Appropriate Sanctions

by Michael Grant

Life is good for Paul Ducane. He’s happily married with a promising career as a political science professor and consultant. But all that changes when his bright young graduate student, Jeff Levin, hacks into a government computer and downloads a file from a mysterious organization called the National Internal Affairs Agency. Immediately, the order goes get that file back and take “appropriate sanctions” against anyone in possession of it. Before Levin realizes that the file contains explosive information capable of bringing down the president of the United States, he is assassinated. Ducane, now in possession of the file, becomes a hunted man as well.
Desperate to evade his pursuers, who have the capability of tracking his every move by monitoring credit card usage and cell phone calls, Ducane flees into the bowels of the the New York City subway system. Beaten by muggers, he is helped by an enigmatic homeless woman who teaches him the arcane ways of the “tunnel people” who inhabit the city’s underground. His situation gets worse when the police wrongly accuse him of murdering Levin. Now he must evade not only his pursuers, but the police as well. Still, he knows he can’t hide indefinitely. He must get the file to the senator who is investigating the president’s administration.
This is a page-turning thriller that delves into shadow governments, assassination, duplicity, and questionable friendships.

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 27, 2012

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name.

I am a former member of the NYPD and a graduate of the FBI National Academy.
I live in knoxville TN with my wife, Elizabeth, and our Golden Retriever, Beau.

Reviews

[Nicholas George · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good to be wrong about your preconceptions of a book. I saw this and thought, hmm...thriller, self-published, no author I'd ever heard of. I expected it to be an amateurish cliche-ridden mess. Quite the opposite! This is a tightly-written, fast-paced thriller that, yes, indulges in some cliches, but mostly does what you want a thriller to do--provide a hero you can root for, suitably despicable bad guys, and an interesting assortment of other characters. (All that said, technology-wise this is a bit dated.) Good stuff!