Lightning: A gripping and action-packed suspense thriller

by Michael Ray Ewing

In a war against the desert's ruthless killers, there are no winners...only survivors.

After power-riding up an old mining trail, specialist bike manufacturer, Adam Barnett, finds himself disoriented and confused. A lightning strike has burned a hole in his shoe and zapped his memory, but he knows enough to fear the bloodcurdling scream echoing up from the canyon. With the help of a large black dog, he hightails it out of there, only to look back and see that he's being pursued.

At Biodosius, a gated research laboratory tucked away in the hills above Scottsdale, Arizona, a secret military research project has come unraveled. When Major Blain Jacobson helicopters in to assess the damage, he faces an information blackout. Inside the lab, he smells blood. Corpses line the halls. Soon, he and his squad of well armed men are running for their lives.

On a remote ranch in Northern Arizona, Victoria Stewart, whose family has been victimized by narco-traffickers, awakens to a familiar internal voice, the voice of "Dark." Another homicide is about to occur. Upset by her newfound psychic powers, but defiant, she's determined to conquer her terror. Maybe she can reach the intended victims before it's too late. The problem is, she doesn't know who or where they are.

Lightning is a multi-character, action-packed thriller with an amoral villain, a raft of bad-guy accomplices, and footprints that spell danger for the Phoenix metro area. Can the three protagonists put the pieces together before danger picks them off one by one?

382 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication April 2, 2026

About the author

Michael Ray Ewing is the winner of the prestigious Emerging Writers Gateway Contest for best new crime thriller. Satan’s Gold was inspired by his work as a Bell Labs engineer on the United States Federal Reserve’s network, FEDNET. An avid mountain biker and resident of Arizona, Mike writes about people who risk everything for the sake of doing what they know is right.

Reviews

[Avi Dinsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Ewing's taut thriller a quiet pattern of anomalies spreads across the state, pointing to an enemy still operating in the dark. After a lightning strike wipes parts of his memory, bike builder Adam Barnett wakes on a remote mountainside with only a strange, loyal dog and a set of terrifying barefoot tracks for clues. In Scottsdale, Major Blain Jacobson arrives at Biodosius Labs to find a slaughter and a total information blackout. Meanwhile, on her Northern Arizona ranch, Victoria Stewart jolts awake to the psychic warning of another impending murder. As their paths converge, all three must piece together a deadly mystery before the unseen threat hunting them closes in.

Ewing balances action with dread, using quiet moments to build tension rather than simply filling space. The violence is brutal but never gratuitous, and the fear is grounded not in gore but in the idea that something is stalking the characters that outmatches them physically, mentally, and strategically. The villain—amoral, calculating, and connected to a network of ruthless accomplices—operates just outside the frame for much of the book, which heightens the sense of nightmare inevitability. The reader feels the same thing Adam, Jacobson, and Victoria feel: the danger is already in motion, and the protagonists are racing against a clock they can’t see. At its core, this is a story about ordinary people pulled into an extraordinary threat, fighting to understand it before it destroys everything around them. A tight, propulsive SF thriller that grabs you from the start and never lets go.

[litandcoffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three strangers find themselves pulled into a catastrophe already in motion in Ewing’s compelling latest. Adam Barnett wakes after a lightning strike with half his memory burned away and a dog that seems to know him better than he knows himself. In Scottsdale, Major Blain Jacobson steps into Biodosius Labs and finds silence, torn bodies, and a wiped security system. On her Northern Arizona ranch, Victoria Stewart jolts awake to a psychic tremor she hasn’t felt in years. As an engineered menace threads their lives together and moves toward Phoenix, can any of them decode a threat that learned them first?

Ewing mixes noir tension, speculative fear, and survival-thriller urgency into a narrative where the quiet moments bruise the most. Adam’s storyline gives the novel its rawest pulse—survival stripped to instinct. Jacobson’s arc widens the threat, and Victoria’s psychic bleed-through adds to the book’s eeriest emotional current. The horror stays low to the ground—footprints, distorted feeds, the sense of a mind studying you in real time. When the storylines collide, the novel becomes a tense study of engineered brutality and human fragility. Lovers of multi-character, conspiracy-driven suspense will be gratified.

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

⋆｡°✩ Spoiler Free Reviews ⋆｡°✩

I was kindly provided with this book (censorship is BS and I hate it but here we are!)

This is a sci-fi thriller novel and when I tell you I wasn’t expecting to be as engrossed as I was! There’s something about the ‘military having a hand in things they shouldn’t and its all hush hush’ concept that sucks me in every time and this novel was no exception.

There was actually a romance subplot which surprised me in the best way, it was lowkey and took a backseat to the action packed main plot but it was still a nice twist on other books I’ve read in the genre!

The sci-fi aspect intrigued me greatly, something about fictional monsters of your nightmares (haha) appeal to the spooky side of my brain and I love the creativity involved in making up a creature that doesn’t exist.

Okay finally cause I’ve rambled a lot lmaoo oops. The multiple POVs worked so well, giving you the bigger picture that you’d miss if just reading from the main character, Adam’s POV. It kept me guessing, had my brain working overtime trying to work out the missing pieces of the puzzle before the book ended!