Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano is a techno-thriller filled with intrigue (available September 18, 2012).
There is no code Elroy Coffin can’t break, nothing he can’t hack, no safe he can’t get into. But for the past two years, he’s been incarcerated in a maximum-security hellhole after a job gone bad, driven to near-madness by the revelation of his beloved wife’s murder.
Now a powerful and mysterious visitor who calls herself a “concerned citizen” offers Elroy his freedom if he’ll do another job, and sweetens the deal with proof that his wife might still be alive. All Elroy has to do is hack into one of the most complicated and deadliest security grids in the world—clear and simple instructions for the best in the business. Or so he thinks.
Quickly drawn into the epicenter of a secret, brutal war between criminal masterminds, Elroy is forced to run for his life through a rapid-fire labyrinth of deception, betrayal, and intrigue—where no one is to be trusted and every fight could be his last . . .
Chapter 1: Five Percent
My fist connects with the soft spot in Coolie’s right cheek, just above his lower jaw, and I hear teeth shatter under my knuckles. I hit him just the way you’re supposed to, arm straight out, wrist stiff like steel, all forward thrust anchored from the shoulder and popped like a coiled spring at my elbow. You turn your whole arm into a concrete piston when you do that. This guy, he’s big and all—but big doesn’t mean anything when you go straight for the face. A monster can’t grow muscles on his teeth. Giant guys who are used to victory by intimidation never expect it to come right at them like this, not ever. Coolie stumbles back all dazed, the knockout reflex working overtime. I hit him next in the throat, a jujitsu-style straight jab with my fingers. His windpipe closes with a sick crack and he loses all his air. When he drops the shank and reaches up to grab his throat, I kick him dead center, just below the belt. That cancels the fight. But just to be sure, and to make it nice and showy for the boys, I swing around again with the heel of my foot and something that looks like a big red tomato bomb explodes in the center of his face. He goes down on the dirty asphalt, dreaming about whatever.
The crowd goes crazy, like it’s a football game.
[Read the full excerpt from Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano]
The first novel I ever read from cover to cover was the tie-in of a movie starring Chevy Chase and Benji called Oh, Heavenly Dog. Believe it or not, that was actually a mystery, a thriller, even—about a private detective who is killed on the job, then gets sent back to earth to solve his own murder as a cute little four-legged friend. I hadn’t actually seen the film before I read the book, so it was just like “the real thing.” Which is to say, I had graduated that afternoon from comics and storybooks, into the realm of printed literature with no pretty pictures—much less an entire movie to illustrate the story. I was eight years old, and I remember the feeling of accomplishment that came with getting to the last page of that sucker, thinking that I was suddenly an adult now. I’d read a whole novel all by myself! Never mind that it was some cute li’l book-for-kids—that part wasn’t important.
