Falling Up

For the President of the United States, the daily horror of life in West Darfur, Sudan's anarchic killing fields, just hit heartbreakingly close to home. His beloved niece Lily, a nurse caring for refugees in the most war-torn region, has been targeted and savagely murdered by a corps of Janjaweed, fearsome government-backed militiamen.

The rash and vicious killing is a clear provocation, but any response will seriously destabilize the already-teetering region and threaten the security of the entire world. With the situation too explosive for diplomatic or military solutions, yet with the President and the public thirsting for revenge, America is out of options. Except one: Ryan Kealey.

Kealey, ex-Special Forces, former CIA, unrivaled counterterrorism expert, has been central to the war on terror for over a decade. But he's finished trying to save the world. After the Agency hung him out to dry--and let his lover die--it was easy for him to turn his back. They had nothing he wanted. Until now. For the government has revealed its trump card, the one thing Kealey will risk everything for.

Once back in the fold, Kealey's pursuit of Lily's killers unearths secrets and betrayals that shock even his war-tempered sensibilities and leave him with no-one to trust. On the lawless streets of Sudan, and at the highest levels of the American government, shadowy forces ignite a conflagration with unknowable global consequences.

When he stumbles across his only daughter's corpse in a deserted beachfront bungalow, devastated Ezekiel Cooper vows to find her murderer. What the former NYPD detective doesn't know is that there have been other victims. Women in Queens, Sarasota, Seattle. Women who seemingly had nothing in common, aside from a grisly fate at the hands of a chillingly clever stranger.

A computer programmer, a casting director, a call girl. The victims have nothing in common except the manner in which they spent their last night--wrapped in their own bed sheets in a bloody ritual of slow, agonizing death.

For NYPD Captain Thomas Horn, this adversary is unlike any he has met before. Methodical and highly skilled, the killer is always one step ahead, able to enter buildings without detection and leave no trace behind. To stop this deadly rampage, Horn must unlock the secrets of a cunning enemy who is saving his most shocking surprises for last. . .

"John Lutz knows how to make you shiver." --Harlan Coben

"Lutz ranks with such masters as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

   Two teenage hockey players brutally murder their parents in an unexpected altercation after a close friend and teammate commits suicide. The town's people believe the suicide was another tragic result of bullying, but the two boys have learned the true reason their friend took his own life, and the boys decide to take matters into their own hands.

   Detective Dean Daly is called in to investigate the brutal murders and believes there is much more to the murders than it first appears.
   Not far away, a young housewife, Sarah, is in a very bad place. Her husband Gerald finally crosses the line from verbal abuse to physical abuse and breaks her arm.  She takes flight in the middle of the night, and Gerald vows he will track her down to the ends of the ends of time, and insists she can never leave him.
   Detective Daly soon becomes involved in both events, not knowing that he will soon be caught in the middle as the two stories collide. 

   This is a story about courage, strength, and standing up for what you believe