By Gregg Hurwitz, 2005

ISBN 0060530413

A shocking suicide in the La Brea Tar Pits serves as the prologue to this well-realized thriller about a mind control cult and the efforts of former deputy marshal Tim Rackley to rescue the stepdaughter of a Hollywood producer with political aspirations from its clutches. Rackley s Rambo-esque vigilantism in the wake of his own daughter's violent death got him cashiered from the marshal's service, but Will Henning has enough clout to get Tim temporarily reinstated to the service--at least, until he manages to return Leah Henning to her family. But the only way to get into the heavily guarded compound controlled by the mysterious cult leader known as the Teacher is for Tim to go undercover as a willing initiate, a potentially deadly masquerade that brings him face to face with the demons that have haunted him since childhood.

A sharp, tense, multidimensional novel that will keep the reader turning the pages until the bloody end, The Program more than measures up to the previous titles in Hurwitz's series featuring series hero Rackley ( The Kill Clause ). --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Hurwitz's fifth novel continues the story of Tim Rackley, the U.S. marshal introduced in 2003's The Kill Clause .

Tim and Dray, his wife, are slowly coming to grips with the loss of their seven-year-old daughter, Ginny, whose kidnapping and brutal murder was the focus of the previous novel. A more conventional series hero would be wreaking vengeance, but Tim's grief is plausibly amorphous. It wasn't always so.

Rash vigilante action caused him to lose his marshal's job in The Kill Clause , but he's given a chance to get his old job back when a brusque Hollywood producer begs him to find his daughter, Leah Henning, a missing Pepperdine coed. Leah may have been kidnapped by an unidentified cult, and Tim must bone up on mind control and manipulation. Hurwitz illustrates Tim's lessons via Leah herself, whose step-by-step indoctrination is as creepy as it is believable.

Intending to persuade Leah to leave with him for deprogramming, Tim infiltrates the Program, facing off with charismatic cult leader TD Betters, who has created a seductively logical society based on self-help tenets. Once Tim's inside, he realizes that rescuing Leah isn't enough: he's determined to blow the Program inside out. Grounded in character and believable detail, Hurwitz's thriller engages on every level.

Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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