Fasten your seatbelts, slather on the sunscreen and settle in for the non-stop thriller beach read of the summer. Debut novelist David Ricciardi has created a reluctant hero who must call on every savvy trick in his character’s slim book of survival skills to escape through the earthquake-ravaged Iranian desert as he flees from his Red Guard captors.

CIA technology consultant Zac Miller is on a weekend holiday trip from Paris to Singapore when his plane loses an engine and makes an emergency landing at a remote airstrip in Iran. All aboard land safely, if not a bit shaken, and depart a few hours later on another flight to continue their journey. A man with Zac’s passport and his clothes is among those boarding the plane, while Zac is held in shackles under armed guard in an abandoned building. He was observed taking photographs of the mountains and sunset in a top-secret area and is now being brutally questioned. He fears for his life and manages to escape his captors to find himself in a world so bereft of civilization that he must call on his wits to survive.

"Fasten your seatbelts, slather on the sunscreen and settle in for the non-stop thriller beach read of the summer."

Zac is confident that his CIA connections will locate and protect him as he was indeed working undercover as a last-minute replacement for a disabled fully trained field agent. His desk job in Washington had not prepared him for what lay ahead. He knew only that the photographs he was asked to take while the plane sat on the airfield were a first but crucial step in an undercover assignment under direction from Quantico.

However, Zac discovers too late that publicity about a murder he supposedly committed puts him on a no-fly list as he makes a desperate run for his life, not only from the Iranians but now from the CIA. In order to clear his name of the heinous murders, one in Paris and another in Singapore where someone has planted DNA to implicate him, he first must find out who is impersonating him and why it is so imperative that he disappear.

The twists and turns as he encounters unimaginable terrors and adversities at a relentless pace kept me flipping pages into the wee hours. Zac Miller has been likened to action heroes Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan by A-listed thriller writers. Based on the all-too plausible premise that Iran continues to possess hidden nuclear materials, this modern-day Odyssey of a stranger in a strange land leads the reader through a plot that thickens with every chilling chapter right to the very last words.

Ricciardi is no stranger to outdoor adventures. He says in an interview that he calls on his experiences as an avid outdoorsman --- a world-travelling backpacker, a scuba diver, an alpine skier and a sailor. He also has received extensive training from law enforcement and US special operations personnel. He likes to imagine what it would be like if he had no compass, other than his inner moral instincts, and no modern-day communication tools at hand to survive. It is from that inner store of knowledge and experience that he calls on his vivid imagination to set the reader in a strong sense of place as he dodges his pursuers around the world.