UNTHINKABLE

Would you kill your spouse if that were the only way to prevent a billion other deaths?

For lawyer-turned-househusband Nate Lovejoy, this suddenly is no idle question. According to Lorton Rogers, the man who’s kidnapped him, Vanslow DeGange, founder of the shadowy Praesidium, can see the future, and he can see that the lawsuit Jenny Welker’s filing on behalf of 280 clients of Virginia’s Commonwealth Power and Light alleging that its coal-fired Shockoe Generation Plant produced record amounts of lung cancer and COPD will have unintended consequences: Other energy companies that get sued will bring their plants into compliance by using technology that will unintentionally but catastrophically accelerate global warming. Nate won’t be able to talk Jenny out of pressing the suit; she’ll have to die to save all those other lives. Although Nate’s nowhere near ready to pull the trigger once he’s released from captivity, Parks stands ready to unleash a furious barrage of complications that will force his hand. Nate will hear Rogers threaten the couple’s two small children. His attempts to gather more information about the Praesidium will backfire spectacularly. He’ll realize that Rogers is tracking his every move. He’ll press DeGange to make other predictions that come startlingly true. He’ll learn that he’s been reported to the police for domestic violence. He’ll get evidence that Jenny is having an affair. All the while, the cabal responsible for killing John Kennedy and Martin Luther King for the greater good of the greater number will tighten its grip on him until…but that would be telling.

A textbook one-sitting read whose fiendishly inventive details only intensify its remorseless momentum.