Author: Gregg Hurwitz

Title: You're Next

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

The two-page prologue of You're Next steals your breath as four-year-old Mike wakes up in the backseat of his parents' station wagon, his mother missing, and his dad holding back tears as they drive up to an unfamiliar school playground.

Mike notices that his dad has blood on his shirt cuff as he slides over the seat to go play with the school children. He can sense the tension and doesn't want to leave, but his dad is insistent, promising he will be back to pick him up. He never does.

When the children run inside the school building Mike is left alone on the playground, the station wagon long gone. When a teacher spots him sitting outside alone she asks him, "Who do you belong to?" Mike doesn't know.  

The abandoned child has too little details to help the police. Little Mike knows his dad's name is John, his mother's name is momma, and thinks the name of his street starts with the letter X.

Mike is labeled with the last name of Doe and placed into foster care in a home that is already teeming with unwanted children. Mike grows up with fragmented memories of his parents, overshadowed by the fear that his dad killed his mother before abandoning him on the playground. What else would make a man abandon his son and then go missing?

As an adult Mike takes the last name of Wingate and finds a job in construction. Life starts improving from the rough life he experienced in the foster home. He marries Annabel, the love of his life, and together they have a precocious daughter named Kat. After Mike's company finishes an award winning, environmentally friendly housing development he is pictured alongside the Governor of California in the state newspapers. Someone recognizes his picture and the trouble that Mike's dad was running from over three decades earlier begins in earnest again.

Mike is faced with an enemy he doesn't know, for a reason he doesn't understand, and everything that he lives for and everyone that loves are in jeopardy. When he goes to the local authorities they seem more interested in Mike's past than they do his current trouble.

Mike turns to the only friend he had from his years in the foster home, Shepherd White, even though Annabel doesn't trust Shep because of his criminal history.  Together they must find out why Mike and his family are being targeted and attempt to turn the tables.

Author Gregg Hurwitz has delivered a chilling thriller that connects to the tension any parent would feel when their family is threatened. Instead of having a James Bond super hero, Hurwitz mines the emotions and vulnerabilities of a troubled parent—to what lengths would any of any of us go to protect our children?

The pacing of You're Next is absurdly exciting. The suspense builds through each chapter, even when Hurwitz jumps back and forth from Mike's past to his current troubles. He has delivered another compelling story that adds to his collection of award winning novels.

If you enjoy suspense, make You're Next your next thriller.

*This article first published 7/22/2011