Todd Moss

A cutting-edge novel of international crime and its consequences, from Nigeria to Russia to Washington, from the former deputy assistant secretary of state. We laugh when it pops up in our inbox: the scam letter promising a windfall. We wonder: How does anybody fall for these things? But it is no laughing matter. It is one of the biggest organized crime rackets in the world, it is deadly - and State Department crisis manager Judd Ryker has fallen right into the middle of it. The disappearance of a young American in London sends Ryker into the heart of a corruption scandal in Nigeria, at the same time his CIA agent wife Jessica finds herself chasing a Russian master criminal known as the Bear. Unknown to either of them, they are pulling at two ends of the same lethal thread, a staggeringly vicious enterprise of piracy, extortion, and murder. The world is messy and dangerous, Jessica warns her husband. More dangerous than you know. But he is about to find out.

An extraordinary international thriller by the former deputy assistant secretary of state and author of the national bestseller "The Golden Hour." ""In the life of every country, at a moment of extreme national disruption, there is a brief period of breakdown, when everything is uncertain, events can turn on a dime. That is the moment to act, to shape events how "you "want them to go. That is" "Minute Zero."" Fresh off the harrowing events of ""The Golden Hour"," State Department crisis manager Judd Ryker is suddenly thrown into a quickly developing emergency in Zimbabwe, where a longtime strongman is being challenged for the presidency. Rumors are flying furiously: armed gangs, military crackdowns, shady outside money pouring in, and, most disturbing for the United States, reports of highly enriched uranium leaking into the market. And that s all before Ryker even lands in the country. It gets much worse after that. If he can t get control, shape his ""Minute Zero"," a lot of people are going to die not least of all himself."

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER A remarkable thriller debut of twenty-first-century espionage, by a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who "knows where all the bodies are buried--literally" (W. E. B. Griffin). "The Golden Hour: In international politics, the hundred hours following a coup, when there is still a chance that diplomacy, a secret back channel, military action--something--may reverse the chain of events." As the director of the new State Department Crisis Reaction Unit, Judd Ryker gets a chance to prove that his theory of the Golden Hour actually works, when there's a coup in Mali. But in the real world, those hours include things he's never even imagined. As Ryker races from Washington to Europe and across the Sahara Desert, he finds that personalities, loyalties--everything he thought he knew--begin to shift beneath his feet, and that friends and enemies come in many forms.

What should a country do if it suddenly discovers oil and gas? How should it spend the subsequent cash windfall? How can it protect against corruption? How can citizens truly benefit from national wealth? With many of the world's poorest and most fragile states suddenly joining the ranks of oil and gas producers, these are pressing policy questions. Oil to Cash explores one option that may help avoid the so-called resource curse: just give the money directly to citizens. A universal, transparent, and regular cash transfer would not only provide a concrete benefit to regular people, but would also create powerful incentives for citizens to hold their government accountable. Oil to Cash details how and where this idea could work and how policymakers can learn from the experiences with cash transfers in places like Mexico, Mongolia, and Alaska.