DOUG WILLIAMS
THE STORY
Behind "Failure" Point" with Doug Williams Video Series
Is it possible to really know your spouse?
Nick Faulkner is about to find out . . . if he can stay alive.
Nick—a former FBI star whose career mysteriously tanked—returns home one day to find that his wife Lexi has walked out on him and simply vanished. Then, he discovers she’s part of a cult-like church. He doesn’t believe for a second she’s suddenly found religion, but is convinced she’s been kidnapped and recruits a band of similarly disgraced ex-agents to spring her from the cult’s heavily armed compound.
He doesn’t know that powerful forces high in the US government and intelligence services are working to make sure that doesn’t happen. And that they’ll stop at nothing to prevent him from exposing the secrets lurking beyond the church gates.
Including murder.
As Nick works his way through the shadows of Lexi’s life and tries to sort out the hidden truth behind her disappearance, he tumbles into a sprawling web of deceit and lies thick with betrayal and shifting loyalties, where nothing is as it seems.
His quest will bring him face-to-face with enemies foreign and domestic, including traitors, social media “truth tellers,” Russian spies, and well-armed mercenaries. And he’ll have to survive a vast conspiracy determined to keep him from learning the stunning truth about who Lexi really is.
Or, perhaps even more shocking, who she isn’t.
THE AUTHOR
Doug Williams is a playwright, author, and award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker. He is a former journalist; served as press secretary in the US Senate; and has overseen communications in both the public and private sectors. He’s somehow managed to make a career as a freelancer for over 25 years.
His script Back Star Rising, based on the life of iconic Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan, has been honored in over 45 competitions worldwide—winning 12 best screenplay awards—and is in development for a feature film. A film he wrote and produced, A Bullet For Your Thoughts, has been recognized in 12 festivals and has won six awards for best short film as well as individual honors for best director, best actor, best supporting actor, and best supporting actress. He and his partner Donna McKenzie are currently working on a screenplay whose working title is Kitty’s Back, about a cat the CIA trains to be a spy and save the world. (Seriously.)
Critics compared his previous novel, Nowhere Man, to Homeland and House of Cards, saying “it delivers excitement, suspense and cheers in all the right places” and calling it a “labyrinthine conspiracy thriller with both verve and heart.” He cowrote A Sacred Duty, the true account of a federal whistleblower who exposed a scandal that took the lives of hundreds of U.S. veterans that is also in development for a film. Additionally, he collaborated with noted restauranteur Johnny Carrabba on two books, With Gratitude and A Gift from the Heart.
He is also a playwright with four New York City productions, and his most recent work, The Boundary, written with Donna McKenzie, was produced by Dirt Dogs Theatre Company in Houston. They are currently at work on a new play, Swimback, which explores the dissolution of a military family during the Cuban missile crisis.
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING
"What do you get when you mix crackling prose, a propulsive plot, and unflinching insights into human relationships? Failure Point, that’s what, the latest political thriller by Doug Williams. And those are only a few of the novel’s delicious ingredients. One taste, and you’re hooked."
ONA RUSSELL,
NOVELIST, EDUCATOR, AND
HOST OF LITERARY HUB'S
AUTHORS IN THE TENT
“It’s an understatement to say how each chapter propelled me to the next with a truly undeniable momentum. Calling it a page-turner doesn’t do it justice. So many hooks and twists! The characters were so deftly drawn that I only wanted more, and the writer’s authority on this material, and the wider world, made me feel in the care of a master — one who’d rip me in two a few times before the last page. Failure Point well-earns its classification as a thriller.”
“The darker aspect of love challenges the darkest aspect of human nature with our nation’s sovereignty at stake in this rollercoaster-paced story. Strap in for Failure Point’s chilling ride of mounting suspense that leaves you gasping at the ride’s end.”
PARIS AFTON BONDS,
NEW YORK TIMES
BEST SELLING AUTHOR
“Impossible to put down – and what an ending!”
DAVID DEWITT,
FORMER EDITOR AND CRITIC
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JOHNNY CARRABBA,
AUTHOR OF
WITH GRATITUDE AND A GIFT
FROM THE HEART
"A sharply rendered thriller...Williams delivers a polished story with a hardboiled edge, lively action, and plenty of intrigue."
“Intense, compelling, and relentless. Failure Point is a book that is just itching to be adapted for the big screen and will keep you turning the page until the very last one.”
MIKE MCGRALE,
SCREENWRITER
THE FOLLOWING AND CSI:MIAMI
"Smart, edgy, compelling, and filled with a wealth of trap doors and misdirection. Failure Point makes for an exciting read you can’t put down."
WAYNE SLATEN,
AWARD-WINNING
SCREENWRITER AND DIRECTOR
F.64 FILMS
THE BOOKLIFE PRIZE
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
Nicholas Faulkner sat on a low, red-brick wall that fronted the brownstone on DuPont Circle. He was shivering in the cold despite the hooded gray sweatshirt and Navy pea coat, trying not to look like somebody who could put the FBI on the front page of the Washington Post, and not in a good way, not in a G-Man-gets-the-bad-guy way.
No, because this time, the G Man was the bad guy.
He glanced down, one brick up from the sidewalk, where the USB drive was tucked into the wall, its metal head sticking out.
Jesus, he thought, when did things get so complicated?
He recalled the stories about Agent Robert Hanssen, and how that traitorous sonofabitch had put a piece of white tape on a sign at Foxstone Park in Virginia to alert his Russian handler he was about to leave a package at the usual place, under a wooden footbridge over a creek.
Tape. Bridge. A sealed garbage bag full of classified material. Sure, Hanssen got caught, and he was now a resident of the sweet hear-after. But he’d had a good run, and you had to appreciate the simplicity of it all.