Black Friday - Couverture souple

On the busiest shopping day of the year, idealistic students wade into malls across America carrying concealed devices they believe will cause chaos at the checkouts. But at the nation's largest shopping center, the results are incendiary - and people lie dead. A white-collar lobby group called Citizens for American Pride takes responsibility for the protest action, calling for an end to cheap, foreign-made goods and exported manufacturing jobs. But they insist the bombing was the work of rogue members, zealots who took the message too far. As Maggie and her partner sift through both the debris and the facts of the case, they uncover paranoia, racism and a sinister secret agenda that extends to the CAPs highest ranks. As retailers count down to Christmas Eve, Maggie knows that infiltration is the only option, even though the cost could be huge. And if they fail, more innocent people will pay with their lives.

'Often when reading thrillers, it can be easy to work out how the plot will develop. In Black Friday by Alex Kava, which centres on a terrorist attach at a mall on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day in America), this is not the case. The plot concerns a sinister character called The Project Manager who may have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, and a group of teenagers who don t realise they are being used as suicide bombers. Kava s action is snappy, and the tale never gets predictable.' --The Bookseller

'Move over Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs and Karin Slaughter...Alex Kava steals the chills from these erstwhile ladies of crime.' --Guardian

'Not for the faint of heart' --Peter Robinson