Ghost Country [Mass Market Paperback]

Patrick Lee (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 28, 2010

“In a word: Brilliant….It left me breathless and awed….Pure exhilaration from the first page to the last.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Altar of Eden

“WOW! Double Wow!...Ghost Country by Patrick Lee will make Asimov and Heinlein cheer with the angels. The techno-thriller meets Sci-Fi, and the result is mind-blowing.”
—Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of Disciple

Patrick Lee reinvented and revitalized the contemporary thriller with his extraordinary debut The Breach (“Audacious and terrifying” —Lee Child). Now his conflicted ex-cop/ex-con hero Travis Chase is back in the breathtaking follow-up Ghost Country. Both Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz fans, X-Files aficionados and devotees of FOX TV’s Fringe, will be blown away by Lee’s Ghost Country—a nightmarish tale of a nefarious plot unleashed at the highest levels of government that will bring about the end of everything in a matter of a few short months.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Lee's dramatic sequel to Breach, gun men hit the motorcade in which Paige Campbell, who has just met with the U.S. president, is riding through Washington, D.C., and kill everyone but her. Before she's captured, Campbell uses her cellphone to get off a call for help to Bethany Stewart, her colleague in the shadowy outfit known as Tangent. Stewart, in turn, recruits Travis Chase, who was once briefly involved in a Tangent operation, and reveals to him the existence of an "entity" resembling a dark metal cylinder that opens a hole in time. Since the entity has shown a horrific future for humanity, Chase and Stewart, who suspects the president was behind the motorcade attack, must scramble to save their friend and forestall devastation in the years to come. Lee imaginatively blends a Baldacci-like political tale of betrayals and assassination with time travel in a thoughtful science-fictional thriller. (Jan.)
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Review

“Patrick Lee’s Ghost Country is in a word: Brilliant. Less a novel, than an adventure, it left me breathless and awed. It’s explosive, innovative and ultimately mind-blowing. Pure exhilaration from the first page to the last.” (James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Doomsday Key )

“Settle back and savor this one. Patrick Lee has an intense brand of storytelling. He’s a most welcome addition to the genre. The real deal. I look forward to reading more from him.” (Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor's Tomb )

“WOW! Double Wow! Starkly original, Ghost Country by Patrick Lee will make Asimov and Heinlein cheer with the angels. The techno-thriller meets Sci-Fi, and the result is mind-blowing. Makes Tom Clancy look like the slowest child in the class.” (Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st ptg. edition (December 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061584444
• ISBN-13: 978-0061584442
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 1.1 x 4.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (151 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patrick Lee lives in Michigan. He is the author of three novels: The Breach, Ghost Country, and Deep Sky.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Sci-Fi Thriller November 28, 2010

By Kevin Joseph VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Warning: Ghost country is among a handful of the most addictive, page-turning thrillers I've ever encountered. If you have any plans for the next day or so, you should seriously reconsider whether you want to lift the cover of this thing.

Patrick Lee hooks you from the get-go with a gut-wrenching action sequence in which a motorcade exiting Washington, D.C. is ambushed with deadly force for the purpose of seizing a mysterious artifact that had just been demonstrated to the U.S President. For those of you who (unlike me) have read Patrick Lee's first novel, The Breach, you will soon be re-introduced to the artifact's guardian, Paige Campbell, and realize that it's one of many mind-blowingly high-tech objects called entities that a highly-classified organization known as Tangent has recovered from the Breach -- a mysterious portal to another time or world. But even if you are coming into Ghost Country cold, you'll quickly get the gist of the dilemma Paige faces as her assailants close in on her and the entity: How, in a one minute phone message, can she leave instructions to someone whom she can trust to locate a companion copy of the entity, figure out how to use it, and save Paige and the world from the doomsday scenario that the sitting U.S. President and other high ranking officials are trying to perpetrate?

Enter Travis Chase, Paige's former lover who has renounced his affiliation with Tangent and Paige for a life of quiet obscurity. After locating the companion copy of the entity and figuring out that it has the power to punch open a window 73 years into the future, Travis sets off to rescue Paige and thwart the Government's frightening plot to create a future of unimaginable horror....

As I flew through this novel, I felt the same rush I get from a well-made blockbuster movie. Scenes leap off the page, cat-and-mouse action sequences propel the plot forward with urgency, and the stakes for Travis and Paige become every bit as dire as those for our civilization at large. And somehow, Lee manages all this without resorting to cardboard characters, unrealistic plot turns, or implausibility not otherwise explained by the high technology and time travel at work. Even the villains are portrayed as complex individuals who believe they are acting in humankind's best interests, all the while plotting the destruction of civilization as we know it.

After finally catching my breath from the final sequence, I was curious what sort of author could have pulled together the best elements of sci-fi classics like the Terminator and the X-Files, with the insider knowledge of Washington, D.C. you expect to see in a David Baldacci novel. According to Patrick Lee's Website, he began his writing career as a Hollywood screenwriter. If making action movies is still his dream, Ghost Country may be his ticket.

-Kevin Joseph, author of The Champion Maker Read more ›

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Shroud Magazine Review January 5, 2011

By Shroud Magazine's Book Reviews VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

Back in the 1970s, during the activation of the Very Large Ion Collider at Wind Creek, Wyoming, an accident resulted in the creation of a wormhole, officially named "The Breach." Periodically, assorted items of alien technology -- known as "entities" --would appear. An autonomous organization known as Tangent was created to research, catalog, and control the entities that come through. Paige Campbell, one of Tangent's leading scientists, is shown a very near-future in which mankind appears to have been annihilated by an entity. Understandably alarmed, Paige rushed off to take this information to the President of the United States. She is no sooner done when an unidentified paramilitary force attacks the motorcade in which she's traveling, kills her companions, and abducts her. A former member of Tangent, Travis Chase, and Paige's assistant, Bethany, are enlisted to rescue Paige. They manage to track her to a secret installation in Washington, DC, and manage to free her. However, the mysterious and decidedly hostile group now relentlessly pursues them, even as they attempt to unravel the hellish fate waiting for them and the rest of the world.

Ghost Country is Patrick Lee's follow-up to his first novel, The Breach, and utilizes characters and concepts he introduced and developed in his earlier book. Regardless, Ghost Country stands alone well enough. Like The Breach, Ghost Country is more a hard-boiled thriller than a science-fiction or horror story, although the alien technology from the other side of the Breach certainly plays a major part in the unfolding of events. Indeed, during my reading of the novel, I found it moving in a very different direction from what I expected, based on the description of the novel and its first few chapters.... Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily -- the story moves at a clip, and the characters are mostly engaging, particularly Travis Chase, the hardened and occasionally not-quite-so moral protagonist. On the other hand, the back story of the Breach itself, and the entities it unleashes, must be taken on faith, as -- by all indications -- Lee's first novel offers no more insight into the actual phenomenon than this one does. I confess to some disappointment at the downplaying of such a potentially fascinating aspect of the overall concept. Regardless, at the heart of the story is the dire need for Travis, Paige, and Bethany to discover the truth, in a hurry, and set things right, if humanly possible. That much the author manufactures with great aplomb.

In the end, having become acclimated to the direction the novel ends up taking, the revelations about the organization against which the protagonists are pitted, as well as the final unfolding of events, come as no great surprise. However, the novel is a fast, solid, and entertaining read. Read more ›

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Book!! December 19, 2010

By Weatherman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is the first book written by Patrick Lee that I've read, and it will not be the last. Lee has a very cool sci-fi, techno thriller type of book here. The book kept reminding me of a Fringe episode (longer though). It has everything in it from time travel, to mysterious items being sent through the "breach." And when they cross over the other future world is a "dead world." Yes, I'm being cryptic here as to not give much away.

And this is the first "pocket book" I've seen in many years! Remember those paperback books, that were cut smaller, usually sold on a rack at your local drugstore. The kind you could stuff in your pocket. Well this is one of those!

And look at the price! As I write this, the book is listed at $7.99. That's for a new first time selling book, that's well written and I could easily see this being made into a movie or extended Television movie. This book could easily be sold at double the selling price!

If you've the previous book by Lee, you're ahead as the characters have a background that is just touched upon here, but it's apparent that there's much more to it than is written in this book.

Nonetheless, Ghost Country is a great read!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars I read this book in the back of a burning Chevy Volt February 24, 2012

By Moon Donkey

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Not as good as The Breach. Ghost Country just stretched logic a bit too far.

Ghost County follows the adventures of Travis Chase as he confronts a disillusioned human rights activist named Isaac Finn who, along with his wife, plots to destroy mankind and start over with a small group of select people in South America.

Problem - how they get from point A to point B makes no sense. Finn's wife, Arica, apparently works for an aerospace company where she designs a bunch of satellites to circle the Earth and, when commanded to do so, bombard the plant with some sort of "Ray" or "wave" or something that makes everyone feel miserable.

Ok... so where exactly does she get the resources to do this? No one else at the company is aware of what she is doing? The engineers don't wonder what the extra machinery is for? What - does she design, build, and launch these all herself? Do you really think the company would spend a bunch of extra cash on satellites that include technology that has no apparent purpose? The idea lacks credibility.

Regardless of how the system gets set up, Finn has also gotten the President of the United States to back him on his crazy plot to destroy the world... along with most of the administration. Why is the PResident backing the plot? Who knows. You see, when Paige and Travis use a portal type device (breach technology) to open a door to 80 years in the future in order to President Currey a destroyed world, heturns around and tries to have them (Travis and Paige) eliminated. Uhhhhh... ok. You know... because the President is also in on the plot...

Then we have the "eureka" moment when Travis figures out Finn's plot. He goes on at length about it, but there is really no good reason why he pieces it together.... It's like a light bulb goes off and he suddenly figures out the whole thing from start to finish. Frankly, this part came across as more of a pathetic attempt by the author to explain what the heck was going on - and he did it through the voice of Travis Chase. Otherwise, when were the plot details going to be sewn together?

Jumping toward the end, Travis and the ex-President, Garner, (yes... Travis is riding shotgun with the ex-president now) jump some fighter jets to South America to stop Finn. To make a long story short, Finn uses his device to open a portal to the future and Travis has to follow him. Travis is nearly killed by Finn when his gun malfunctions, but he is saved when Finn is shot dead. Who shoots Finn? Well future Paige of course. Future Paige didn't know Travis would be there, she just happened to be in the area with a long range rifle. What? Are you kidding me? 80 years in the future she is in just the right place in just the right time in order to save Travis from getting killed? But Moondonkey, you ask... wouldn't Paige be an old lady? Nope - thanks to a convenient little Breach device she is wearing that slows the aging process... which of course was conveniently thrown into the book at an earlier point for the sole purpose of explaining away how Paige could be in this future location.

Back in the present, after Travis landed in South America, the jets that brought him took off again. Why? Of course, this becomes relevant because the device used to open the breach is going to self destruct and Travis must return to New York before it does so - because he needs to use it to open another portal to rescue Paige. Yes - I realize this is jumping all over the place, but it would take to long to lay out all the details. Anyway - the point is that time is ticking - which wouldn't have been a problem if the jets had just stayed. As it is, they have to fly another one down from Florida to pick Travis up. What? - they couldn't have just refueled and waited to give the guys a ride home?

By the time Travis arrives in New York, he has about 2-3 minutes to find current Paige (who is trapped in the future) and rescue her. Uhhh... except she has been trapped in the future for about 12 hours or so and who knows where she is. Well, apparently Travis does because he jumps on a chopper and lands just a few minutes from her location (in the present), opens the portal (to the future), and *bam* happy ending. Dude... it can take longer than 2-3 minutes just to find my dog in the yard or my kids in the house. But Travis finds Paige in the future apocalypse of New York in just a few minutes. Yeah right.

That's just dumb. Seriously... just dumb.

The book was a fun and quick read. Like The Breach, it really feels like you are reading a movie. Unfortunately, you get the same huge leaps in logic. You also get those "... come on..." moments.

All in all, I still sort of liked the book. I give it two stars because it was not as good as The Breach. I also found that the overall plot just went a bit too far past the believability threshold.

BTW - does Tangent actually have any employees that are worth a darn? Apparently Travis Chase does everything for them.

I'm probably dropping the series at this point. Read more ›