Bottled Lightning is the debut novel by L. M. Weeks. It’s an international legal/murder thriller which starts off with one hell of a motorcycle chase scene through a tight roadway loop in central Tokyo. Torn Sagara is the protagonist who is a successful lawyer who has worked in the international technology market, and he’s giving a spontaneous unplanned ride to Saya Brooks, the inventor of a new lightning generation and energy storage technology. The invention of “bottled lightning” threatens to make the fossil fuel business obsolete, and that’s the issue that drives most of the story line. What starts out as a fun motorcycle ride suddenly becomes one in which Torn and Saya’s life are in danger. Torn assumes that the expert drivers, motorcyclists, and shooters are aiming to kill him, not understanding the desperation that some companies had for cancelling the new technology.
The story line presents multiple complications for Torn starting with a very well-written erotic sex scene between Torn and Mayumi Ino, who is not his wife. Torn and his wife, Yukie Sagara,had been separated for two years. He knew the marriage was over but she refused to grant him a divorce. Their two children, Sean and Sophia, are caught between the very different needs of their parents. Torn manages to the make his impossible private life even more complicated when he finds himself falling in love with his client, Saya.
As the story unfolds, there are various companies involved in old and new technologies, and the controlling people in those companies have large stakes involved in the future of those enterprises. The story starts in Tokyo, but skirts off to Alaska and Russia. There are big cultural issues involved among Japanese, Japanese-Americans, and Americans.
In short, this story is a fast ride of international intrigue, one that will keep you spellbound. The book is due for a release in the second week of June 2022. This novel gets my strongest recommendation.
West Coast Don
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