The Good Son

A soldier reconnects with his past as he fights to save his mother from the radicals who have kidnapped her in this taut, layered, riveting suspense novel.

Special Operations soldier Theo Bailey is right to be concerned when his mother, a controversial Muslim writer, announces that she will be traveling to Pakistan to attend a symposium on peace. His worst fears are realized when the conference is taken hostage by a group of terrorists who resolve to execute the captives one at a time. Fortunately, Sonia Bailey Laghari has a few tricks of her own: an astounding facility with languages, the mysterious insights of Jungian psychotherapy, and an unthinkable, at times brutal, sense of faith.


While Theo masterminds a high-stakes military operation to save the hostages, his mother discovers in her gift for dream interpretation a psychological tool of great power and subtlety. For her fellow prisoners, including an eccentric American billionaire and a Jesuit priest, Sonia's uncanny influence over the captors is their only hope for survival.

Praise for The Good Son

"Adeptly plotted yet philosophical, worldly yet preoccupied with moral truth, it's a book to provoke comparisons with John le Carré and Graham Greene." —Laura Miller, Salon.com


"The brilliant character development and the labyrinthian plot . . . make this a provocative thriller that readers won't soon forget." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)


"Gruber . . . weaves the threads together masterfully while successfully exploring themes of family, duty, loyalty, cultural identity and more, without ever slowing the momentum. Smart, tense and vastly entertaining." —Kirkus Reviews