White Hot Silence

July 1, 2019
At the start of this intricate tale of international financial skullduggery from Porter (Firefly), Anastasia Hisami, who’s in Italy working with the Aysel Hisami Therapy Foundation, manages to leave a couple of cell phone messages for her husband, financier Denis Hisami, who’s in Palo Alto, Calif., before she’s kidnapped by two Italian gangsters. Anastasia later wakes up in a storage container on a cargo ship alongside two dead men. Before her abduction, she was also able to call her former British lover and ex-MI6 agent, Paul Samson, who now owns a restaurant in London and works as a private investigator. Denis hires Paul to find his wife, a task the investigator leaps at because he’s still in love with Anastasia. Porter handles every aspect of the complicated plot, including the labyrinthine financial and political developments and the romantic triangle involving Anastasia, Denis, and Paul, with keen intelligence and compassion. Thriller readers looking for plenty of action, excellent writing, and credible, convincing characters will be rewarded. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit.

August 1, 2019
Porter has written several internationally best-selling thrillers, including Brandenburg Gate (2006), winner of the CWA Steel Dagger, and his latest is a sequel to last year's ripped-from-the-headlines Firefly, which centered on the Syrian refugee crisis. Former MI6 agent Paul Samson returns to the Mediterranean, again making use of his uncanny ability to find missing persons, this time in search of Anastasia Cristakos, a Greek aid worker taken hostage by a Mafia group with terrorist ties. Anastasia's billionaire husband, Denis Hisami, is unable to intervene personally, thanks to the U.S. authorities seizing his passport and throwing him in jail for his own possible acts of terrorism in the past. Coincidence? And how does Anastasia's abduction and Hisami's jailing connect to the explosive information that Hisami is privy to and that his enemies are willing to kill to obtain. Hisami reluctantly turns to Samson for help, knowing that the MI6 agent has carried a torch for Anastasia for years. This frighteningly realistic political thriller will draw readers comfortable with the darker side of the genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)