The Bottom Line: A truly unnerving and explosive terrorism thriller that deftly turns modern infrastructure into a battlefield. Every single page feels dangerously plausible.
As Blackout opens, a private jet off the coast of Venezuela is serving as the command center for what appears to be a presidential assassination. Tracy Ciacchella, a billionaire power broker with a team of technicians and conspirators, is preparing a swarm of explosive drones to intercept Air Force One on approach to Tampa.
Meanwhile, civil engineer and series hero Jake Bendel, is aboard an Amtrak train, unaware that the flight he was supposed to take has crashed near Dulles under similarly suspicious circumstances. Jake soon learns that the U.S. president has been assassinated and air traffic is grounded. Before long, he’s pulled into the FBI’s response because of his rare combination of airport knowledge, engineering expertise and previous experience with weaponized technology.
Author J. Luke Bennecke soon frames the problem not simply as a question of who launched the drone attacks, but as a question of what the attacks are designed to hide. Jake’s suspicion that the attacks are aimed beyond aviation soon hardens into a more urgent fear: the power grid may be the true target.Â
Because Bennecke also gives readers access to Tracy’s side of the operation, the suspense gap lies between what Jake can prove and what the reader understands. Tracy is by far the novel’s most theatrical presence: wealthy, ideological, ambitious and cruel. On that note, the novel’s most psychologically tense moments come in adversarial conversations between Tracy and Jake, where the national emergency narrows into something truly intimate and psychologically destabilizing. Tracy doesn’t simply taunt him. She probes the deepest wound in his life by suggesting that Cynthia’s death may not be as settled as he believes.
Beneath the book’s action-oriented layer is Bennecke’s central theme, which is the fragility of modern dependence. Electricity, GPS signals, flight paths, traffic systems, federal communications, and emergency planning all sit close together in the book’s imagination, and the danger comes from how easily one failure can cascade into another. Bennecke seems especially interested in the gap between technological sophistication and institutional readiness.
Bennecke, author of the award-winning Jake Bendel novel Waterborne, is an expert at expanding from a conventional crisis to a broader conspiracy, and Blackout’s short, crosscutting scenes are built for momentum as the book hurdles toward its climax. But Bennecke also doesn’t ignore the character’s underlying humanity, as the surrounding cast helps give the book its procedural and political range. Jose Cavanaugh, Jake’s FBI ally, is both an institutional force and a personal friend, the kind of figure who can bark orders in a crisis while still understanding Jake’s history. Agent Kristy Konnors brings a capable field presence and a connection to Jake’s family world. President Goldberg, suddenly elevated after the assassination, adds unease to the corridors of power. While Blackout is the third series book, Bennecke delivers just enough backstory to make it an accessible entry point for readers new to the Jake Bendel universe.
