Fake Truth

by Lee Goldberg

Overview

The only thing more dangerous than fake news is fake truth in this exhilarating thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.

Author Ian Ludlow writes great adventures…but after helping Chinese movie star Wang Mei defect to the United States, he becomes the accidental hero of a real-life espionage thriller. Now he’s stuck with the actress—and suffering a nasty case of writer’s block—when he stumbles into a secret Russian plot using “fake news” to outrage Americans into believing a terrifying lie.

It’s up to Ian and Margo French, his researcher-turned-spy, to discover the connection between a barbaric drug lord in Mexico, a homicidal maniac in California, a rogue citizen army in Texas, a raging TV pundit in New York, and two dead tourists in Portugal…before the president of the United States makes a catastrophic mistake that could resurrect the Soviet Union.

The only weapon Ian has against the global conspiracy, and the assassins who are closing in on him, is his vivid imagination. If his story isn’t a killer thriller, he’s dead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542093118
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Series:	Ian Ludlow Thrillers , #3
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lee Goldberg is a two-time Edgar Award and two-time Shamus Award nominee and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the Ian Ludlow series (Killer Thriller and True Fiction), the Eve Ronin series (Lost Hills), fifteen Adrian Monk mysteries, and the first five books in the internationally bestselling Fox & O’Hare series (The Heist, The Chase, The Job, The Scam, and The Pursuit) cowritten with Janet Evanovich. He has also written and/or produced dozens of TV shows, including Diagnosis Murder, SeaQuest, The Glades, and Monk, and cocreated the hit Hallmark movie series Mystery 101. As an international television consultant, he has advised networks and studios in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, China, Sweden, and the Netherlands on the creation, writing, and production of episodic television series. You can find more information about Lee and his work at www.leegoldberg.com.

Editorial Reviews

Hilariously surprising. The author’s juggling of truth and fiction is almost as dexterous as his hero’s.” —Kirkus Reviews

“At the start of bestseller Goldberg’s entertaining third Ian Ludlow novel, Ludlow, the author of a bestselling series starring macho freelance superspy Clint Straker, returns…Goldberg continues to inject a welcome dose of levity into the thriller genre.” —Publishers Weekly

“Delightfully outrageous…There are shootouts, bombings, car chases, and plenty of almost slapstick—but still murderous—mayhem. There are hilarious lines, too. Here’s a waiter with ‘a nose so large it looked like he’d grown a thick mustache to help support its weight.’ For readers who enjoy madcap action. And a good laugh.” —Booklist

“Fake Truth promises to be the most over-the-top, electrifying book in the series so far—making it a no-brainer for readers looking for a fun and thrilling read.” —The Real Book Spy

“A pedal-to-the-metal, full-on page turner.” —Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author

Praise for Lee Goldberg’s Ian Ludlow Series:

“Goldberg has crafted a clever, silly, and exciting thriller that showcases a love for the genre and the world of writing.” —Associated Press

“If great pacing with awesome characters is what keeps you up at night, then make a pot of coffee and open this book.” —Crimespree Magazine

“A delight from start to finish, a round-the-world, thrill-a-minute, laser-guided missile of a book.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Judgment

From the Publisher

2020-01-26
Ian Ludlow, the novelist who’s blessed or cursed with the ability to invent and transplant plot twists from real life to fiction and vice versa, gets a third opportunity to devise a rollicking tale that’s ripped from the headlines and a bunch of James Bond movies.

Always looking for new ways to bring the United States to its knees, Russia’s GRU stumbles over a new wrinkle flooding digital media with fake news about nonexistent events: They provoke or invent incendiary incidents they can count on other news sources to parrot. Double-crossing every party she can find, GRU agent Beth Wheeler arranges to have a well-armed security team for an anti-immigrant Texas ranger kill two dozen clueless Mexican drug smugglers with weapons that will point to a White House conspiracy so that another clandestine group of GRU hirelings passing themselves off as enforcers for Mexico’s Vibora drug cartel can execute the members of the security team. Not content with staging an incident bound to have international reverberations, Beth leaks to Fox News puppet Dwight Edney a recording of the president’s expletive-laced vow to take revenge on Mexico that’s so exclusive that the president never actually made it. The only way to prevent the two nations from being dragged into war is to wait until Ian and his research assistant, Margo French (Killer Thriller, 2019, etc.), return from Portugal, where Ian’s search for new fictional inspiration in real-life anecdotes has plunged them into a hitherto unsuspected murder and endangered their lives, so that they can survive to revise the Russian agents’ sinister closing act and make it more suitable for peaceniks and life in the Western Hemisphere. That’s exactly what Ian does in a finale whose general outline is as predictable as its working out is hilariously surprising.

The author’s juggling of truth and fiction is almost as dexterous as his hero’s.

Kirkus Reviews