The Spirit Box

Rachel's in trouble. She's a ticking bomb. A couple of co-workers bullied her into stealing a radical new drug from their employer, and now it's lodged inside her. They're watching her like hawks and her time's running out. John Bishop runs security for the company. As a father who once lost a teenaged daughter to an accidental overdose, his drive to hunt down the thieves and rescue their victim grows more intense with every lost minute. He can never bring his own kid back. But he can save someone else's.Which is fine until the company realises that if the swallowed package bursts and Rachel dies, their secrets are kept safe and their problem goes away. Though Bishop's on the trail, he's an easy man to cut loose and discredit. But now he's Rachel's only hope. Either the package will burst, or the boys will cut her open to get it. They're so convinced it will make them rich that they'll kill anyone who tries to take her, and hunt down anyone who succeeds.It can't end well. For somebody.

From Publishers Weekly

In Gallagher's white-knuckle thriller, his first full-length novel since Red, Red Robin (1995), several experimental drugs have been pilfered from a North Carolina research lab and suspicion points to employee Rachel Young. Manager John Bishop investigates the theft to preserve the facility's reputation for security, but he has another motive: the day before, his troubled teenage daughter committed suicide, and some inexplicable experiences since hint that her influence is compelling his involvement. Whether John's experiences are truly supernatural or merely guilt-fueled fantasies is never clear, and Gallagher uses the tension this creates to masterfully propel his story forward to a harrowing finale. Gallagher's hard-boiled style is pitch perfect for the tale's grim events, but he leavens it with dislocating moments of powerful emotion that draw the reader irresistibly to the characters. The novel packs a wallop that should make an impact on fans of both suspense and horror fiction. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Stephen Gallagher has combined the career of an award-winning novelist with that of a writer and director of high-end miniseries and primetime episodic television. Screen credits include Doctor Who, miniseries adaptations of his novels Chimera and Oktober, and the original series Eleventh Hour, starring Patrick Stewart in the UK and Rufus Sewell in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS remake. He is the author of fourteen novels including Valley of Lights, Down River, White Bizango, The Boat House, and Nightmare, With Angel. The Bedlam Detective (Crown, 2012) continues the exploits of ex-Pinkerton man Sebastian Becker, first encountered in The Kingdom of Bones. Stephen may be found online at http://www.stephengallagher.com/

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