David Baldacci, born in Virginia in 1960, worked as a criminal defense attorney and corporate lawyer in Washington. He has published many action novels in various series. This is the first work featuring Atlee Pine as the protagonist.

When Atlee Pine was six years old, a man broke into the children’s room, where she was sleeping with her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was kidnapped and never heard from again. Thirty years later, Atlee has become an FBI agent who likes to work without being part of a team. She is the only agent in Shattered Rock, deep in Arizona.

The case she has to investigate seems like a minor incident: someone has disemboweled a mule at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But the situation becomes complicated when the tourist who was riding the mule disappears, and his identity does not match the information held by the company organizing the tour. It must be someone with their own agenda. Curiously, Atlee’s superiors are interested in the case and want to intervene directly, leaving Atlee Pine on the sidelines.

She decides to act on her own, pretending to take a vacation, and finds herself confronted with a conspiracy that threatens the entire country and poses a danger to international peace. At the same time, she tries to obtain information about her sister’s killer.

The language is clean, with no indecent descriptions or settings.