The Fourth Rule

The Fourth Rule, an international suspense novel, is a fast-paced, literary adrenalin rush! It’s the story of a man’s struggle to keep the secret of his brother’s disappearance from the CIA.

After returning from three years as a Green Beret in Vietnam, Mark Grant vanishes. Twenty-two years later, the CIA sends two private investigators to question Matthew Grant about his brother’s disappearance. Matthew denies knowing anything, but the investigators don’t believe him. For over two decades, he has lived the fourth rule—“tell no secrets”, but now he faces a serious challenge. Jack Straw, a rogue CIA agent, orchestrates a desperate manhunt to find out what happened to Mark, while Matthew races to find out why the CIA is interested in the secret he has kept for half his life. The action escalates as the rogue agent and Matthew struggle for advantage until the agent kidnaps Matthew’s sixteen year old daughter to ransom her for information on Matthew’s brother. One night the two meet halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge (the book cover) to exchange information on where Matthew’s daughter is held and the location of Matthew’s missing brother.

The story reaches a climax when Matthew rescues his kidnapped daughter, kills the rogue agent, and prevents a terrible wrong from the past being repeated. The question of what happened to Mark Grant remains unanswered until the last paragraph in the book, when the secret is revealed to the reader, but not to any of the characters in the book. Thus, Matthew lives up to the fourth rule—“tell no secrets”.