A globe-trotting thriller with pulse-pounding momentum, intimate emotional turmoil, and realistic stakes.
As the United Nations prepares to open its newly constructed global headquarters, an assassin known only as “Pakistan” engineers a devastating plot: transform the building into a massive bomb and eliminate world leaders in one deadly blow. The goal? A power vacuum that will shift global dominance. The operation is funded by an underhanded plan to murder seven young Muslim men in different cities across Europe, with each death staged to activate a massive insurance payout. After one man survives, Interpol agent Colton Gray is called in to unravel the plot and decipher cryptic warnings that surface. But as Pakistan begins to fall in love and discovers he’s been manipulated by those he trusted, the mission becomes a moral maze. Can he stop what he started, or will he be silenced before the truth detonates? The result is a fast-paced thriller that dares to question the price of ideology, revenge, and redemption.
Dwight Morgan Jr. knows how to tell a story with just the right pacing and credibility in the drama, making for a globe-trotting thriller with pulse-pounding momentum, intimate emotional turmoil, and realistic stakes. A lot of the work in grounding the story comes down to Colton Gray and his character presentation, offering a smart, dogged investigator readers will instantly root for. The descriptions and bright flashes of dialogue give Colton an immediate presence, and the story reads like a blockbuster movie with an intelligent conscience as a result. Twists of the plot never feel gimmicky or placed just for the sake of it, but they always deliver and keep readers guessing with the right amount of unpredictability. Despite the wild turns and excitement, there’s an undercurrent that leaves audiences in safe hands with the author as he balances the action with moments of quiet reprieve and emotional complexity. The novel seamlessly combines espionage, politics, and human emotion, and Pakistan is a layered antagonist unlike any other I’ve come across in fiction before. There’s a fine art to villainy where people still feel like real people, and Morgan explores extremism and exploitation with nuance to bring to readers a chillingly plausible conspiracy that never feels too far from reality. A brilliant modern novel that doesn’t shy away from the hard questions, Heat of Hydration is a razor-sharp geopolitical thriller, highly recommended for those who enjoy action-packed tales grounded in something much more meaningful than most.
