Red Chaos by Ed Fuller & Gary Grossman
The United States is Russia’s pawn in a global gambit one move away from checkmate.
Once again, the writing team of former hotel and security executive Ed Fuller and award-winning TV producer Gary Grossman have combined their knowledge and firsthand experience to produce the latest supercharged thriller in their popular Red Hotel series, Red Chaos (Beaufort Books), a grabbed-from-the-headlines sizzling political drama and cautionary tale.
Fuller and Grossman use current world events — global terrorism, Russian invasions and presidential pawns — to weave a timely and tantalizing story that is terrifying to consider. They start with kernels of truth from real-world affairs, then ratchet up the drama by positing what could happen if nefarious global powers succeeded in hostile takeovers.
What if Russia used operatives from other countries to conduct terrorist attacks around the world? What if Russia strategized to annex their former territories in Eastern Europe? And what if America’s president was sympathetic to Russia’s plan to regain their superpower status?
Sound familiar? The possibilities are terrifying, but that’s what makes Red Chaos an edge-of-your-seat read. The world’s superpowers sit atop a chasm of possible destruction, but amid the precariousness of the political power struggle, there is hope that democracy will eventually prevail.
Protagonist Dan Reilly gives readers that hope. Reilly has a unique occupation that, combined with his background, makes him the perfect person to covertly gather intelligence and protect U.S. interests. Through the years, the State Department had groomed him to be the ultimate operative.
As president of the international division of the Kensington Royal Hotel Corporation, Reilly travels the globe “evaluating markets, overseeing purchases and sales, solving personnel problems and meeting with foreign dignitaries.” It’s also his job to detect and stop threats at their hotels around the world before it reaches Red, the deadliest level in his five-tiered Red Hotel threat assessment plan.
But Reilly is not your average corporate executive. He’s a former U.S. Army soldier and State Department intelligence officer who uses his skills to protect not only Kensington but the United States. Maintaining an ongoing relationship with Secretary of State Elizabeth Matthews and CIA officer Bob Heath, Reilly keeps the intelligence information highway running both ways — technically, he’s a freelance consultant, but that’s just a nice way of saying he’s a part-time spy.
Fuller and Grossman create an unusual skillset for Reilly. How many corporate vice-presidents have the security contacts and specialty espionage skills to protect the free world? Reilly is an intelligence operative hiding in plain sight, a hero that readers can root for.
Russian Federation President Nicolai Gorshkov pursues a covert master plan to rebuild the Russian empire, reclaiming their land lost to Eastern Europe. But to succeed, Russia needs money, and to get it, Gorshkov will create global havoc through terrorism against the shipping industry. Impairing non-Arctic shipping channels will tip the global economy in Russia’s favor.
Can Reilly identify who’s behind the terrorist bombings of shipping channels and the execution of oil company executives to save democracy from Russian expansion, economic terrorism and an inept U.S. president?
This timely narrative is an ominous story of Russian aggression at its deadliest. Reilly is the fictional hero we can only hope for in our real upside-down world where democracy is one well-coordinated step away from collapse.
Ed Fuller had a 40-year career with Marriott International, where he served as chief marketing officer, followed by 22 years as president and managing director of Marriott International. He is president of Irvine, California based Laguna Strategic Advisors, a global consortium that provides business consulting services to corporations and governments. Fuller is also director of the FBI National Academy Associates (FBINAA).
Gary Grossman’s first novel, Executive Actions, propelled him into the world of geopolitical thrillers. Executive Treason, Executive Command and Executive Force further tapped Grossman’s experience as a journalist, newspaper columnist, documentary television producer, reporter, and media historian. Besides the bestselling Executive series, Grossman wrote the international award-winning Old Earth, a geological thriller that spans all of time. With the Red Hotel series, his collaborations with Ed Fuller, Grossman entered a new realm of globe-hopping thriller writing.
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Publish Date: February 21, 2023
Genre: Fiction
Author: Ed Fuller & Gary Grossman
Page Count: 476 pages
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN: 9780825309878
