While climbing in the Swiss Alps, Dr. Jonathan Ransom and
his wife Emma are caught in a blizzard. When Emma breaks
her leg, Jonathan makes the difficult decision to leave her
and go back down the mountain for help. He leaves Emma with
food and water, covers her with his parka and sets out.
When he returns with a rescue team, his wife of eight years
is nowhere to be seen. The search team finds her body at
the bottom of a hidden crevasse. Weather conditions make
recovery of the body impossible and Jonathan is forced to
again leave Emma where she's fallen.
The next day Jonathan receives baggage claim tickets
addressed to his late wife. When he tries to recover the
mystery luggage, he's attacked and nearly killed by two
Swiss policemen. Jonathan escapes with the help of a
friend, but he leaves one officer dead and the other dying.
When the bags are opened, they reveal fake identification
papers with his wife's photograph, a large sum of cash,
keys to a Mercedes and a man's sweater.
Already grief-stricken by his wife's death, Jonathan is
overwhelmed by these findings. Stunned by evidence of a
secret life and her obvious betrayal, Jonathan runs; not so
much scared as determined to find out what Emma was up to
and who she was working for. His desperation to uncover his
late wife's secrets puts him into danger's path again and
again. Jonathan stumbles across a conspiracy with possible
CIA roots that stretches across continents. One step ahead
of a shadowy assassin, Jonathan systematically hunts down
the men responsible, sometimes arriving only to find bodies
instead of answers. As he reaches the end of his search,
Jonathan is horrified to find out what his peace-loving
wife may have been involved in.
RULES OF DECEPTION is an exciting, complicated thriller.
Everything comes together at the end and what a wild ride
it is getting there.
Dr. Jonathan Ransom, world-class mountaineer and surgeon
for Doctors Without Borders, is climbing in the Swiss Alps
with his beautiful wife, Emma, when a blizzard sets in. In
their bid to escape the storm, Emma is killed when she
falls into a hidden crevasse.
Twenty-four hours
later, Jonathan receives an envelope addressed to his wife
containing two baggage-claim tickets. Puzzled, he journeys
to a remote railway station only to find himself in a life-
and-death struggle for his wife’s possessions. In the
aftermath of the assault, he discovers that his attackers—
one dead, the other mortally wounded—were, in fact, Swiss
police officers. More frightening still is evidence of an
extraordinary act of betrayal that leaves Jonathan
stunned.
Suddenly the subject of an international
manhunt and the target of a master assassin, Jonathan is
forced on the run. His only chance at survival lies in
uncovering the devastating truth behind the secret his
wife kept from him and in stopping the terrifying
conspiracy that threatens to bring the world to the brink
of annihilation. Step by step, he is drawn deeper into a
world of spies, high-tech weaponry, and global terrorism—a
world where no one is whom they appear to be and where the
end always justifies the means.
Rules of
Deception is a brilliantly conceived, twisting tale of
intrigue and deceit written by the master of the espionage
thriller for the twenty-first century.