Twenty: A Jack Swyteck Novel(17 Jack Swyteck)

About the Book

Jack Swyteck and his family are caught in the crossfire after a deadly school shooting claims twenty casualties--Florida's fifth mass shooting in as many years--in this provocative and timely thriller from Harper Lee Prize-winner James Grippando that touches on some of the most contentious issues roiling America today. It is the message every parent of a school-age child fears: "Active Shooter on Campus."

Jack Swyteck is at his office when he receives the emergency text from Riverside Day School. Both his daughter, Righley, and his wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, are in danger. Andie is in the school's rec center when she hears the fire alarms, then loud popping noises and screams coming from the hallway. A trained law-enforcement officer, Andie knows she's supposed to stay locked down inside the room. But Righley is in her kindergarten classroom and Andie must get her to safety.

The tragedy prompts mass hysteria--and dangerous speculation. The police haven't identified the shooter, but they find a handgun on the school grounds registered to a parent, a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. News of the gun and its owner leaks and quickly goes viral. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Andie is shocked--Amir is married to her friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution.

When Xavier, Amir and Lilly's oldest child and an eighteen-year-old senior at Riverside confesses to the crime, the local community's anti-Muslim fervor explodes to levels unseen since 9/11. Terrified for her son's life, Lilly asks Jack to step in. A seasoned defense attorney with a passion to see justice done, he's taken on plenty of complicated cases. Xavier's, however, is not one he's inclined to take--until an old friend who lost his daughter in the shooting tells him that he must.

With the public calling for blood and prosecutors confident their case is air tight, Jack must unearth the Khourys' family secrets in order to expose the shocking truth and save his client from certain death. But he may not be able to save everyone--including himself.

About the Author :
James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense. He was a trial lawyer for twelve years before the publication of his first novel, The Pardon, in 1994. He is now counsel at the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and an adjunct professor of law and modern literature at the University of Miami School of Law. His novels are enjoyed world-wide in twenty-eight languages, and his novel Gone Again won the 2017 Harper Lee Prize in Legal Fiction. He lives in South Florida. Jonathan Davis, who has narrated more than 150 audiobooks, has received widespread critical acclaim for his performances in a variety of genres. He's been nominated for an Audie Award in the Thriller/Suspense category, and he's read several AudioFile Earphones Award-winning titles. He has also narrated over thirty Star Wars titles. Jonathan has read such works as Snow Crash, The Stranger, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, and The Shadow of the Wind. He also performs voice-over work and is the voice of Vladimir Lem in the Editors Choice Award-winning video game Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. Jonathan grew up in Puerto Rico and speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.