Panic!

Evan Casher has a good life as an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and things have gotten even better since the beginning of his romance with his new girlfriend, Carrie. Little does he know that a frantic call from his mother is about to make his life explode.

Evan arrives at his parents’ home to find his mother murdered. The killers assault Evan, demanding he turn over a set of digital files his mother sent to him the day before. The killers don’t believe Evan’s distraught protests that he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and they begin torturing him for the information, but he is rescued by a man named Gabriel. A disgraced ex-CIA operative, Gabriel tells Evan that the parents he has known and trusted all his life weren’t who he thought they were and that his whole life is a carefully constructed lie.

So begins Jeff Abbott’s Panic (Dutton, 2005), sending Evan on a twisty journey where deceit rules and death rewards failure. Along the way, he learns that his father has gone missing and that his own life is in danger because the digital files contain information that exposes a sinister rogue spy ring. Everyone wants the files—various government agencies as well as the leader of the spy ring, whose background is shrouded in mystery—and almost everyone seems to want Evan dead. Even worse, the more he looks for the answers that can save him, the more Evan begins to realize that his parents, some of the government agents, and even his girlfriend, may be working for the bad guys.

The journey will take him from Texas to Florida to the Midwest and overseas to London as he races to stay one step ahead of the professional killers trailing him and find not only the incriminating files and his missing father but also the real identity of the leader of the rogue spy ring. But even if he succeeds, will he be able to trust his father when he finds him? Or his girlfriend?

Panic is a page-turner filled with tense encounters and narrow escapes as Evan struggles to stay alive long enough to find the truth, save those he loves, and destroy the spy ring. And it nicely portrays the angst of a young man caught up in machinations beyond his understanding, who must come to grips with the evil done by his parents or pay the price for that evil with his own blood.

Nominated for three Edgar and two Anthony Awards, Abbott ’85 is the author of seven mystery and suspense novels, including A Kiss Gone Bad, Black Jack Point, and Cut and Run.

—Christopher Dow