The Sam Jameson Series

The machine that watches everyone was built by the government. It does not work for the government anymore.

A burned-out ex-Homeland Security agent chases a dead man across the country and works out too late that the trail was laid for her by a private apparatus riding the NSA's own wires.

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Bill W.
Been up the last 3 nites til 3 am, can’t put it down!
Nancy J.
Just started reading and do not want to put it down. No dinner tonight!
Mickey L.
Great series. You will sit up all night reading!
The Story

In March a bomb in Washington took twelve people, Sam Jameson's career, and the Director of National Intelligence who had a five-year-old girl killed to stall her investigation.

By August she is in Charleston. Sober, unemployed, going to the movies alone.

A man she once helped interrogate in Venezuela sits down at her table and slides a movie stub across it. On the back, in red marker: Alexander Wells is alive.

The evidence is thin and it is real. A hospital corridor. A facial-recognition match at eighty-three percent. A second frame, taken in Charleston, thirty feet behind her.

She goes. Las Vegas, because that is where the trail points. A nightclub owner with Family money and a bad hairpiece. A detective on somebody's payroll. A dead woman in a Henderson safehouse with no marks on her, then a second body in the desert, also unmarked, also impossible to sign off on.

Then a lawyer with an arm missing, and one word left in him before the ambulance doors close.

Capstone.

Somebody has built a private intelligence service on the back of the government's own wires. No charter, no oversight, no record it exists. It reads everything, and it has been reading her a great deal longer than she has been looking for it.

Book Eight in the Sam Jameson series.

Six months after a bombing in downtown Washington ended her career and killed the Director of National Intelligence who had a child murdered to stall her investigation, Sam Jameson is told the man survived.

The man who had the girl killed died in the blast. Everyone agrees. The facial-recognition software does not.

Where It Sits On The Shelf

Genre & Subgenres

For readers of Barry Eisler, Joseph Finder, David Baldacci and Mark Greaney.

Primary Genre

Conspiracy Thriller

Sam holds no badge and no brief. No service is running her and there is no station to report to. What she is chasing is a private surveillance-and-wetwork apparatus riding the government's own infrastructure.

For readers ofBarry Eisler · Joseph Finder · David Baldacci
The Heart Of It

Vigilante-Justice Thriller

Half this book is a woman with no legal authority working up a criminal chain of command by whatever the room provides, narrating the cost as she goes. Nobody is going to sign off on her methods, including her.

For readers ofMark Greaney · Jack Carr
Secondary Genre

Surveillance Thriller

Post-Snowden and entirely off the shelf. Dark Web purchases, steganographic malware, a hacked cardiac implant, NSA backdoors named as such. Nothing in the toolkit had to be invented.

For readers ofDaniel Suarez · Joseph Finder
What You're In For
1

The man who had the girl killed died in the blast. Everyone agrees. The facial-recognition software does not.

2

A movie ticket stub, face-down on a kitchen table, with three words on the back in red marker.

3

Somebody built a second intelligence service on top of the first one. Nobody voted for it.

4

It has no charter, no oversight, and no record that it exists. It has been reading her mail for months.

5

The photograph was taken in Charleston. She is in it. So is he, thirty feet back.

A movie ticket stub, face-down on a kitchen table, with three words on the back in red marker.

Somebody built a second intelligence service on top of the first one. Nobody voted for it.

Zero Spoilers

The Tropes Inside

The Man Who Died Twice

Everybody agrees he was killed in the blast. The software puts him in a hospital corridor at eighty-three percent confidence. Somebody is wrong, and it matters enormously which.

A Note on a Ticket Stub

Three words in red marker and two initials she needs a full minute to place. That is the whole inciting incident, and it is enough.

It Watches the Watchers

A private intelligence service running on the government's own infrastructure. No warrant, no oversight, no paperwork — because officially there is nothing there to paper.

Off-the-Shelf Nightmares

Nothing in this book's toolkit had to be invented. Everything in it can be bought, rented or downloaded. That is the part worth losing sleep over.

One Floor Higher

She thinks she is climbing toward the man in charge. There is somebody above him, and he has been enjoying the climb.

Murder You Cannot Autopsy

Two bodies. No wounds, no struggle, nothing a coroner can put on a form. The method is already on the market and already in your chest, or your neighbour's.

The Cop on the Payroll

She reports a crime to the local police. Within a day the people who committed it know exactly which hotel she is in.

Fingerprints She Never Left

Two homicides, two weapons, two clean sets of prints. Hers. She has never touched any of it.

The Badge That Isn't

The two federal agents who arrest her at midnight showed her genuine credentials a week ago in Nevada. That is exactly the problem.

What Readers Are Saying

Real Reviews, Real Readers

★★★★★

“Right up there with James Patterson, David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, and Frederick Forsyth.”

Gene GeRueAmazon customer review
★★★★★

“It’s 5 a.m. and I just stayed up all night reading!”

Teresa Nallmanvia LJEmmerich.com
★★★★★

“Sharp, extremely well written, and scary as hell!”

Verified Readervia LJEmmerich.com
★★★★★

“Special Agent Sam Jameson is one very tough, gutsy lady… one of the best suspense/thriller books I have read in a long while. My new favourite suspense author.”

Loralei MoirReader review, Goodreads
★★★★★

“I love this series… Love this smart mouthed, sassy, sexy agent. I hope her luck holds in future books!”

Karla ThompsonReader review, Goodreads
Burn - Sam Jameson Book Eight

Reviews sourced from Amazon, Goodreads, and LJEmmerich.com. Names shown as publicly displayed by each platform.

Who's Behind The Chaos

About The Author

Lars Emmerich, author of the Sam Jameson series

When Lars Emmerich was twelve, he went to an airshow. An F-16 flew over the crowd, low and fast and impossibly loud. Something stirred in his chest and tears formed in his eyes. It was love at first sight. Lars and the F-16 went on to enjoy fifteen incredible years together.

While Lars was a young lieutenant in Undergraduate Pilot Training, he read a Tom Clancy novel. It was his first exposure to the espionage and conspiracy thriller genre, and again it was love at first sight. “I will write stories like this one day,” he vowed solemnly.

He’s still trying to live up to that promise.

Lars Emmerich · USA Today Bestselling Author · 1,000,000+ Readers in 17 Countries

Start Reading

Burn - Sam Jameson Book Eight

$14.99$9.99

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Get the ebook
$18.76$14.99

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What Readers Say
Bill W.
Been up the last 3 nites til 3 am, can’t put it down!
Clarke M.
Sam Jameson is one bad ass chick. Very well written books!
Mickey L.
Great series. You will sit up all night reading!