Urgent, haunting, and relentlessly suspenseful…
Lovett and Schultz launch their Dangerous Places series with a taut political thriller in which a child’s hopeful poem becomes a dangerous act of defiance against Myanmar’s brutal military regime. When twelve-year-old Vika, the son of a vanished poet, writes a verse about hope, Myanmar’s brutal regime calls it treason. His arrest reaches Kae Zhang, leader of Article 5, an international group fighting torture and repression. As Kae moves deeper into the junta’s shadow world, she faces its most feared enforcer, the ruthless Metal Viper. In a country where truth is dangerous, how far must they go to save one child?
Set against the real tensions of Myanmar’s latest military coup, Lovett and Schultz craft a thriller rooted in political realism. Kae is depicted not as an invincible hero but as a complex and deeply human figure whose determination to save a child leads her into the regime’s hidden machinery of power. More symbol than villain, the Metal Viper represents the quiet, institutional cruelty that sustains authoritarian regimes. Myanmar’s streets, prisons, and borderlands are sketched with precision, placing personal stories alongside the mechanisms of repression. Vika’s perspective adds emotional weight. The prose remains crisp and stark, while the pacing stays steady.
The novel raises difficult questions about how individuals and institutions respond to injustice when the risks are immense and the outcomes uncertain. Kae’s efforts reveal how even modest acts of resistance: a poem, a protest, a refusal to remain silent, can carry unexpected consequences. In the end, the novel works both as a political thriller and as a reflection on contemporary human-rights struggles. Lovers of politically charged, high-stakes thrillers will find plenty to admire here.
Pub date April 22, 2026
Indies United Publishing House, LLC
ISBN 9781644568842
Print length 276 pages
Price $18.99 (USD) Paperback
