Alistair MacLean · 1977 · thriller

Alistair MacLean's 1977 thriller. Nuclear physicists are being kidnapped one by one and enough weapons-grade material has gone missing to build several bombs. The man behind it has worked out where to put them: not in a city, but along the fault that runs the length of California - and he is entirely willing to demonstrate.

1. 1
   Los Angeles

   Physicists disappear and a power station loses material it should be unable to lose - and Sergeant Ryder finds his own wife among those taken, which makes the case his whether he is assigned to it or not.

2. 2
   The San Joaquin Valley

   The trail runs inland into the valley and the empty country beyond it, where a private army has a laboratory, the missing scientists and enough fissile material to make the threat entirely serious.

3. 3
   The San Andreas Fault

   The plan is to detonate along the fault line itself and drop a piece of California into the sea - and a first device is set off in the desert to prove the point, which leaves the state a very short time to find the rest.