Three At The Center Of Rage

In scenes that shift from New York to Moscow to South Asia, my novel explores the essential natures of three ordinary men whose lives, while appearing to barely touch, will produce a butterfly effect with the explosive power of C4.

New York Detective, Sergeant Frank Driscoll, is assigned to the murder of a beautiful Russian immigrant. What at first seems a bungled mugging, proves instead to be a botched execution by a hired professional, a man with whom Driscoll engages in a heart-stopping firefight; with Driscoll later discovering that the shooter has unexpected connections.
Finding himself in charge of a case that is far from routine, this pushy, hardnosed cop pursues a risk-laden dot-to-dot linkage up the food chain of the business and political elites, rudely penetrating their polished space to uncover a world of laundered money and sex for government contracts, while posing too great a threat to those who know how to push back—hard.

The “apple pie” life of third generation Pakistani-American law student, Yusuf (Joe) Masood, is suddenly turned upside down when his older brother disappears in Islamabad while attending their uncle’s funeral. Declared a suspicious episode in a climate of war and terror, this leads to a relentless FBI interrogation of Joe’s parents--for Joe a rage-inducing event, setting in motion his journey into the terror camps of South Asia, and leaving in his wake a ticking bomb that Detective Driscoll must defuse.

This ticking entity is Charlie Farrell, a “lost in a crowd” porter at Wall Street’s TrustBank-Manhattan. A delusional and emotionally needful outsider who teeters atop a cauldron of hate; ready to be persuaded, to be shoved, to morph from the daily humdrum into today’s world of terror. And he must be stopped.
The title of the novel refers to the fact that each character at a given point is staggered and close to being overwhelmed by his rage, and it is only when he moves to the center of it, his rage, embracing it, that he finds his equilibrium Thus the title: Three At The Center Of Rage.