In the labyrinthine Yankee Green mall, children play in the indoor amusement park; young professionals jog on the atrium's overhead running track; and the elderly walk the promenades. But in the maze of service halls lurks a demon: a madman with a grudge, whose plan is to hold five thousand people hostage inside a pavilion wired to explode.
Hidden Charges, first published as The Seizing of Yankee Green Mall, is a novel of intense dramatic power that brings the unthinkable into every American's backyard. The setting is The Yankee Green—an enormous shopping center and entertainment mall located in a suburb of Boston. A self-sufficient, environmentally controlled, electronically secure indoor city, The Yankee Green has tens of thousands of people pass through its five pavilions every day. The children play in the indoor amusement park; young professionals work out in the state-of-the-art health club and jog on the atrium's overhead running track; the elderly walk the promenades, sit on benches, chat under the fountains and in the manicured gardens. But in the labyrinth of service halls that are weaved into the superstructure lurks a demon, a madman with a grudge who plans to hold five thousand people hostage with hidden explosives. This book is a kaleidoscope of plot and character that spins greed, power, and passion, and explodes into a breathtaking rocker.
Ridley Pearson
Ridley Pearson is a New York Times bestselling author with over 24 novels published. His work is extremely diverse, from children’s fiction to crime novels, paranormal and adventure; his novels often incorporate a compelling combination of realistic high-tech forensic wizardry and hair-trigger suspense. One of his best-known crime novels, Undercurrents, contained cutting-edge forensic ideas that helped solve a real-life homicide case. Another, Chain of Evidence, was the first to raise the possibility of a "crime gene"—which later became the focus of a high-profile genetics conference. He has published several popular crime series featuring recurring characters, as well as standalone novels under his own name and the pseudonyms Joyce Reardon, Ph.D. and Wendell McCall. Pearson was the first American to receive the Raymond Chandler Fulbright fellowship at Oxford University, the site of his research for best-selling novels No Witnesses and The Angel Maker. He was also a founding member and bass player for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band comprised of best-selling authors including Dave Barry and Stephen King.