Author: Sean McFate
Publisher: William Morrow and HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780062843661
Year Published: 2020
With extensive military experience in the 82nd Airborne Division and as a private contractor, Sean McFate brings reliable authenticity to this book about his key protagonist Tom Locke.While in exile in Israel, Locke, who is staying with a good friend, watches an explosion of a bridge that takes out the vice president and his wife while en route to the National Prayer Breakfast, on TV.
Although most experts, including the government agencies consider it an act of Islamic terrorism, Locke immediately suspects it is the work of his former employer, a company of mercenaries known as Apollo Outcomes.
To confirm his suspicions, Locke needs to return to the United States and get back inside his old company. That also means putting his life in danger and also in the hands of former teammates who he needs to contact and they may have dubious loyalties.Back in DC, Locke discovers that a civil war has fractured Apollo. A division has splintered off, a rogue unit led by an ambitious, unprincipled former colleague who may have planned the attack himself. But Apollo couldn’t have pulled this off without help from inside the government. The official’s itinerary and route taken by the vice president entourage were confidential - which means there must be a traitor high up in either the White House or the NSA who is leaking information to Apollo.
At the same time, renegade FBI agent Jennifer Lin has her own questions about the assassination. She immediately sees the imprint of an intricate Russian operation and, using her experience working in organised crime along with immense martial arts skills, starts an off-the-books investigation through a maze of underworld connections.In an unusual coincidence, both Lin and Locke meet when she rescues Locke from the crashed SUV where he is held prisoner by the rogue unit of the team of Apollo Outcomes aligned to his former boss, Brad Winters, whom Locke thought was beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
After a brief confrontation, Lin and Locke decide to work together to solve the mysterious assassination confronting them and to do that they must plough through the possible suspects, who include high-ranking Cabinet members, the Russian Mafia, and rogue mercenaries. Along the way, the reader is treated to a story bouncing from one action sequence to another.Meanwhile, Locke is a hero readers can associate and cheer for. Unlike some other political thriller characters, he does not have the attitude of feeling sorry for himself. He and Lin make a good team and will remind readers of Brad Taylor’s Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill.
High Treason will keep the readers breathless from the sheer audacity of its storytelling to its breakneck pacing. An exciting read.