To Touch Infinity
Novel - Mainstream Suspense
Nightbird Publishing 2015
Deluxe Trade Paperback, 489 pages
(also available in Kindle eBook format)
ISBN: 978-0-9911871-2-6
The Story . . .
Summer 2003, nearly two years after the 9/11 attacks. American paranoia is at an all-time high. Long out-of-work technical writer Rena Helmsworth takes a job in Southwest Florida, documenting a highly classified terrorist tracking communications network for the newly-created Department of Homeland Security. Her third week on the job, Rena is approached by a mysterious woman known only as Blue. Blue claims she works for a domestic terror cell known as Infinity, and demands that Rena turn over top-secret database access protocols and digital encryption schemes. Blue threatens to have Rena killed if she doesn’t deliver. Terrified and not trusting the police and federal agencies, Rena hires private investigator Dean Treadwell to help her. As Rena and Treadwell negotiate the labyrinthine paths leading to Infinity, the body count rises and the threats against them mount. Their search reveals Infinity to be an al-Qaida terrorist cell operating out of the Gulf of Mexico, planning an assault on the United States that promises to make 9/11 seem like child’s play. What Rena and the detective discover 80 miles off the coast of Florida is truly bizarre and life changing. And for Rena Helmsworth, their discovery is much more personal than she could ever have imagined. Danger, intrigue, romance, terror . . . deception at every turn. You get it all when you enter the deadly lair of Infinity.
Jedwin Smith, Bestselling author of Fatal Treasure and Our Brother's Keeper
“Upon reading this superb thriller, the first thing that came to mind was the term "Gordian knot" -- the baffling knot of legend that could only be undone by the future master of Asia; Alexander the Great couldn't untie the damn thing so he cut it with his sword, which gave rise to the saying, "When in doubt, go to the blade, dude!"
Surely with that in mind, author Jeff Dennis gives us a most perplexing yet rewarding tale of spies, terrorists and sexy ladies that is guaranteed to keep the reader guessing to the final pages. This is the perfect receipt for readers who are tired of shelling over big bucks for society's fawned over thriller writers whose fumbling tales can be picked apart halfway through the novel. Not so with To Touch Infinity. Sir Dennis gives us ample portions of danger, intrigue, romance, terror, and deception, most all of which is forked over by those fun-loving folks from the "religion of peace."
Bottom line: here's a tale well worth every nickel and dime you're forking over, a sure-fire favorite for every Johnnie out there who's locking and loading in our nation's never-ending fight against Islamic terrorists!”
Clay Ramsay, Short story author
“Jeff Dennis’s To Touch Infinity is the perfect summer novel. Like any book you would take with you on vacation, there is romance, adventure, and mystery, with enough twists to keep you on tenterhooks until the satisfying conclusion. Set in Florida, like those delicious detective novels by talents like Carl Hiaasen, you can feel the baking heat and hear the lap of the waves, even if your reading time does not coincide with your beach vacation. But what makes Dennis’s book so different from the throwaway pulp you would find in a drugstore aisle or an airport bookstore is the quality of the writing. The pace is relentless, the characters complex, and the plot leaves no room for extraneous prose. Dennis also sprinkles serious and authoritative information about tattooing, information technology, and classic rock throughout the tale, educating the reader without pedantry, an education of the most delightful type.
Set two years after 9/11, when the dangers of radical Islamic terrorism forced enormous changes in the way we think about our security and our world, the story follows a young technical writer, Rena Helmsworth, after she is hired by Warfield Systems, a tech company with a significant contract with the new Department of Homeland Security. When she is confronted in the first chapter by a stunning Asian woman who calls herself Blue Infinity, Rena is pulled into circumstances she could not have anticipated. What started as a lucrative dream job after the wilderness of unemployment becomes an introduction into the shadowy world of terrorist organizations and the spooks who fight them. Far from simply producing tech manuals, she is forced to confront her understanding of herself, her family, and her role in the perilous days after the Twin Towers fell.
Dennis uses all the elements of a great thriller—intrigue, secrecy, a race against the clock, sympathetic and flawed protagonists, genuinely malevolent villains with enough humanity to make them understandable, the fate of the world at stake—but he does so with flair and nuance, and the book is better for it. Dennis seems to improve with every offering. We can only hope he keeps the stories coming. In the meantime, enjoy every page of this one. It’s worth the effort.”