Twilight’s Last Gleaming

In Ronnow’s impressive, all too plausible near-future thriller, U.S. president Edmund Wheeler is faced with only difficult choices at a time of great international turmoil. Two blows to the American economy trigger the crisis: first, China sells over $1 trillion in U.S. bonds; second, Russia’s Putin-like president, Dmitry Burkov, announces that he’s ending his country’s economic connections with Europe, Canada, and the U.S., and is expelling their diplomats and businesses. A financial panic follows, as does a rise in military tensions in the Persian Gulf that threaten to escalate into all-out nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. As Wheeler works to devise an appropriate response to Russia’s aggression, Naomi Hendricks, an NSA intelligence analyst, provides even more disturbing news: an attack against the U.S. power grid by Russia, North Korea, and Iran is imminent. Ronnow lends credibility to this doomsday scenario by making his characters three-dimensional. Tom Clancy fans will be satisfied. (BookLife)