Having it all is great, until everything comes crashing down.
Atticus Forester is the son of a billionaire, living a life of privilege between a Manhattan townhouse and Pandion, the family compound on the coast of Maine. But young Atticus misses a flight on his father’s jet, and that changes everything.
Suddenly alone and on the street, Atticus must fend for himself armed only with his wits. He crashes in a Loisaida tenement and invents one scheme after another to feed himself and his dog. But tragedy piles upon tragedy when the jet crash is ruled sabotage, his father’s empire collapses, and a killer stalks what’s left of his family. Now Atticus must face the fact that everything he believed to be true is a lie, and he must find a way to save the ones he loves.
Suddenly alone and on the street, Atticus must fend for himself armed only with his wits. He crashes in a Loisaida tenement and invents one scheme after another to feed himself and his dog. But tragedy piles upon tragedy when the jet crash is ruled sabotage, his father’s empire collapses, and a killer stalks what’s left of his family. Now Atti sees everything he believed to be true is a lie, but he still must find a way to save the ones he loves.
William Michael Ried, the award-winner author of Five Ferries and Backstory, has written a new genre-bending mystery of puzzlement, betrayal, and love that will keep you turning pages until the very end.
Readers will find Atti’s transformation from privileged, entitled boy to a responsible and empathetic adult absorbing. Ried has crafted a wide range of colorful and interesting characters—bossy billionaires, submissive brothers, seedy drug peddlers, loyal caretakers with secrets to spill, and more. But the most endearing of them all is Ghost, Atti’s dog. Pandion convinces in its depictions of both worlds, the one of ultra-rich business people with its inherent sycophancy and shallow relationships, and the one with people living a hand to mouth existence.
Ried sustains the reader’s interest by deftly weaving together the two main plot strands, Atti’s inner landscape and the unraveling of the mystery, which boasts puzzles inspired by Greek mythology that the villain leaves behind. Pandion also succeeds in creating an atmosphere of fear through the persistent suggestion of an unknown danger, as that villain lurks in the shadows, though by the end readers may wish more space could have been devoted to the antagonist’s motives and backstory. Still, Ried offers an engaging, gratifying story that rewards readers’ intelligence.
Takeaway: A billionaire’s son must live a regular life and face a deadly threat in this smart mystery.
Great for fans of: Zoe Whittall’s The Best Kind of People, Catherine McKenzie’s I’ll Never Tell
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
For Immediate Release Contact: Bill Ried
Phone: 917-597-3407
Email: fiveferriesnovel@gmail.com
PANDION PUBLISHED JUNE 28
Third Novel Follows the “Ponzi Kid”
New York, NY June 28, 2022. Award-winning author William Michael Ried, in conjunction with CKBooks Publishing, today published Pandion, his third novel.
Pandion tells the story of Atticus Forester, the son of a billionaire, who lives a life of privilege between a Manhattan townhouse and Pandion, the family compound on the coast of Maine. But young Atticus misses a flight on his father’s jet, and that changes everything. Suddenly alone and on the street, Atticus fends for himself armed only with his wits. He crashes in a Loisaida tenement and invents one scheme after another to feed himself and his dog. But tragedy piles upon tragedy when the jet crash is ruled sabotage, his father’s empire collapses, and a killer stalks what’s left of his family. Now Atti must face the fact that everything he believed to be true is a lie, and he must find a way to save the ones he loves.
Ried’s first novel Five Ferries was a finalist in the 2019 American Fiction Awards for Best New Fiction. In 2021 his second novel Backstory won the New York City Big Book Award for Mystery, and a Silver Medal from the Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Adult Fiction, was a semi-finalist for the Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction, and was named a 2022 Hoffer Award Category Finalist. In Pandion he has written a new genre-bending mystery of puzzlement, betrayal, and love that will keep readers turning pages until the very end.
The paperback (ISBN 9781949085549) is available on Amazon and can be ordered worldwide through bookstores. The ebook (ISBN 9781949085556) will be available through all major sources online.
Book club suggestions, cover stories, photos and more information is available at wmrauthor.com. Reach the author at fiveferriesnovel@gmail.com.
