Warning Light

January 22, 2018
Zac Miller, the 28-year-old hero of Ricciardi’s gripping first novel and series launch, is on his way to Singapore when one of the engines of the passenger plane he is on fails over Iran. The plane flies into prohibited airspace and lands at an airport in the small city of Sirjan. The Iranians are extremely upset because a secret nuclear facility is just minutes from Sirjan and no Westerners should be anywhere near it. Zac, in tourist fashion, snaps several pictures on the way into the terminal, where he’s detained by security personnel. Nominally a technology consultant, Zac is really a CIA strategic weapons analyst, a substitute for the trained field agent who was supposed to be on the airliner. After several bouts of torture, Zac escapes and begins a run across land and sea, displaying plenty of resourcefulness during his dangerous journey. He eventually comes to realize that he’s more suited to a career in the field than behind a desk. Thriller fans will look forward to his further adventures. Agent: Rick Richter, Aevitas Creative Management.

February 15, 2018
A major earthquake near a secret Iranian nuclear facility triggers nonstop danger for CIA strategic weapons analyst Zachary Miller.Zac is a passenger on a British Airways plane bound for Singapore that makes an emergency landing in Iran, and authorities single him out and detain him because he takes snapshots with his cellphone--nice sunset, he insists, but the authorities don't buy that excuse. Col. Arzaman of the Revolutionary Guards demands that Zac explain why he's really in Iran, warning that "pain and suffering can set you free." The beating Zac gets is just the beginning of the abuse he takes throughout the book. Zac is guilty, though, because the unscheduled landing is a ruse to get him close enough to photograph certain vital buildings in the chaos following the earthquake. Earlier, after his boss told him they'd have to scrub the mission because their agent's cover wasn't strong enough, he'd volunteered to do the assignment himself, and his boss tried to tell him no, since he had "no tradecraft, no language skills, and no legend. You'd be a sitting duck out there." But Zac's send me in, Coach plea prevails, and in captivity, he wakes up from unconsciousness after a beating thinking "What an idiot." Then he decides that "if he wanted his freedom, he was going to have to take it." Thus begins a Ulysses-like odyssey across a rocky desert, where he meets goatherds who might turn him in, across the Strait of Hormuz, where the wakes from leviathan supertankers threaten to swamp his stolen boat. Then there's more jail, more ocean, more gunfire, and more danger right up to the coast of France, where all he has to do is steal another boat, then cross the stormy Channel to England and safety. A couple of women play brief but significant roles, but Zac is much too busy for a love life. If only he'd run into a whirlpool and a monster, readers might mistake this adventure for a tale by Homer.A little implausible but good fun. Let's hope for more Zac Miller adventures.

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February 15, 2018
Something's going wrong with Flight 337, the airbus out of London, bound for Singapore. Must put down at Sirjan in Iran, the pilot says. No! say the air traffic controllers. Forbidden! The pilot lands there anyway, and among the spooked passengers milling about is Zac Miller, a young American technology consultant who bides his time taking several photographs of the sunset on the mountains. The local authorities are sure Miller is up to something and waste no time isolating and abusing him. He escapes and makes for the hills, beginning a fine thrill ride that takes himand usthrough fights, chases, gun battles, and a thrilling account of a storm over the English channel. Plus, there's a painless history lesson, detailing when and how relations between the U.S. and Iran turned sour and bloody. The writing is lean and propulsive, the characters offbeat and interesting, especially an elderly English lady who is not quite what she seems. Among other things, she knows what it is with those sunset photos.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)