“Gone Dark” by Ryan Steck … and a GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to Friday Reads!

 

There’s a giveaway for a print copy of Gone Dark by Ryan Steck, courtesy of the publisher. (US ONLY!) Enter by using the Rafflecopter link at the bottom of the post. (Contest ends June 27, 2025.) If you’re the chosen winner, I’ll contact you for your information to pass along to the publisher.

 

About the book…

 

Matthew Redd doesn’t go looking for trouble. But this time, it’s found him anyway . . . and he’s not the only one in the crosshairs.

Late-summer wildfires are a fact of life in Montana. But as an inferno nears Wellington, Matthew Redd gets the unusual call that a team of smoke jumpers has suddenly gone dark. As head of the county’s fledgling search and rescue team, Redd drops into the fire zone and finds way more than he bargained for: a killer has taken out the smoke jumper team along with two civilians, and only a terrified young boy is left as witness. Redd and little Jack narrowly escape the raging fire, and Redd calls in Gavin Kline, now acting director of the FBI, to investigate the bigger forces at play.

That afternoon, during one of her last clinic shifts before the birth of her second child, Emily Redd loses a young patient to an overdose. Fed up with yet another loss to the opioid crisis—this one a former schoolmate and a wounded veteran—Emily tracks down and confronts the retired doctor responsible for feeding her patient’s deadly addiction.

Hours later, when their home is attacked, Redd and Emily wonder which of them kicked a hornet’s nest—or if they’ve both stumbled onto pieces of a much bigger puzzle. As the fire closes in, they follow the connections from a corrupt doctor and a local opioid supplier all the way to a murdered whistleblower for a Big Pharma giant. As Redd’s concern for young Jack grows, those who want to silence him forever hunt him down. Redd will do whatever it takes to protect the boy and his family . . . even if it means he’ll have to outrun an inferno and come face-to-face with his greatest fear.

 

Amazon purchase link

 

Excerpt…

Prologue

 

Montana was on fire.

The Big Sky was full of smoke, and the country beneath it was full of flames.

And that, thought Trace Hazlett as he shuffled across the flight line in his high-collared Kevlar jumpsuit, lugging more than half his body weight in gear, was not such a bad thing.

For Trace, fire meant work. Work meant money, and money meant freedom.

Freedom from the grinding poverty of the reservation. Freedom to live as he pleased.

No fires, no freedom.

Oh, to be sure, fire was an enemy—the enemy that he and his team would fight to the literal death, just as his Blackfeet ancestors had fought  against Shoshone and Kootenai, and later against white settlers trying to take their territory. Warriors needed enemies. Without an enemy, how  could a warrior demonstrate courage and win glory?

Freedom and glory. That was what fire meant to Trace Hazlett. It was why he had left the rez at eighteen, worked his way onto a hotshot crew, and then, four years later, attended smoke jumper school at Missoula Base. It was why he was humping eighty-five pounds of gear—heavy-duty jump jacket and pants, a helmet with a steel face cage, main and reserve parachutes, and a personal gear bag containing, among other things, about a gallon of water and an emergency fire shelter— up the boarding steps of an idling Forest Service De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter, for yet another one-way flight.

Once inside, he collapsed onto the jump seat and slid over until he was pressed up tight against the jumper who had boarded just ahead of him. A moment later, the last jumper in the “stick”—the technical term for the number of parachutists who would be going out the door on an overflight—squeezed in next to him, completing the human sandwich.

The cabin of the Twin Otter was cramped to begin with, and with all the gear they wore, jumpers quickly got used to the idea of being packed in like sardines on takeoff. The jumpsuit, which was essentially body armor to protect the jumper upon landing, was like a personal sauna under the best of conditions, and the close quarters didn’t help. But these were minor inconveniences, quickly forgotten when the command came to line up, clip in, and exit the plane.

As the plane lurched and began moving, Trace glanced over, curious to see who he would be snuggling with for the duration of the short flight.

At the beginning of the season, things had been very precise and disciplined, the team assignments carved in stone. But as things ramped up and the calls started coming in fast and furious, operations became a lot more fluid, such that he didn’t know who he would be jumping with until the roster was called.

On his right was Terry Collins, a fellow “Ned”—newcomer—whom Trace
had gone through initial training with. Although they both had about a dozen actual fire jumps under their belts, they wouldn’t shed the loathed nickname until the start of their second season.

When he looked to his left, he did a double take.

Who’s this guy?

There were about eighty jumpers at Missoula Base, and while Trace didn’t know all their names, he did know their faces. This guy definitely wasn’t one of them. His most distinctive feature was his blond hair, shaved on the sides but long on top and pulled back in a ponytail. That and a wispy, slightly reddish beard made him look like a Viking.

Trace stared at the unfamiliar face in profile for a moment until the man, sensing his scrutiny, turned to face him. Smiling, he gave Trace a nod and awkwardly reached across with his left hand.

Adapted from Gone Dark by Ryan Steck. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.  All rights reserved.

 

About Ryan…

 

Ryan Steck is an editor, an author, and the founder and editor in chief of The Real Book Spy. Ryan has been named an “Online Influencer” by Amazon and is a regular columnist at CrimeReads. TheRealBookSpy.com has been endorsed by #1 New York Times bestselling authors Mark Greaney, C. J. Box, Kyle Mills, Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, and many others. A resident of Michigan, along with his wife and their six kids, Steck cheers on his beloved Detroit Tigers and Lions during the rare moments when he’s not reading or talking about books on social media.

 

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Rules for the giveaway can be found here.