Editorial Content for Detour

Jeff Rake is a television producer, writer and showrunner, with his biggest success to date being the sci-fi series “Manifest.” Now he teams up with bestselling author Rob Hart, who has written the Assassins Anonymous novels and stand-alone titles like THE WAREHOUSE and THE PARADOX HOTEL. The first book in their new series is DETOUR, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller that you will not easily forget.

If you were to create a mash-up of “The Twilight Zone” and “Lost,” with a dash of the Multiverse Saga from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you might have some idea of what to expect here. The book opens with news coverage of the fast erosion of a huge glacier in Antarctica, where a massive chunk roughly the size of Florida has broken off and sunk. This causes a spiral effect that has the potential to raise water levels to deadly degrees and supplant millions of people from their homes. This could be just the start of events that lead planet Earth to becoming uninhabitable sooner than later.

"DETOUR had me transfixed from the opening page. When I arrived at the cliffhanger, I was hoping that Rake and Hart would devote all of their spare time to working towards releasing book two pronto. It’s trippy and twisty in all the best ways!"

The richest man in the world, presidential candidate John Ward, has funded and built a spaceship with the intent of sending six people on a two-year mission to Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, in an attempt to confirm whether or not it would be a viable place to offshore the human race at some point. The makeup of the individuals selected for this unique and vital endeavor is indeed interesting. Three are well-known astronauts --- Mike Seaver, Della Jameson and Alonso Cardona. The other three are more suspect choices --- Padma Singh, an astrophysicist; Courtney “Stitch” Smith, a Brooklyn graffiti artist and computer whiz; and Ryan Crane, a police officer who earned his seat by saving Ward’s life in an assassination attempt.

Crane is the hardest to convince. It will take $20 million and the promise of finding the right doctors to get his son, Teddy, walking again, which Ward is very capable of doing. With his connections at NASA, Ward is able to accelerate training in Houston to make the six into a team in a matter of weeks before they embark on his Starblazer ship. Unbeknownst to the other five members, Ward hands Crane an envelope that he is instructed not to open. He must take it with him and then give it back to Ward upon his return to earth. What’s that all about?

Just prior to the launch, a post hits a dark web forum featuring a heavily redacted report claiming that the public is not being told the full story. The hidden parts may be deadly to everyone on the planet, especially those manning the Titan mission.

At the midway point, just as the crew is preparing to launch the satellite that they were sent to deliver, they lose all communication with earth and are rocked by two separate blasts. The end result appears to be positive, as there is no damage to the ship and the delivery of the satellite is a success. It will not be for another year when they land back on earth that they realize something is terribly wrong. I will not provide any details here as they would spoil the fun and clearly will continue to be dealt with in the next installment.

DETOUR had me transfixed from the opening page. When I arrived at the cliffhanger, I was hoping that Rake and Hart would devote all of their spare time to working towards releasing book two pronto. It’s trippy and twisty in all the best ways!