Zig and Nola · #2
The Lightning Rod
Zig and Nola are back--in the hugely entertaining, highly anticipated follow-up to Brad Meltzer's #1 New York Times bestselling thriller The Escape Artist.
Archie Mint has led a charmed life--he's got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. When he's killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered--and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint's charmed life, so perfect on the surface, held criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.
While working on Mint's body before his funeral, mortician "Zig" Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Dover Air Force Base, where he uncovers Mint's involvement in a top-secret military unit and his connection to military artist and Sergeant First Class Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig's life--so he knows better than most that she's as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning.
Everyone wants to talk to Nola, but she's not cooperating--and indeed doesn't want to be found. In order to track her down, Zig teams with Nola's long missing brother, who's just as combustible as she is. As they follow Nola's trail, they discover one of the U.S. government's most intensely guarded secrets--an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself.
Trouble always finds her...
She's the lightning rod.
The series
In a world built on secrets, sometimes it takes an unlikely pair to uncover the truth no one wants found.
Read full series description
The Zig and Nola series walks the thin line between duty and obsession, between justice and vengeance. What begins with a government mortician—Jim "Zig" Zigarowski—quietly tending to the dead in the hidden corners of military bureaucracy quickly spirals into something far more dangerous. When Zig crosses paths with Nola Brown, a fiercely enigmatic Army artist with a traumatic past and a knack for vanishing into shadows, their lives become tangled in conspiracies designed to stay buried.
These aren’t your typical thrillers. The stories pulse with the weight of real-world stakes, rooted in the strange truths of institutions we often take for granted. From the hallowed rooms of the White House to black sites hidden in plain sight, the series peels back layers of power, grief, and loyalty. What sets it apart is its emotional core: Zig’s quiet tenderness, Nola’s violent brilliance, and the bond they form—not of trust, but of necessity.
The atmosphere is taut, grounded in forensic realism and shaped by an author who thrives on asking uncomfortable questions: What do we owe the dead? What lies do we live with, just to survive? For fans of political thrillers that don’t just race—they dig deep—the Zig and Nola books offer a labyrinth of truth, half-truths, and the kind of danger that changes you.
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