ENTERTAINMENT

No wonder 20th Century Fox scooped up Collision before publication. From its opening scene where a new bride falls victim to a bullet on Maui to the bittersweet ending in a Tyler park, Jeff Abbott's action thriller is camera-ready cinematic.

In keeping with the Austin-based author's signature premise, Collision tracks an ordinary citizen trapped in an extraordinarily nauseating situation as he struggles to stay alive and clear his name. Here he's freelance corporate consultant Ben Forsberg, living on the west side of Austin and working part-time for a global supplier of private security forces.

Still mourning his wife slain two years before, Ben buries himself in contract work. But when his business card is discovered in the pocket of a dead assassin with terrorist ties, Homeland Security agents turn up at his door.

Forced to ally himself with the burnt-out killer-spook known only as Pilgrim, who framed him, he enters the shadowy world of the war on terror, where loyalties shift like sand and dead bodies pile up like driftwood.

Mr. Abbott can create memorable characters, such as the Gulf Coast justice of the peace and the librarian-sleuth in the mass-market paperbacks he wrote before Panic, his first hardcover. This time he tilts toward the spiraling plot.

If the cast is a shade cartoonish, we can sometimes sniff their humanity. Nearly everyone in the spy thriller playbook shows up: an ex-IRA sniper, Arab gunmen, the middle-aged female boss of an off-the-books agency subgroup, a naïf unaccustomed to rough stuff and a former CIA agent declared dead a decade ago.

If this sounds like another odd-couple, fish-out-of-water scenario, it is. But stick with the author. His hard-driving narrative builds, sucking readers into a wild Twister ride of bruising fights, bloody betrayals and burning-secret surprises.

Set mainly around Austin with side trips to Frisco, Dallas, Indonesia and Beirut, Collision is not atmospheric though the author slips in some zingers about the slow traffic and rise of mega-mansions in the capital city.

Born in Dallas and reared partly in McKinney, Mr. Abbott went to Duncanville High School and graduated from Rice University. Before turning writer full-time, he worked as creative director at an ad agency in Austin. With this latest book, Mr. Abbott cements his rep as a suspense master.

Jane Sumner is a freelance writer in Austin.

Jeff Abbott

(Dutton Books, $24.95) Plan your life

Jeff Abbott will discuss and sign Collision 7 p.m. Wednesday at Barnes & Noble, 7700 West Northwest Highway.