May 14, 2007
H
enderson's uneven debut marks another addition to the growing list of post-9/11 thrillers in which home-grown radical elements within the United States, not Islamic fundamentalists, pose a terrorist threat. Jeannie Reese, a 22-year-old Department of Defense computer genius, has developed a powerful surveillance technology she hopes can thwart an impending attack. The terrorists, led by racist Edward Latrell, who ran for president in 1976, are holed up in a compound in Colorado, though their tentacles of sympathizers stretch all around the country. They plan to hit the U.S. all at once through a highly developed plan of coordinated attacks coast to coast. Reese, however, has assembled a crack team of techies intent on saving the nation and restoring order. Though well researched, Henderson's plot eventually crumbles into confusion and overly technical detail. Along the way, too many silly asides—including the notoriously chaste Reese's fumbling romance and eventual drunken sex with a navy lieutenant—tend to break the otherwise admirable tension.