Richard Hollands

Just when you thought thrillers packed with nightmare visions of Armageddon, cold warstyle treachery and undercover agents' derringdo had crumbled along with the Berlin Wall, Richard W Hollands revives the genre with an exciting new angle and a whole new axis of potential evil! The appositely titled Paradigm Shift is exactly what it says on the tin. It moves the diplomatic, political and military intrigue and shenanigans from the traditional Uncle Sam versus the Soviet Bear to Asia specifically India and Pakistan. What hasn't changed is the nature of the good guys in this case US President Whiting whose true grit in the face of a sinister conspiracy that threatens to change the world forever is the stuff of every action thriller you ever read.

So what exactly is the titular Paradigm Shift? A plot hatched by a lunatic Indian Prime Minister and China to take India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war, shut off the world's oil supplies and hold the western world to ransom. As the civilized world's brought to its knees, two undercover agents race against time to take out the madman and restore sanity and here's where Hollands introduces the romantic element by teaming up cynical Special Forces veteran Luke with the dangerously gorgeous Kirin, an American agent of Indian descent. As the chances of success dwindle, a strange and unspoken love grows between the two battlehardened professionals. But will it ever be consummated? The answer seems to be ‘only if their mission succeeds'. Read this riproaring and riveting apocalyptic thriller and find out!

P Dodd's
The Bookseller Review