A Deadly Influence

by Mike Omer

Overview

From bestselling author Mike Omer comes the first in a new series full of the psychological twists and police procedural turns that his fans have come to know and love.

Lieutenant Abby Mullen is no stranger to crisis. As the hostage negotiation instructor for the NYPD, she deals with worst-case scenarios every day. Nothing fazes her anymore.

That all changes when she gets a call from Eden Fletcher, a fellow survivor of the infamous Wilcox cult. The two haven’t spoken since the night of a tragic, fiery massacre, when their paths diverged. But now Eden needs Abby’s help: someone has kidnapped her son and is demanding a $5 million ransom. As Abby throws herself into the case, she can’t help but wonder why the kidnapper has targeted Eden. But Eden refuses to talk. She’s silent about the relics of their shared past hanging on her walls. About the kidnapper’s possible motives. About what’s happened in the years since she and Abby parted ways.

As the truth closes in, Abby realizes that her past may not be as far behind as she thought…and it’s come home to collect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542022873
Publisher:	Thomas & Mercer
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Series:	Abby Mullen Thrillers , #1
Pages:	444
Sales rank:	452,580
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Mike Omer has been a journalist, a game developer, and the CEO of Loadingames, but he can currently be found penning his next thriller. Omer loves to write about two things: real people who could be the perpetrators or victims of crimes—and funny stuff. He mixes these two loves quite passionately into his suspenseful and often-macabre mysteries. Omer is married to a woman who diligently forces him to live his dream, and he is father to an angel, a pixie, and a gremlin. He has two voracious hounds that wag their tails quite menacingly at anyone who dares approach his home.

Editorial Reviews

01/25/2021

In this smart series debut from Omer (the Zoe Bentley mysteries), Lt. Abby Mullen, an NYPD hostage negotiator, receives a phone call from Eden Fletcher begging for help. Eden’s eight-year-old son, Nathan, has been kidnapped. As children, Abby and Eden lived on a farm as part of a cult; they were among the few surviving when the police raided the community in New York’s Suffolk County. Abby builds a response team made up of FBI agents, Suffolk County police, and the NYPD, all the while struggling with repressed childhood memories. Abby and her team, knowing that Nathan’s older sister, Gabrielle, is using her large following on social media to raise the $5 million ransom, begin to suspect the kidnapper may be one of Gabrielle’s followers. In due course, they narrow their focus to someone from the cult. The suspense mounts as the kidnapper becomes more and more desperate and the action builds to a nail-biting rescue attempt. Readers will eagerly await Abby’s next outing. Agent: Sarah Hershman, Hershman Rights Management. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-12-25
The creator of FBI profiler Zoe Bentley—last seen in Thicker Than Blood (2020)—launches a new series starring a hostage negotiator whose past makes her just perfect for this case in both good ways and bad.

Eight-year-old Nathan Fletcher is kidnapped on the way home from his school bus stop by someone who demands a ransom of $5 million. It’s clearly an impossible sum for his mother, dental office assistant Eden Fletcher, to raise. Distraught because the caller told her she’s being watched, she reaches out to Lt. Abby Mullen of the New York Police Department, with whom she shares a terrible secret: As children, they were two of the only three survivors of cult leader Moses Wilcox’s suicidal standoff with the police. That bond, which is so frayed that Abby doesn’t even recognize Edie when she responds to her plea for help, will become pivotal because Edie’s ex-husband, David Huff, remained behind as one of the mainstays of a different cult run by Otis Tillman when his wife and their two children fled. Now, one of those children holds the key to the other’s well-being, for the man who snatched Nathan never imagines that Edie will come up with the money; he expects her daughter, Gabrielle, to raise it through the thousands of followers she’s collected as a teenage social influencer. The fact that the kidnapper is holding Nathan in a locked room furnished and decorated to look exactly like his own bedroom suggests an unusually deep-laid plan. Can Abby see around the twists Omer throws at her to rescue the boy before it’s too late?

An expert ticking-clock suspenser best consumed in one prodigious gulp.

Kirkus Reviews

An expert ticking-clock suspenser best consumed in one prodigious gulp.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In this smart series debut from Omer…readers will eagerly await Abby’s next outing.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher