Rules? We have no stinking rules in this thriller. Throw out any player’s rule book or any company’s policy manual. Anything that seems normal…isn’t.

Deception is afoot everywhere, including the novel’s twisted deployment:
•A seeming butterfly (actually a micro-airborne vehicle) morphs into a full-blown drone that carries a nacelle containing 20 kilos of Semtex plastic explosives.
•An adrenalin-seeking Doctors Without Borders physician, Jonathan Ransom, is duped into the role of cop-killer, terrorist within an international espionage rampage initiated upon the lethal accident of his wife.
•Jonathan’s spouse, Emma Everett Rose, is disguised as Eva Kruger who transforms into Cary Ransom.
•Hot on Jonathan’s trail is Chief Inspector Marcus von Daniken, head of his homeland’s domestic security, who is thwarted and misled by his superior, Alphons Marti, Switzerland’s minister of justice.
•CIA agent, Paul Palumbo, fools von Daniken about an Al-Qaeda operative Palumbo is secreting away to discover an extremist plot only later to be blindsided by Defense Department lackey, James Austen, who heads an ultra-secret group called the Division.
•Emma’s best friend, Simone Noiret, is drawn into some of Jonathan’s adventures during which she shows her true colors in the finale.
•A Swiss high-end engineering firm, ZIAG, is not actually owned by the Swiss nor is it manufacturing and distributing everyday consumables.
•Despite enormous embargoes, mundane Iranian industries are producing high-grade plutonium at an alarming rate.
•An apparent extremist plot cloaks an inter-agency struggle to undermine and destroy Middle Eastern balance.
•Meanwhile, the Israelis are saber-rattling toward nuclear exchanges with Iran that might be ignited by the deployment of—the butterfly.

This book is one of those near page-turners wherein interspersed chapters follow the deliberations and actions in three or four different arenas until they combust in an almost unbelievable, albeit riveting, conclusion.