The Emergency Window

In a poor and dangerous country like Jamaica, some people will do almost anything to improve their lot. They will lie, cheat and even offer up their bodies to carry drugs or worse; anything, if it means getting to the United States.

Young diplomat Tano Beltran, a proud and patriotic first generation American, sets off to serve in the small island country, expecting that his day to day will be filled with visa interviews. Instead, he slowly unravels a web of corruption dedicated to the exploitation of Jamaicans desperate for a better life. The scope and breadth of corruption will force him to question everything he believed about loyalty, service and what it means to serve his country.

Set against the complexities of turn-of-the-millennium Jamaica, where the desire for the American dream lures millions and makes them easy prey, The Emergency Window is both a taut diplomatic thriller and an exploration of the moral ambiguities that define modern American power. Informed by the author's Foreign Service experience, it asks what we sacrifice-of ourselves and others-in service to a nation's interests.

For readers of John le Carré's moral complexity and Graham Greene's examinations of conscience in the developing world.