Strong Light of Day

August 10, 2015
Land’s exciting seventh Caitlin Strong novel (after 2014’s Strong Darkness) finds the fifth-generation Texas Ranger pursuing two cases: one involving a herd of cattle that has been picked clean to the bone and another revolving around the disappearance of a busload of students from a Houston prep school spending the night at a nature center. Caitlin realizes that the key to solving both may be found in an ingenious Cold War conspiracy involving “agroterrorism” that her own father investigated decades earlier, along with outlaw Boone Masters, the father of her boyfriend, Colt Wesley Masters. A convoluted narrative—with Russian mobsters, irate Texas militiamen, alien invasion theories, cattle rustling, and a corrupt oil baron—slows the momentum early on, but Land pulls out all the stops in the latter chapters. More than a few bombshell revelations and jaw-dropping plot twists will satisfy longtime series fans. Agent: Natalia Aponte, Natalia Aponte Literary Agency.

September 1, 2015
Caitlin Strong is a kick-ass Texas Ranger and one of the toughest female protagonists in crime fiction. In her seventh outing, she's called to investigate the disappearance of 30 children, who all seem to have vanished while on a camping trip. One of the missing children is the son of her boyfriend, Cort Wesley Masters. On top of all that, she's asked to help negotiate with a crazed rancher who is holding his family hostage, claiming that aliens have taken his cattle and that he will kill his family before he lets the aliens take them. Other subplots include a billionaire businessman who has created a genetically engineered pesticide that is causing cancer, Navy SEALs in Afghanistan back in 2003, and some really nasty Russians. This is a complex, multifaceted tale, but it moves at lightning speed, even allowing time to provide some background on Strong's familyshe is a fifth-generation Texas Ranger. Fans of the series and readers who like their women fearless and smart will love this story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)