RED HOTEL

RED Hotel is an incredibly timely globe-trotting thriller that's fiction on the edge of reality.

Tokyo, Japan. The guards at the Kensington Hotel sit in the back room watching security footage and playing their favorite game: guessing the back stories of people milling around in the lobby. Like any large scale luxury business hotel you get an assortment of characters. Business men in suits. Women in heels and pearls. A sleepy child holding a stuffed animal. Hotel staff in their matching uniforms. Drivers picking up guests. Watching a couple cross the lobby, the guards make bets about the nature of their relationship: wife, girlfriend, escort. It's a crude game, but it makes the night shift go faster. On another monitor, a FedEx truck weaves its way through Tokyo traffic. One of the guards glances over at the screen, just as it pulls up to the hotel. It's an odd time for a delivery, he thinks.

Meanwhile, nearly 7,000 miles away, it's midday in Washington D.C., and Dan Reilly, CEO of Kensington Hotels, is getting eaten alive by a congressional committee. With 21 deadly attacks against hotels which resulted in 1,799 deaths between 2002 and 2011 (all of which were serially under reported by the press), Reilly is appealing to the U.S. government to offer support - both military and financial - to protect the hospitality industry. But in this case, for Reilly - forty-two, handsome, divorced, successful - the charm, confidence and charisma that are so often a strength in his business dealings and personal life are a detriment. The committee find his request ludicrous and they'd love nothing more than to see a golden boy like Reilly squirm a little bit.

And just when it looks like Reilly is about to lose his plea, an aide comes tearing down the center aisle to whisper something in his ear. Cell phones throughout the congressional chamber start to buzz. There's been an explosion in Tokyo. A bomb in the back of a FedEx truck that ripped the façade off the front of the Kensington Hotel, killing and injuring dozens. And while people run to the scene with the hopes of reaching survivors, one man walks calmly away from the wreckage, a coy smile playing on his lips.

With no way of identifying him, he is given the name "Smug", and Reilly, working closely with CIA friends, makes it his mission to track him down. Another perplexing and unclaimed hotel attack of increasing violence establishes an escalating pattern and the understanding that time is of the essence. Reilly begins mining old contacts and resources: college professors, comrades from his days in the military, security specialists, in an effort to delve deeper into the motive behind these attacks, and fast. Through his connections he learns, as suspected, that Smug is not acting alone. But the organization behind the perpetrator is not who they expect. Facilitated by the official government from a fearsome global superpower, the implications and reasons for these attacks are well beyond anything Reilly or his sources in the CIA and State Department could have imagined, and point not to random acts of terror, but calculated acts of war.

RED HOTEL is a collaboration between noted international thriller writer Gary Grossman and global executive Ed Fuller. The novel draws heavily on Fuller's experience with the intelligence community and his career as President of Marriott International. Fuller has worked in global hot spots during real-time crises, from Cairo during the fall of Mubarak to Tripoli and the last days of Ghaddafi. He oversaw the aftermath of bombings of Marriott properties in Jakarta and Mumbai, dealt with drug lords in Mexico and Central America, and created the threat assessment plan for his international properties. RED HOTEL is based on and inspired by his experience, and yields a globe-trotting thriller that's fiction right on the edge of reality.

ED FULLER is a hospitality industry leader, educator, and best-selling author of the international Top 20 bestselling business book, You Can't Lead with Your Feet on the Desk, published by Wiley. He is President of the Irvine, California-based Laguna Strategic Advisors, a global consortium that provides business consulting services to corporations and governments. Fuller is also Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigators National Academy Associates Foundation Board (FBINAA). His 40 year career in the industry was capped by his role as President & Managing Director of Marriott International for 22 years. As worldwide chief, he directed and administered corporate expansion by 551 hotels in 73 countries and eight billion dollars in sales. During that time he oversaw the creation of Marriott International's Global Security Strategy. Ed Fuller served as a Captain in the US Army in Germany and Vietnam and was decorated with a Bronze Star and Army Commendation medals.

GARY GROSSMAN is a multiple Emmy Award winning television producer and author of the international political thrillers Executive Actions, Executive Treason, Executive Command, and Old Earth. He has also written two highly regarded non-fiction books on TV history. Grossman has been published by Dell/Delacorte, Byron Preiss Publishing, Diversion Boks, Harlequin, Arlington House, and CBS/Popular Library. His books have sold an estimated 150,000 copies. He has worked for NBC News, served as a columnist for the Boston Herald American, written for the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Grossman is Contributing Editor to Media Ethics Magazine and has produced more than 10,000 television programs for 40 networks. He's a member of ITW, the International Thriller Writers Association and the Military Writers Society of America.