In this story, a teenage Muslim girl, Aliyah from London and a mid-twenties ex-marine, Greg from Florida have fallen under the spell of a cultish group led by an ex-special OPs woman, Miriam. She is bent upon "resetting" US's broken tribal political culture through terrorist attacks that are orchestrated to appear as if coming from Muslim Jihadists. The story follows the two parents of the pair, Aliyah's father Sajid and Greg's mother, Carrie, as they race to find their children while pursued by authories through London, Canada and the US. I can't think of any other book in which older parents are primary characters. The movie "Taken" comes to mind, but in that movie, Liam Neeson is basically Superman. In this story Sajid is constantly afraid of the police, first in Bangladesh, then in London, Canada and the US. Sajid is not a hero and feels powerless but keeps pressing on anyway for the love of his daughter. Both parents are sure that their children are involved in somehing they cannot control through no real fault of thir own and would come to harm, or cause somthing disastrous if they do not reach them in time.
Another primary character is Shreya, who is an FBI agent on the case, who is also of Soth east Asian descent. Shreya is a great agent who is always trying to think ahead and extrapolate based on clues even if they are slim or insufficient in the eyes of her colleagues and superiors. And guess what, her boss Dan, appears as dense as they come. Not only does he refuse to act upon Shreya's hunches but keeps throwing her off the case. Surprise, surprise. Shreya has "authority issues" and acts upon her hunches against orders even when she is off the case. This happens multiple times since Shreya persists working on the case on her own time anyway.
The story propels forward at breakneck speed and the book is what I call, "un-put-downable". The plot is unbelievable, as with most thrillers. Often I have found that the thrillers end in a slip-shod way, as if the author got tired of writing and just wanted to get the draft over with. In here, it ends in quite a satisfying way. It is not clear what the bad guy (white-haired ex-special ops woman in this case) was really trying to achieve besides chaos or what control she had on the supposedly wide network of compatriots. Hey, but who is quibbling when you want a good beach-read to kill a few hours of your leisure time!
