The Tipping Point

Dr David Evans is an eminent neurosurgeon at an exclusive Washington hospital, maybe even the best in the world in his field; that makes him the ideal choice to perform an urgent and highly secret operation on the president. He is also a single father grieving over for his dead wife and struggling to build a relationship with his daughter; that makes him a target for a shadowy group who want the president dead.

 
As the hours count down towards the most important operation of his career Dr Evans must break every law of his country and of being a father in order to ensure his kidnapped daughter survives; even if the most powerful person in the world doesn’t.

 
The Tipping Point may well be a later entrant to my personal list of books of the year, any might even top that list, high praise with which to start a review, but in this case more than justified.

 
J G Jurado has delivered a near perfect thriller, one that touches all the right based by setting up a nail biting race against time, a satisfyingly obscure conspiracy and providing plenty of plot twists. This alone would be good enough to put it in the best seller lists; this book though goes much further.

 
The author uses the mechanics of a thriller to ask serious questions about how far his central character would go to protect the ones he loves and how he balances off the resulting actions against his responsibilities to his country and calling. To these he provides no easy answers, each of his main characters emerges from their experiences changed and usually damaged by what has happened.

This is a meticulously constructed and hugely satisfying thriller that takes its readers on an unforgettable rollercoaster ride through high tension situations whilst at the same time treating its audience like thinking adults.