Jenny Siler garnered critical praise with her debut effort Easy Money and followed it with Iced. Her latest effort ‘Shot’ follows her trademark of dark suspense with gritty and tough female protagonists who have a deep love of guns.

Carl and Lucy Greene are a supposedly happily married couple with a golden lifestyle courtesy of Carl’s job at the top-notch biotech firm, Bioflux. But all their happiness is lost the day Lucy gives birth to a child which dies due to genetic defects. This puts a heavy strain on their marriage and they subsequently drift apart. A few days after Carl leaves for a trip to the Seattle office, Lucy gets news of his unexpected death. After the funeral, an old friend of theirs, Kevin, comes to their home, wanting to know why Carl had not kept his appointment to meet him. This starts Lucy wondering why Carl had contacted an ex-TV reporter with promises of a big story, and if his sudden death had something do with it.

An ex-thief, Darcy is blackmailed by the warden of a prison (in which she had spent some time and where her younger junkie sister still resides) into breaking into Carl’s files and finding any information about some TB tests conducted at the prison a few years back. She fails the first time - scared off by Lucy and her beloved Glock. By the time she returns a second time, the files are gone, claimed by Bioflux and removed from Lucy’s home.

What does Chick’s (Lucy’s brother) mysterious illness have to do with it? How is it connected with the death of Lucy’s child and the TB tests? At this crucial juncture, Lucy and Darcy, together with Kevin, form an uneasy alliance to find those files and discover for themselves what exactly Bioflux is up to. This leads them on a high-speed chase across the country, taking them to the most unlikely places, discovering startling and vital information along the dangerous journey, while they manage to keep just one step ahead of a professional hit man.

Jenny Siler once more delivers a fast moving and tautly plotted tale of conspiracy, murder and violence. In Shot, two tough females, Lucy and Darcy, are out to solve the mystery, in full possession of cool logic and dangerous weapons. As the suspense builds and the body count rises, the complex storyline takes us deeper and deeper into the shadowy and secretive world of biological warfare and government coverups. Siler, with her hard-bitten insights and bone-chilling descriptions, makes it appear far too plausible for comfort. Hard-hitting and terrifying.

• Iced