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A Thea Paris Novel
by K.J. Howe
There are twenty-five elite kidnap and ransom (K&R) specialists in the world. Only one is a woman: Thea Paris. And she's the best in the business.
Twenty years ago, a terrified young boy was abducted in the middle of the night by masked intruders while his sister watched, paralyzed with fear. Returned after a harrowing nine months with his captors, Thea's brother has never been the same.
This life-shattering experience drove Thea to become what she is today: a world-class freedom broker. Most hostage-recovery work is done at the negotiation table, but when diplomacy fails, Thea leads Quantum Security International's black-ops team on highly sensitive rescue missions to political hot spots around the globe.
Her childhood nightmare resurfaces when her oil magnate father, Christos Paris, is snatched from his yacht off Santorini on his sixtieth birthday, days away from the biggest deal of his career. The brutal kidnappers left the entire crew slaughtered in their wake, but strangely, there are no ransom demands, no political appeals, no prisoner release requests - just obscure and foreboding texts written in Latin sent from burner phones.
Knowing the survival window for kidnap victims is small, Thea throws herself into the most urgent and challenging rescue mission of her life - but will she be able to prevent this kidnapping from destroying her family for good?
"Starred Review. This debut novel generates nonstop suspense, commanding attention from the start and never letting go. Intended as the start of a series, this is a must for thriller fans." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A fast-moving thriller ... A spectacular start for what promises be a great Thea Paris series." - Kirkus
"Howe, the executive director of ITW's annual Thrillerfest, provides nonstop action, believable characters, and a well-researched look at the world of international kidnapping." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The Freedom Broker was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
K.J. Howe is the executive director of ThrillerFest, the annual conference of International Thriller Writers. A three-time Daphne du Maurier Award winner, she completed her MA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. She is an avid traveler who has raced camels in Jordan, surfed in Hawaii, and dove with the great whites in South Africa. She became fascinated by the kidnap and ransom (K&R) world after meeting Peter Moore, a British computer consultant who became the longest-held hostage in Iraq and the only person to survive of the five men who were taken that day. This is her debut novel.
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