The Survivor

Ben Cross arrives for the first day at his new job in New York City and is promptly fired and escorted out by security. Upset and struggling to understand what happened, he barely catches the 1 train heading uptown from South Ferry station. As he sits on the train, his phone starts receiving text messages telling him not to turn it off or to leave the train. Further, if a particular man in the train car exits at the next station, the man will die. Ben doesn’t believe it, but when the man leaves and is promptly shot, Ben realizes the texts aren’t bluffing, and he was not picked randomly to play this demented game. Outside the train, NYPD detective Kelly Hendricks investigates the murder of a man who just got off the subway and learns of Ben Cross hijacking that very same train. What she’s hearing from her superiors and what her gut is telling her are in conflict, so she decides that confronting Ben directly will provide the answers she wants and perhaps save the lives of every person on board. Reid’s first novel to be published in the United States is a fantastic action thriller that reads like Die Hard mixed with Thomas Harris. The Survivor would make an excellent film as the story primarily takes place in a short amount of time. Readers will want to uncover Reid’s other novel, The Hunter, which was published in the UK, while never riding on the subway again.