Manhattan, 2002: Mark Wallace has it allβheβs married to Claire, the love of his life; they have two bright, beautiful children, and his is a high-powered Wall Street job. Until one night while on a neighborhood errand by himself, his twelve-year-old son, Kyle, vanishes, brutally snatched off the streets of New York.
Seven years later, Kyle has never been found. The loss, guilt, and mystery surrounding their sonβs disappearance have almost destroyed the Wallacesβ marriage, leaving their daughter alienated and distant. Mark has thrown himself into his workβhe is now an energy markets consultant for a private hedge fund run by the father of a friendβand, though successful, is living on emotional autopilot.
Now, on the same day that a natural gas pipeline in remote western Russia is blown up by suspected terrorists, a new lead opens in Kyleβs case. When the very next day a colleague slips Mark classified information on Saudi oil production and then suddenly turns up dead, apparently a suicide, it remains for Mark, with the help of his technophile daughter and still-grieving wife, to find the sinister connections among everything thatβs going on. Their personal struggle is equally compellingβthree people who must once again learn how to be a family.
Politically savvy, emotionally complex, and frighteningly believable, The Garden of Betrayal is a tense and timely imagining of the casualties of recession-era Wall Street gaming and the backroom global oil wars, a riveting, compulsive read that will grip you from first page to last. It also places Lee Vance on the level of todayβs best and best-selling thriller writersβRichard North Patterson, Christopher Reichβwho not only thrill us but make us think.