No Safe Place: A Novel (Michael Gannon Series, 4)

“Brace for casually described violence, death, and mean people, from the first chapter. . . . a great book if you want to be gripped in the gut by one peril after another in classic thriller style.”

Mike Gannon’s on a genuine vacation trip in a gently rural and collegiate part of Connecticut, savoring the incredible fly-fishing for trout along the Farmington River and loving life. The former NYPD investigator, now on his own, lets the river introduce him to a small town where he’s able to relax, not called for any effort beyond meals, a daily run, and teasing the trout.

So the last thing he expects in the coffee shop is his long-ago school crush Colleen Doherty. Even more unlikely: She too is an investigator, for a law firm, re-opening a student death at the local college. It clearly has odd aspects, as the student’s mother took a payoff in exchange for no more questions. But Colleen’s looking on behalf of the student’s father, recently released after overturning a wrongful conviction. And just like that, Mike’s interested and ready to support his old heart throb (and maybe earn a date with her at last).

But this is a thriller, in the style Michael Ledwidge honed as co-author with James Patterson in the past, and by the time Mike’s meeting Colleen, readers already know a lot about that student death, and suspect more. Every new step into the case, where a whistleblower, a scandal, and dark connections to organized crime all tangle, takes Mike Gannon into deep murky waters.

Here's the front man he’s up against: the president of local Beckford College, Martin Cushing. Ledwidge puts the cards right up front in introducing this self-important man: “He had gone from faking it into actually making it, hadn’t he? He was rich now. And not just rich. He had power. The basketball program gave him name recognition and the entire campus was more like his kingdom than a school. He even had knights, in the form of the campus police.”

So what would this kind of college president do to make sure no buried scandal reaches the light again? More significantly, what will Frank Stone do to protect the investment in Cushing’s position? What neither Mike Gannon nor Colleen Doherty could possibly guess is the total absence of scruples and eagerness for cruelty that propel Frank Stone forward. There are dangerous men on the way, Stone’s own army of killers and reorganizers. Mike and Colleen won’t know that, of course, until the lights go out and shots are fired. With really big ammunition.

Of course, Mike’s a planner, taking in the scene and armed with weapons and even a drone to size up the situation as it unfolds. “I watched the bodyguard stand there with his hit team. No telling what they would do if I gave them the chance,” he admits. “Which I wasn’t going to. Because whatever they did next, we would know it immediately thanks to the drone. And there was something else in my bag of tricks, I thought. Something they weren’t going to see coming by a country mile.”

Brace for casually described violence, death, and mean people, from the first chapter. This is a great book if you want to be gripped in the gut by one peril after another in classic thriller style. But Ledwidge gives plenty of warning, since most of the time the reader knows what’s coming before Mike Gannon does. How far will his paramilitary, police, and inventive skills take him? Who will he be able to save? Buckle up for the crashes.