No One Sleeps

by Jack Erickson

Overview

Milan's elite anti-terrorism police, DIGOS (Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali), receives a tip that a sleeper cell of Muslim terrorists have received toxic chemicals from Pakistan to make deadly sarin gas. The cell leader has access to Milan's centers of finance, technology, commerce -- all high profile targets with potentially hundreds of casualties in a terrorist attack.

Police forces all over the world -- and especially in Europe -- are being challenged by terrorist groups recruited in the Middle East by radical forces intent on destroying Western governments and cultures. Bombings and armed assaults on innocent civilians in France and Belgium are the latest and most deadly attacks since 9/11.

Italy is at the center of the attempts in Europe to neutralize this threat with sophisticated police techniques. No One Sleeps is the fictionalization of an attempt by a cell of radical Muslims intent on attacking an important Italian cultural institution in Milan and killing hundreds of innocent Italians. When DIGOS, the Italian anti-terrorism police, learns about the terrorist cell, they send agents to discover who they are and stop them before they act.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780941397117
Publisher:	Redbrick Press
Publication date:	10/29/2017
Series:	Milan Thriller , #2
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Jack Erickson writes in multiple genres: international thrillers, mysteries, true crime, short mysteries, and romantic suspense.

He is currently writing a series of international thrillers based in Milan featuring the anti-terrorism police, DIGOS, at Milan's Questura (police headquarters). Book 1 in the series is "Thirteen Days in Milan." Book 2 is "No One Sleeps." Book 3, "Vesuvius Nights, was published in 2019. Book 4, "The Lonely Assassin," will be published in 2020.

The models for Erickson's thrillers are based on three popular Italian mystery series: Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti in Venice; Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano in Sicily; and Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen in Rome. All three have been produced as TV series at either BBC, PBS, RAI, or Deutsche Welle

Erickson travels throughout Italy for research and sampling Italian contemporary life and culture. In earlier careers, he was a U.S. Senate speechwriter, Washington-based editor, and RedBrick Press publisher. He wrote and published several books on the emerging craft brewing industry including the award winning "Star Spangled Beer: A Guide to America's New Microbreweries and Brewpubs."

Before he began writing fiction, Erickson was a wealth manager for a national brokerage in Silicon Valley.

Editorial Reviews

“ . . . a chilling story that reads like today’s headlines. With no leads, DIGOS agents use technology to discover terrorists are using stolen cell phones to communicate. But they don’t know their leader — an Italian with Pakistani heritage — was trained at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan."

" . . . a suspenseful thriller with moments of humor, romance, local color and interesting characters. A bonus is a peak into Milan’s elite fashion world and even Hollywood.”

“ . . . great characters and a classic setting in historical Milan. Erickson’s usual attention to detail and thorough explanation is outstanding . . . “

“A thoroughly researched and soberly told tale of one of today’s most pressing global issues . . .” Kirkus review

From the Publisher

2017-09-23
A terrorist plot threatens a high-profile event in the latest installment of a Milan-based thriller series.When a hapless customs official accepts several bribes to overlook particular shipments coming through the Italian port of La Spezia, his guilt and suspicion compel him to confess the transgression to his brother-in-law, Gianni D'Imporzano, an agent with the Milanese Questura. What the subsequent probe turns up is frightening: someone has been transporting into Italy chemicals used to make the deadly gas sarin. The Questura assembles a team to foil the suspected terrorist scheme. The story proceeds to plumb painstaking investigative minutiae as inspectors track phone records, stake out suspects, and navigate agency politics, all while trying to lead normal lives. A parallel narrative describes how the villain, at first a normal Muslim-Italian man with Pakistani heritage, came to be radicalized, a slow build of humiliation, resentment, and cultural intolerance that culminates in his plan to commit mass murder. The mundane element of the tale is notable: would-be jihadis struggle with their sexual drives and the jobs they hate while detectives gush about meeting celebrities and bicker like siblings. Nobody is ideologically pure; everyone is merely human. Unfortunately, Erickson's (Weekend Guest, 2016, etc.) attention to quotidian concerns tends to trip up the pace of his slick procedural. Every character, no matter how peripheral, is given a bio at the moment of introduction, and with the exception of the villain, whose past traces effectively to his harrowing present, the broader back stories of the main players have no bearing on the tale's primary action. The result is that histories intended to round out characters read as mere devices for making them sympathetic instead of contributing to a textured fictional reality in which their participation in the plot leads to growth that they wouldn't otherwise have achieved. This disjointedness drains the story of its urgency, leaving the reader to root for the foiling of terrorism for its own sake, without much concern for the agents trying to get the job done.A thoroughly researched and soberly told tale of one of today's most pressing global issues, weakened by clumsy characterization.

Kirkus Reviews