[Warner & Lopez 02] • The Fusion Cage

Deep in the mountain wilderness of Missouri, a lone hiker in the forests witnesses a brilliant pulse of light that temporarily blinds her as she returns to her remote hometown of Clearwater. Upon recovering her vision the following morning, she is shocked to find that every single one of the town’s three hundred inhabitants have vanished. Worse, Clearwater looks as though nobody has set foot in it for more than half a century…

The Defense Intelligence Agency, struggling to root out the identities of the members of “Majestic Twelve”, a powerful cabal suspected of discreetly directing world affairs for profit, dispatches Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez to Clearwater in an effort to discover what happened to the population and why the news media hasn’t covered the remarkable vanishing.

They find a town deserted for decades and yet evidence of recent habitation is concealed beneath the grime and filth of ages. Stumbling upon the lone survivor, suddenly they are plunged into a conspiracy that could change the world forever. From the forests of Missouri, to the scorching deserts of Saudi Arabia and the high-tech laboratories of a massive nuclear facility in France, they face a whirlwind of corporate espionage while being pursued by hitmen charged with ensuring nobody ever learns of mass disappearances that have occurred in remote towns around the world for decades…

The Fusion Cage is the second volume of the Warner & Lopez series from internationally best-selling author Dean Crawford.

**REVIEW**

**Praise for Dean Crawford:**

*"The fossilized remains of a 7,000-year-old creature dug from the sands of the Negev Desert in Israel become the bones of contention in Dean Crawford's fast-paced debut thriller... The book neatly threads together a wild variety of plotlines." -* **Wall Street Journal**

*“… cleverly introduced premise… assured pacing and plotting…”* - **Publishers Weekly**

*“The action is frenetic, in the vein of Matthew Reilly’s Scarecrow series. Crawford is an able storyteller who smoothly orchestrates the plot’s twists and turns… ” * – **Kirkus Reviews**

*“… brilliant high-concept, high-octane thriller….”* - **The Guardian**

*"A fast-paced and entertaining yarn." * - **Melbourne Age**

*"Partly mythical read, part thriller this pacy tale is a page turner guaranteed to keep you up late." * - **The Sun**

*"Get the cameras rolling—Indiana Jones meets Alien. What a combination of mystery, suspense, and unspeakable horror. I loved it!" * - **R.L. Stine **

*“This is an amazingly good, intelligently told novel by an exciting new British author.” * - **Eurocrime**

*"Earth-shattering intrigue, hyperdrive action and a desperate race to save humanity, cranked up to the max with scarily realistic science and apocalyptic religion thrown in for good measure . . . a major new talent has hit the mystery thriller scene!" * - **Scott Mariani**

**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**

Dean Crawford began writing after his dream of becoming a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force was curtailed when he failed their stringent sight tests.