prepared for only serviceable prose.