Six years ago, suburban Californians Charlie and Julie Davis fled Uzbekistan, where Charlie had been working as a journalist, at the start of a bloody uprising. Now, while visiting Disneyland, Julie goes missing, and Charlie discovers they’ve become entangled with a dangerous power player in the region. Narrator Scott Sowers sets a fast pace for this thriller. He’s particularly strong in his portrayal of Charlie as a formerly mild-mannered news photographer who is determined to find his wife. Sowers provides a somewhat quirky English accent for the British-born Julie but excels at presenting her terror at being abducted and held by terrorists. In an especially chilling portrayal, Sowers gradually reveals the Uzbek villain’s maniacal hunger for revenge. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Steinberg, the creator of the TV series Without a Trace, makes his fiction debut with a high-action thriller that stands out in a crowded field. In part one, set in 2005 Uzbekistan, journalist Charlie Davis covers a mass protest against the government in the provincial capital of Andijan. With him is his politically progressive British wife, Julie, who’s pregnant with their first child. When government forces open fire on the protestors, Charlie and Julie are both wounded, though not critically. Six years later in Los Angeles, where the couple have settled after their recovery, Julie is kidnapped while stuck in freeway traffic after a trip to Disneyland with their two kids. Certain that someone from their past in Uzbekistan is up to no good, Charlie sets out to rescue Julie with all the determination of a Vince Flynn or Brad Thor hero. Good backstory, original characterization, and a cinematic prose style add up to an exciting read. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (June)

The mysteries of marriage collide with the page-turning suspense of a breakneck thriller in one of the most combustible reads of the year.

Out of Range is an explosive international thriller, gritty and real, with vivid characters, dramatic international settings, and a sense of menace that grows almost unbearable. I absolutely loved it.

Hope, desire, heartbreak, global intrigue, swift plotting and characters you’ll love—Hank Steinberg’s stunning debut has it all.

With the speed of an ICBM and a plot straight out of ‘Homeland’, Out of Range is for those who like their terror stakes on red alert and their action set to high.

Hank Steinberg’s Out of Range blasts out of the gate and never stops galloping.

A moving and suspenseful first novel. . . . Tense and intriguing to the last page, this domestic thriller promises a bright future in crime fiction for Steinberg. Recommend this to fans of Harlan Coben and Lisa Unger.

Gripping from the start . . . this action-thriller shines in its action scenes.

Six years ago, suburban Californians Charlie and Julie Davis fled Uzbekistan, where Charlie had been working as a journalist, at the start of a bloody uprising. Now, while visiting Disneyland, Julie goes missing, and Charlie discovers they’ve become entangled with a dangerous power player in the region. Narrator Scott Sowers sets a fast pace for this thriller. He’s particularly strong in his portrayal of Charlie as a formerly mild-mannered news photographer who is determined to find his wife. Sowers provides a somewhat quirky English accent for the British-born Julie but excels at presenting her terror at being abducted and held by terrorists. In an especially chilling portrayal, Sowers gradually reveals the Uzbek villain’s maniacal hunger for revenge. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Six years after ace newspaper reporter Charlie Davis and his British wife, Julie, barely escaped a Tiananmen-like massacre in Uzbekistan, she is abducted near their Los Angeles home. His efforts to find her lead him back to the roiling former Soviet state, where he must also thwart a terrorist plot. Charlie's marriage hasn't been the same since he gave up the international beat--understandably, since he got shot in Uzbekistan and his wife nearly lost her baby during an uprising there--to do menial work for the Los Angeles Times. After her disappearance, he discovers emails of Julie's that indicate she has been having an affair--possibly with her old Cambridge classmate Alisher Byko, once a potential force for good in Central Asia with his inherited wealth and charisma, and now a force for oppression. She may also be involved in some kind of secret operation, possibly with MI6. In due course, Charlie is abducted by the same Black Ops agents who carried off Julie, makes a daring escape and, with the help of an old, trusted friend, goes all-out to undermine Byko. This debut is fast-paced, well-plotted and scenic. But we're on familiar turf, storywise, even with the torture scenes. The characters are rather thinly drawn, and Steinberg could have done more to make the events of the past resonate unsettlingly through the present. Charlie and Julie survive their harrowing first visit to Uzbekistan too neatly, and the book never overcomes that. An above-average, if familiar international thriller, the first from the creator of TV's Without a Trace.