Gregg Hurwitz

Each night for the last 17 years, at precisely 2:18 a.m., thirtysomething Nick Horrigan has awakened in a panicked sweat. But as this novel begins, he’s awakened instead by a SWAT team bursting into his modest Santa Monica condo. The invaders, U.S. Secret Service agents, tell him that a terrorist has entered a nuclear power plant and is threatening to blow it up unless he gets to speak to Nick. In minutes, he’s in a helicopter on his way to meet a man he’s never heard of, and he learns that the terrorist is not a terrorist at all. It’s a slam-bang beginning to a fast-paced thriller that involves two presidential candidates, bent Secret Service agents, Bulgarian thugs-for-hire, a handful of murders, and, eventually, the reason Nick wakes up at 2:18 a.m. The scope of the book’s plot is too circuitous and elaborate to detail, but the page-to-page suspense and the breakneck pacing will please Hurwitz’s growing audience.