This is Joseph Reid’s second novel featuring air marshal Seth Walker, and first set in West Virginia, where Walker goes to investigate a plane wreck. On his website Reid relates that his protagonist there “finds himself caught in the confounding - and deadly – cross fire between drone-deploying ecoterrorists, unstable frackers, ruthless drug smugglers, and armed miners pushed to the breaking point.” Yet in his “Acknowledgements” he claims “sincere affection for the state and its people,” and brags about attending kindergarten at Alban Elementary in St. Albans, and visiting a Phillips Exeter Academy classmate in Jefferson County. Reid graduated from Duke and then earned a masters from U.C. Davis and a law degree from Notre Dame. He lives in San Diego.
Seattle: Thomas & Mercer, 2019. 291 pages. Trade paperback