Gatekeeper features a labyrinthine setting — from the chambers of the American embassy in Paris to the stoops and back alleys of New York City — stocked with characters whose ambition, cunning, and technological sophistication are intolerant of any threat to their conspiratorial will to power.

Hollis Freemont has arrived in Paris to begin her job at the American consulate. Her return to Paris forces her to revisit tragedy: the assassination of her parents by a sniper’s bullets fifteen years earlier. Hollis, a beautiful young woman, soon attracts the notice of Paul McGann, deputy chief of mission, whose ardent attention to Hollis is matched by his violent temper. Hollis’s involvement with McGann leads her into the anals of the clandestine paragovernmental alliances colluding to create a new world order at the expense of certain high-level officials and unfortunate individuals, such as Hollis herself, who stray into the sights of a hired assassin — the Handyman.

As she struggles against all odds to elude the Handyman and his colleagues, it becomes evident that she can trust no one, not even those whose confidences she holds most dear. From the opening scene in an assassin’s hideout to the stomach-churning climax at the Statue of Liberty, Gatekeeper is electrifying.

When General Griffin North, a highly decorated African-American icon, is killed in a suspicious plane crash, the special commission deems it a tragic accident caused by mechanical error. But Mollie Smith of the Criminal Investigation Division vows to keep the investigation alive. Certain the General was assassinated, and keenly aware that officals in high places would have stopped at nothing to keep a black man from a possible vice presidential nomination, Mollie intensifies the pitch of her inquiry.

Then Mollie — her investigation nearly complete — is found murdered. Rachel Collins, Mollie’s protegee and close friend, is left to pick up the scent of conspiracy enveloping the dead. With the help of Mollie’s brother, Logan, the head of the hermetically-sealed FBI team tracking domestic terrorists, Rachel comes head to head with the Engineer, an ingenious and ruthless killer whose sole goal is to cut short her inquiry — and her life.

From its harrowing first scene to its conclusion, Last Rights is a masterfully crafted thriller spinning around an unforgettable heroine. Philip Shelby once again demonstrates that he is among the great thriller authors in America today.