Road is not your ordinary thriller. On one hand, it's a story of a Los Angeles are private eye searching for a missing woman and child. But, that's when it gets crazy. The woman decided to run off to Raqaa and join ISIS, the private eye heads to Beirut and then war torn Damascus and somehow effect a rescue and plops himself into the middle of a cvil war where everyone is on the take and normalcy is defined by wild parties and a violent police state. And, of course, there is the side story of the CIA and Albania and a worod in chaos. Although sometimes it is a story that leaps around from narrative to narrative, it does succeed in showing the new horrors of Syria and Iraq including people in cages, torture, slavery, and thebhalf-baked insanity of the true believers. Quite an ambitious work!

Joe Tiplady, I am thinking is there some kind of code in the last name of the hero perhaps?

I was sent to some of the places described in the book and it is obvious the author has actually been there. A few times the writer seems almost distracted in places but overall I think this is a great thriller type story most will enjoy.

A lot of this is preposterous- but it's also topical and I kept reading because well, I wanted to know what happened, Sweeney has crammed too much into his tale, which made it less appealing, It is a fast read and the sort of thing that might be good on a plane ride. Thanks to net galley for the ARC.