Failure Point

by Doug Williams

Is it possible to really know your spouse?

Nick Faulkner is about to find out . . . if he can stay alive.

Nick—a former FBI star whose career mysteriously tanked—returns home one day to find that his wife Lexi has walked out on him and simply vanished. Then, he discovers she’s part of a cult-like church. He doesn’t believe for a second she’s suddenly found religion, but is convinced she’s been kidnapped and recruits a band of similarly disgraced ex-agents to spring her from the cult’s heavily armed compound.

He doesn’t know that powerful forces high in the US government and intelligence services are working to make sure that doesn’t happen. And that they’ll stop at nothing to prevent him from exposing the secrets lurking beyond the church gates.

Including murder.

As Nick works his way through the shadows of Lexi’s life and tries to sort out the hidden truth behind her disappearance, he tumbles into a sprawling web of deceit and lies thick with betrayal and shifting loyalties, where nothing is as it seems.

His quest will bring him face-to-face with enemies foreign and domestic, including traitors, social media “truth tellers,” Russian spies, and well-armed mercenaries. And he’ll have to survive a vast conspiracy determined to keep him from learning the stunning truth about who Lexi really is.

Or, perhaps even more shocking, who she isn’t.

Hardcover

Published October 22, 2024

About the author

Doug Williams is a playwright, author, and award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker. He is a former journalist; served as press secretary in the US Senate; and has overseen communications in both the public and private sectors. He’s somehow managed to make a career as a freelancer for over 25 ears.

His script Back Star Rising, based on the life of iconic Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan, has been honored in over 45 competitions worldwide—winning 12 best screenplay awards—and is in development for a feature film. A film he wrote and produced, A Bullet For Your Thoughts, has been recognized in 12 festivals and has won six awards for best short film as well as individual honors for best director, best actor, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress. He and his wife Donna McKenzie are currently working on a screenplay whose working title is Kitty’s Back, about a cat the CIA trains to be a spy and save the world. (Seriously.)

Critics compared his previous novel, Nowhere Man, to Homeland and House of Cards, saying “it delivers excitement, suspense and cheers in all the right places” and calling it a “labyrinthine conspiracy thriller with both verve and heart.” He cowrote A Sacred Duty, the true account of a federal whistleblower who exposed a scandal that took the lives of hundreds of U.S. veterans that is also in development for a film. Additionally, he collaborated with noted restauranteur Johnny Carrabba on two books, With Gratitude and A Gift from the Heart.

He is also a playwright with four New York City productions, and his most recent work, The Boundary, written with Donna McKenzie, was produced by Dirt Dogs Theatre Company in Houston. They are currently at work on a new play, Swimback, which explores the dissolution of a military family during the Cuban missile crisis.