Retribution

"How hard can it be?" asks down-on-his-luck ex-cop Mike Devlin when he takes a plum job as the security director of a forty-story Manhattan office tower. This hard: In less than two weeks Devlin will discover that a killer is targeting the company's top executives and that the building is accessible to entry and sabotage at a hundred critical points. And in less than three weeks, after a series of mysterious "accidental" deaths, the killer will be revealed as a world-class assassin, expert at penetrating the most sophisticated lockdown systems. A highly sensitive deal-in-the-works prevents Devlin from going to the police, though all his instincts scream to do so. Nor can he rely on his own building-security prowess. He bluffed his way into the job. Fortunately, the best thing about hitting bottom is that there's nowhere to go but up.... Retribution features a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at high-tech surveillance and executive protection; an affecting portrait of a hard-edged loner, Mike Devlin, who believes he has just one more chance to get it right; and a bathyscaph descent into a modern corporation where, frighteningly, the phrase "acceptable casualties" has secured a foothold. At once an electrifying cat-and-mouse thriller and a parable of cost/benefit accounting taken to its extreme, this is page-turning fiction at its finest.