Former army pilot Ted Roberts has lost his wife and career, and his daughter hates him. Bob Sorenson, a high-ranking bureau head in the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, is looking for a man who has little to lose. Ted happily accepts a chance to put his wide-ranging skill set and enthusiasm for jumping headlong into the unknown to good use.

Ted is assigned a recon mission in Jakarta to investigate a pilot who seems to have flown a Garuda A330, with all his passengers, off the face of the earth. During his investigation Ted meets an American CIA attaché, Alan Miller.

When Ted downloads data from the pilot’s flight simulator, the sirens of local police start to blare, leaving him and Miller little choice but to race to the airport and escape Indonesian airspace. Meanwhile, two more planes have disappeared off the radars. Waiting for a flight back to Sydney, Ted notices the suspicious behaviour of a pilot heading towards a flight bound for Kiev. Ted swindles a ticket and boards the plane in the hope, and fear, that this flight is heading to wherever the other planes have been diverted.

This taut thriller drags the reader into the seat beside Ted as he tries to figure out what is happening to these planes. McGuire has provided the right mix of detail and action, with nail-biting moments and even self-deprecating levity we associate with the Australian brand of action hero. This is a recommended read for all those who love an action thriller; just don’t read it on a plane!

Reviewed by David Johnson