Too Far Gone »

John Ransey Miller's career has included stints as a visual artist, commercial photographer, advertising copy writer, and photojournalist. A native son of Mississippi, he has lived in Nashville, New Orleans, and Miami, and now resides in North Carolina, where he writes fiction full-time.

Alexa Keen is the best the FBI has to offer, a special agent who can achieve the impossible: finding victims of abduction before they can be killed. Casey LePointe West is heiress to one of the greatest fortunes in America. Now, as Hurricane Katrina roars toward New Orleans, these two women are finding common ground in a city of ghosts and grandeur...Alexa as the FBI’s representative in a case guaranteed to destroy careers, and Casey as a woman whose husband has gone missing—and who herself may be the next victim of a brilliant manipulator’s rage.

From the violent wards of an insane asylum to the primordial Louisiana swamps, Alexa is entering the darkest corners of a deadly mystery, peeling back layers of family secrets, hidden relationships, and a twenty-five-year-old crime. And as a raging hurricane gathers strength, she is plunged into a frantic race against time, in the eye of a storm of violence...and just where a ruthless killer wants her to be.

Publishers Weekly

Miller's newest crime thriller eschews customary protagonist Winter Massey for FBI Special Agent Alexa Keen, who specializes in resolving high-profile abduction cases. While in New Orleans for a law enforcement seminar, she gets drawn into a case the authorities are desperate to keep quiet: Gary West, the husband of billionaire heiress Casey LePointe, has been kidnapped, without a note or motive. As Alexa navigates a Fed-weary police department, LePointe's reluctant, influential uncle and treachery at every turn, another threat looms: the approaching Hurricane Katrina. Miller digs into the underbelly of New Orleans and the minds of some deeply damaged characters, building tension while Katrina builds in strength. In a genre typified by predictable twists and stereotypical antagonists, Miller's entry is a refreshing change, providing genuine surprises and rich secondary characters. Unfortunately, Alexa is not a particularly original creation, saddled with a straightforward traumatic childhood story to explain her familiar workaholic-with-a-heart-of-stone act, but Miller's work with Alexa's adversaries, as well as the LePointe family, more than makes up for it. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.