Ex-CIA operative turned underworld recovery man Max Starkey returns in the second installment of Gregory Poirier’s international thriller series, where dangerous secrets collide in a land of shifting sands, shifting loyalties, and deadly consequences.

A decade ago, CIA officer Max Starkey helped create a monster. Now he’s come back to kill it.

In Gregory Poirier’s second Max Starkey, what begins as a search for answers pulls Max and FBI Special Agent Giuliana Abara into a web of criminal empires and old betrayals stretching from Washington to Cairo. Powerful people want the past to stay buried. Others want revenge. And somewhere in the middle stands Starkey, a former spy who knows that the secrets worth protecting are often the ones worth killing for.

Combining the international intrigue and cinematic action of a Jason Bourne adventure, The White Desert delivers assassins, smugglers, espionage, and relentless suspense. As intelligence operatives, contract killers, and underworld kingpins converge, the hunt races toward a final reckoning in Egypt’s White Desert, a vast expanse of shifting sands and towering limestone formations where entire planes can disappear and survival is never guaranteed.

There, isolated from allies and surrounded by enemies, Max must confront the consequences of the mission that changed his life and stop the criminal empire he helped build before it destroys everyone he has left to lose.

Perfect for readers of Brad Thor, Gregg Hurwitz, Vince Flynn, and David McCloskey, The White Desert cements Max Starkey as one of thriller fiction’s most compelling new heroes.