Signal

Starred review from May 4, 2015
Bestseller Lee mixes high-concept technology and adventure in his exciting second novel featuring former Delta Ranger Sam Dryden (after 2014’s Runner). Sam’s off-the-grid life buying and selling houses he rehabs is interrupted when he receives a late-night call from former colleague Claire Dunham, who needs his immediate help on a secret mission. The two rescue four kidnapped girls held in a shack in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills; yet the police and FBI earlier found the girls and their abductor dead. Claire has been working security for a firm that has built a machine that tells the future, giving those who own it a chance to change events—a power too seductive to those who want world domination. Sam and Claire team with skeptical FBI agent Marine Calvert, but those behind the machine predict their every move. A trained assassin with a double life, a presidential candidate, and shadowy thugs up the ante. A credible hero and a plot filled with nonstop cinematic action will leave thriller fans eager for the next installment. Announced first printing of 100,000 copies. Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management.

Starred review from April 15, 2015

In this sequel to Runner, ex-Special Forces operative Sam Dryden receives a desperate phone call from Claire Dunham, an old friend working as an internal security chief at Bayliss Labs. A spin-off from a big defense contractor, Bayliss works on bleeding-edge technology. But what researchers have stumbled upon goes beyond the edge of technology, and into the future, literally. Working with neutrino particles that not only move faster than light but also move against the direction of time, scientists have built a machine that uses radio waves to transmit events that happen ten and a half hours into the future. After the lab is destroyed in suspicious chemical fire, Claire and Sam race to prevent further disasters predicted by another (hidden) machine. It looks like another country may have discovered the same technology and begun to use it against the United States. VERDICT Lee's thriller featuring a loner hero compares to Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series but with the added kick of technology. Readers will wait with bated breath for the next Dryden adventure.--Susan Carr, Edwardsville P.L., IL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2015
Sam Dryden can't seem to stop running. Runner (2014), the first thriller starring the former Special Forces agent, grabbed readers by the collar and dragged them in its considerable wake as Dryden tried to protect a young girl with a phenomenal ability to read minds. Now he's running again, not just to avoid capture by some seriously bad guys but also to outrun or at least sidestep time itself. It starts with a former colleague, Claire Dunham, rousing Sam in the middle of the night to help her out of a jam right now. He does so, of course, and the lives of four kidnapped girls are saved. But there is a bigger problem: a Rod Serlingesque time machinewhich allows its users to listen to radio waves from the future as they jump around on some Einsteinian time-space continuumhas fallen into the hands of an evil cabal (yup, another one) called the Group, which is doing some very nasty long-range planning. Evading the Group, not to mention squashing them, becomes a bit tricky for Dryden and Dunham, as all their adversaries need to do to figure out their next move is to turn on the radio. Two books into this series, and it's clear that Lee has hit the jackpot. He's combined a Lee Childlike ability to build momentum in an instant and keep it going for 350 pages with a nose for premises that run right up to the point of disbelief without quite diving over the edge (it helps that there's always a whiff of science supporting the craziness). Expect the horde of out-of-breath readers gasping to keep up with Lee's breakneck pace to keep growing exponentially with each new appearance of Sam Dryden.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This one has a 100,000 first printing, and the movie rights to Runner were sold to Warner Brothers at auction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)