★ 01/15/2018
Mortician Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, the hero of this stellar series launch from bestseller Meltzer (The Book of Lies), works the U.S. government’s most top-secret and high-profile cases at Dover Air Force base in present-day Delaware. Zig’s world changes when a military plane mysteriously crashes in the Alaskan wilderness and the body of soldier Nola Brown, who as a child saved his daughter from an explosion at a Girl Scout camp years before, arrives on his table. As Zig prepares the body, he discovers that the scars Nola sustained at camp are missing, and he becomes suspicious. When he finds a crumpled piece of paper in the woman’s stomach, a warning for Nola, his suspicions are confirmed: this isn’t Nola. Zig is determined to discover what happened to her and whether she’s safe. The closer he gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon he finds himself in the middle of Operation Bluebook, a secret government program that goes back to Harry Houdini. With its remarkable plot and complex characters, this page-turner not only entertains but also provides a fascinating glimpse into American history. Author tour. Agents: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim, Williams & Bloom Agency and Jenifer Rudolph Walsh, WME. (Mar.)

THE ESCAPE ARTIST has a magic trick up its sleeve. Part Lisbeth Salander, part Homeland's Carrie Mathison. One of the most memorable characters I've read in years. Look out—Nola's coming. This is Meltzer in peak form.

Brad Meltzer has done it again! THE ESCAPE ARTIST is an exciting, cutting-edge thriller you will not be able to put down. If you love twists, tension, and tons of amazing characters, treat yourself to this gripping tale by one of the absolute best in the business.

This novel is like a launched torpedo slashing through 400 pages of deep water before reaching impact. Enjoy one of the best thriller rides ever.

Highly entertaining... Meltzer keeps the action crackling... There's no escaping the solid storytelling of THE ESCAPE ARTIST."

—Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Meltzer is a master and this is his best. Not since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have you seen a character like this. Get ready to meet Nola. If you've never tried Meltzer, this is the one.

Meltzer is a master and this is his best. Not since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have you seen a character like this. Get ready to meet Nola.”

THE ESCAPE ARTIST is a slingshot of a novel. Brad Meltzer expertly pulls it back and lets it go, propelling the unlikeliest of heroes forward in a high stakes, high tension thriller that never lets you catch your breath. My advice: Buckle up!

THE ESCAPE ARTIST is Brad Meltzer's best book in years... Meltzer weaves a stellar tale of history, government-insider knowledge, and thrills... the rare novel that one wants to read fast while also needing to go slow to savor every word.

A throat-clenching masterpiece of suspense-and damned ingenious to boot. My jaw dropped once more—and so will yours.

Meltzer has based his literary career on conspiracy-themed stories, and he’s very good at them. In Nola and Zig, too, he’s created two of his most compellingly fresh characters. Nola, in particular, represents a high point in the author’s career: a strong, resourceful, mysterious female lead who could go toe-to-toe with Jack Reacher, Bob Lee Swagger, and the other guys.”

Nola Brown is a really smart soldier who is badly damaged by childhood abuse. She’s supposed to be dead, but mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski knew her briefly years ago and realizes the body he’s working on isn’t hers. Scott Brick gives an expressive performance that occasionally touches on the melodramatic. Co-narrator January LaVoy brings a nice balance with her cooler, tougher approach, which nicely reflects Nola’s character. Author Brad Meltzer keeps the plot moving— secrets and plots unravel, people die, and Nola and Zig begin a reluctant working relationship to figure it all out. G.S.D. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

2017-12-07
An Army mortician teams up, sort of, with a military artist who just won't die to thwart an obscenely shape-shifting conspiracy.Everybody has some God-given talent. Jim Zigarowski's is to make the dead look presentable for the families who come to view their remains at the Dover Air Force Base. When the bombing of a military plane from Alaska kills all seven aboard, Zig's attention is drawn not to the headline victim—Librarian of Congress Nelson Rookstool, an old friend of President Orson Wallace—but to Sgt. Nola Brown, an Army artist-in-residence who years ago saved the life of 12-year-old Maggie Zigarowski, though she couldn't prevent Zig's daughter from dying scarcely a year later. Illegally grabbing the job of preparing Nola's remains from the mortician assigned to the case, Zig quickly discovers that the remains aren't Nola's after all. His joy that Nola is still alive is tempered by the sobering realization that an awful lot of people have conspired to cover up this happy news by signing off on her death. Inevitably, the living Nola returns, determined to get to the bottom of the bombing. By that time, veteran suspenser Meltzer (co-author: The House of Secrets, 2016, etc.) has begun a series of harrowing flashbacks to Nola's childhood and adolescence that firmly establish her as the most damaged heroine in the genre since Lisbeth Salander. Uncovering traces of a sinister scheme called Operation Bluebook, Zig and Nola work—often at cross-purposes, though not when they need to save each other's lives—through a web of corrupt procurers, creatively armed killers, and board-certified magicians to trace and neutralize Bluebook before its resourceful conspirators can kill Zig and finish the job they bungled on Nola.The same mixture as before: a sweeping, overplotted, overscaled account of high crimes, misdemeanors, and violent coverups and reprisals. But those flashbacks into the heroine's traumatic early years, although they seriously disrupt the momentum of the blood-and-thunder present-day plot, sting long after the details of that plot have faded.