Critical Mass Book

This searing new novel from bestselling author Whitley Strieber explores the unthinkable but very real possibility: Could terrorists get nuclear weapons?

What would we do if a nuclear weapon were detonated in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. government suddenly disappeared? What would we do if a terrorist organization announced that it had concealed nuclear weapons in every major Western city and then demanded that the entire planet embrace its twisted brand of Muslim fundamentalism?

In Critical Mass, Whitley Strieber explores this unthinkable but real possibility in a furious story that is almost too terrifying to tell. Nuclear interdiction expert James Deutsch and his Muslim wife, Nabila, struggle to stop an impending nuclear attack on a great American city. Along the way, they delve deep into the hidden world of nuclear terrorism and the experts who strive to contain it, and get a compelling look at the titanic battle within Islam over its own...

Publishers Weekly

In this overheated thriller about nuclear terrorism from bestseller Strieber (2012: The War for Souls), Jim Deutsch, a CIA contract employee whose expertise is counterproliferation, has the world's fate in his hands as he races to foil the Islamic master-terrorist known as the Madhi. When Deutsch learns that some plutonium has been smuggled over the U.S. border from Mexico, he begins to suspect that America's elaborate homeland security apparatus has been compromised. His valiant efforts, alas, aren't enough to prevent the destruction of Las Vegas. As U.S. president William Fitzgerald ponders whether to launch devastating counterattacks aimed at much of the Muslim world, the tension rises, but the impact is undercut by some uneven prose ("She looked back at him as if from another dimension, her gaze resplendent with the unquenchable hope of youth, her mother's proud lips, determined, supremely confident that her dad was the great man she believed him to be"). (Feb.)

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