Nancy and I are about halfway through the new thriller Hidden Order, by bestselling author Brad Thor (I'm reading portions of it to her at night).

This book grabs you from the very first page of the excellently crafted "Prologue" (set in Sea Island, Georgia), the first sentence of which reads: "Clarie Marcourt should have gone to bed hours ago."

From the inside front flap:

The most secretive organization in America operates without any accountability to the American people. Hiding in the shadows, pretending to be part of the United States government, its power is beyond measure.

Control of this organization has just been lost and the future of the nation thrust into peril.

When the five candidates being considered to head this mysterious agency suddenly go missing, covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath is summoned to Washington and set loose on the most dangerous chase ever to playout on American soil.

But as the candidates begin turning up murdered, the chase becomes an all-too-public spectacle, with every indicator suggesting that the plot has its roots in a shadowy American cabal founded in the 1700s.

With the United States on the verge of collapse, Harvath must untangle a web of conspiracy centuries in the making and head off the greatest threat America has ever seen.

This is thriller writing at its absolute best, where the stakes have never been higher, nor the line between good and evil so hard to discern.

For more on the book and Thor, see "Chilling: Author Brad Thor Reveals the Extremely Powerful Agency Behind New Book Hidden Order" at The Blaze.

Here is a review by Joe Hartlaub at Bookreporter.

Included in this article is video of a "Testy TV Exchange" in Chicago, also published at The Blaze.