One Night in Fear City by J.J. Hernandez

It’s the summer of 1977 and a suffocating heatwave has enveloped New York City. On the brink of financial ruin due to an ongoing fiscal crisis, and with a crumbling infrastructure stretching public resources to their breaking point, the city is on the precipice of catastrophe. Organized crime syndicates, gangs, and outlaws rule a city overrun by crime, poverty, and violence. Socialite Carolina Lynch has been kidnapped by one of these gangs and is being held for ransom in one of the five boroughs. The Savage Kings led by the madman Abaddon have given Carolina’s father, billionaire Josiah Lynch twenty-four hours to pay the ransom. Former Force Recon Marine and Vietnam War veteran Vicente “Vic” Espada is working as a Fugitive Apprehension Agent for a failing bail bonds company in Harlem and living check to check without very many options. But when Vic’s friend and former Force Recon sergeant Oran Burke approaches with a job offer to find Carolina and lead Oran’s team of highly trained operatives to her location, Vic thinks his luck is changing for the better. With the clock ticking, Vic a former gang member who’d left behind the streets of Brooklyn for the jungles of Vietnam, along with his gifted but stubborn protégé Teresa “Teri” Nelson, must work every angle of the streets he knows so well. Outnumbered and outgunned, Vic must use his connections and wits to locate Carolina before time runs out. But things don’t go as planned and with New York City plunged into darkness by a citywide blackout, Vic and Carolina find themselves alone and on the run from her violent kidnappers and their homicidal leader. Through an urban nightmare filled with marauders, rioters, and looters, Vic and Carolina must make the treacherous twenty-mile trek to haven, all while trying to figure out who betrayed them and why.