A former CIA locksmith turned glorified janitor is haunted by a botched Cold War operation with ramifications that extend to the present day. New York Times bestselling author Jason M. Hough pens a fast paced thriller packed full of action, perfect for fans of Alma Katsu and David McCloskey. Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith. Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick… except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War. Cruising towards retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him, and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him. What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.
Author
Jason M. Hough (pronounced 'Huff') is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dire Earth Cycle and the near-future spy thriller Zero World. In a former life he was a 3D artist, animator, and game designer (Metal Fatigue, Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction, and many others). He has also worked in the fields of high-performance cluster computing and machine learning. The Darwin Elevator began life in 2008 as a project for National Novel Writing Month. The book released on July 30th, 2013 and reached the New York Times Bestseller list the following week. Darwin was Jason’s first published fiction. The subsequent books in that trilogy were released that same summer, along with a prequel novella, The Dire Earth, in 2014. Jason's latest novel, Zero World, released on August 18th, 2015 from Del Rey Spectra (US) and Titan Books (AUS/NZ). Publishers Weekly called it “a thrilling action rampage that confirms Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.” He lives near Seattle, Washington with his wife, two young sons, and a dog named Missbuster.
