Kill Chain

The fifth book in the Evan Delaney series, Kill Chain, will be published October 5th. The manuscript has been written, rewritten, sent to my editor, sent from her to a copy-editor, returned to me for corrections, typeset, proofread, corrected by me again and finally sent to the printer.

Those are the nuts and bolts. Here’s the story.

Phil Delaney’s car is found wrecked at the bottom of a California ravine. The local cops think he’s killed himself, but there’s no body. The FBI thinks he’s skipped the country. He’s a former military intelligence officer, under investigation for divulging classified information. But Evan thinks her dad’s been abducted. Then she gets a phone call that confirms her fears – he’s been kidnapped because of his military work. The kidnappers give her 72 hours to turn over what they’re asking for, or he’ll die.

With the hours draining away, she has to piece together the puzzle and rescue him. She has bad guys on her tail, gets on the wrong side of the law and has to follow the trail into some dark and treacherous places – physically and emotionally – to track down the information she needs. If she fails, her father and others in her family will die.

That’s the gist of the story. The book started with the thought: what would happen if your father disappeared? Gone, without warning, under violent circumstances. What would you do to get him back? Would you turn your own life upside down and risk danger to find him? How that thought developed into the novel is a story that I’ll be continuing here throughout the summer. I’ll keep you posted.