Day Of Reckoning

Megan and Duncan Richards have come a long way from 1968 and their radical past. He's a banker; she's in real estate. They have two teenage daughters and a young son. But the past has not forgotten them. From her prison cell, the beautiful and cold-blooded terrorist Tanya, with whom the Richards were involved in 1968, plots her revenge on the couple she blames for her capture. Soon she will be released from jail. Then she will start to pay them back -- beginning with their son . . .

Megan and Duncan Richards have it all: beautiful kids, a lovely home, respectable jobs in banking and real estate, stock portfolios, and a .45 pistol dating back to 1968. They don't talk about the .45, because back then they were members of the Students for a Democratic Society splinter group the Phoenix Brigade. Their charismatic, manipulative leader, Olivia, bullied and shamed them into driving the getaway cars in a bank robbery to raise cash for the revolution. Olivia--then known as Tanya--made the bank job sound completely foolproof, inevitable, like the withering away of the state in a Marxist fantasy.

But cops and robbers died in the bungled heist (grippingly described by Katzenbach, a former SDS kid and distinguished crime reporter turned novelist), and Megan and Duncan fled the scene. Olivia emerges from 18 years in jail and hooks up with a Phoenix Brigade pal who's been an underground refugee. Age has failed to mellow her: they kidnap the Richards' son and Duncan's dad--a judge-and Olivia has had time to dream up a much meaner, cleverer plan to raise cash and wreak vengeance. She never squealed on the couple, enabling her to blackmail them--they're still accomplices to murder, so they can't call the cops on her. Will Duncan pull off a truly sophisticated bank job to save his kids? Can Olivia keep her unstable gang in line? Can realtor Megan find Olivia's hideout? As events rampage along, Katzenbach puts us inside each character's head, drawing closed the net of terror. This is a stay-up-all-night thriller. --Tim Appelo