The Power Couple
A Novel
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From #1 New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award winner Alex Berenson, comes a supercharged espionage thriller about marriage and the dangerous secrets spouses keep.
Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all: a nice house in a Washington,?DC, suburb; two well-behaved teenagers; and high-pressure government careers—Rebecca in FBI counterterrorism and Brian as an NSA coder. Brian even developed and sold a profitable app. But twenty years in, their marriage has deteriorated. Communication and intimacy have dwindled.
To reignite their connection, they take their kids, Kira and Tony, on a European vacation. Fun turns to terror when Kira is abducted one night in Barcelona, sparking a frantic weekend-long search. As a kidnapping spree unfolds, hidden dangers tied to espionage, encryption, and international ransom emerge.
Rebecca taps her FBI and NSA resources to locate her daughter, while Kira—revealing resilience and cunning—fights to escape. Over the course of a weekend, the couple confronts marriage strains, career secrets, and betrayal. In this globe-trotting spy thriller, suspense escalates as family dynamics and the dangerous world of espionage collide.
The Power Couple combines domestic espionage, spy fiction, and marriage thriller elements in a fast-paced plot full of shocking twists, while offering a nuanced look at the cost of ambition, parenthood, and trust within modern marriage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite the title, Rebecca and Brian Unsworth, the protagonists of this cinematic standalone from Edgar winner Berenson (the John Wells spy novels), aren't that powerful: she works in counterterrorism for the FBI; he works in software at the NSA. But they have access to power, which they'll need when their 19-year-old daughter, Kira, is kidnapped while the family is on vacation in Barcelona. The setup nods to the well-worn Taken movie franchise, but the focus is more on the parents and how their career and personal trajectories brought them to the fateful night in Spain. Career-obsessed Rebecca traded a lucrative job as a lawyer to join the FBI; Brian parlayed a knack for computers into a job with the NSA. Kira's kidnapping almost recedes into the background, though the teen's resourcefulness provides some of the best scenes as the book explores the tensions in the marriage and why the daughter was snatched. Berenson writes with vigor and pace, and keeps the foreground plot humming along, but the long backstories undercut the immediate concern of Kira's abduction. This thriller is tailor-made for the big screen.
