Author: John Lansing
Published by White Street Press July 2025
Category: Thriller, Crime, Fiction
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Former Army Ranger Dakota Judd, unfairly jailed for injuring his commanding officer while preventing him from torturing a teenager during a mission, is offered a reprieve by FBI Agent Jean Steele. If he agrees to gain access to Blackfox, a white supremacist organisation in prison, and carry on in the outside group when he’s released. His brief is to gain as much information as he can for the FBI and his record will ultimately be erased.
If he fails it won’t matter one way or the other as he wouldn’t be alive to worry about it. I love the fact Dakota’s Aunt Billie, a retired detective and great character, not a woman to mess with or underestimate, is the perfect back up, always ready and willing to help him in any way she can.
He wasn’t entirely free. He had a mission that if accomplished, and if he came out alive, a lot of ifs, then, and only then, would he genuinely be free. But right now, in this moment, he felt lighter. A sense of peace and optimism washed over him. He was up for the challenge and would find a way to excel and succeed. Not sure how, but again, a Ranger was trained to expect the unexpected.
Embedded is action packed and fast paced, with a multi layered plot involving influential and unscrupulous people pulling strings for their own ends. But they hadn’t reckoned on Dakota and Aunt Billie.
Embedded has all the ingredients….the twists this reader didn’t see coming, suspense, drama and tension, that make a book hard to put down. And I’m so glad Dakota is a character in his own right, with an individual background and personality, and not similar in any way to the main character of the author’s previous series, which I also loved. Look forward to the next instalment!
Jailed Army Ranger Dakota Judd is offered a life-altering deal from Jean Steele, an ambitious and attractive Black FBI agent. Infiltrate a White Supremacist prison gang while he’s incarcerated, then embed himself into their militia on the outside. Become the eyes and ears of the FBI. If successful, his record will be expunged and he can live a normal life. If he fails, he’ll wind up dead.
Embedded, the first book in the new Dakota Judd thriller series, features John Lansing’s trademark propulsive, page-turning writing style, with a tough but sympathetic protagonist. Accompanying Dakota are two powerful women: Aunt Billie, his tough-as-nails wingman, a retired female detective who makes sure Dakota stays alive as he rotates back to civilian life where peril awaits, and Jean Steele, Dakota’s FBI handler, who must thwart her romantic impulses towards Dakota, as one false move can cost her a career in the male-dominated FBI.
John Lansing is the author of six thrillers featuring Jack Bertolino—The Devil’s Necktie, Blond Cargo, Dead Is Dead, The Fourth Gunman, 25 To Life, and Mia, the prequel—as well as the true-crime non-fiction book Good Cop Bad Money, written with former NYPD Inspector Glen Morisano. Embedded is John’s first thriller in the Dakota Judd series. He’s been a writer and supervising producer on network television, and the co-executive producer of the ABC series Scoundrels, and co-wrote two MOWs for CBS.
The Devil’s Necktie is in development at Andria Litto’s Amuse Entertainment, with Barbara DeFina attached as a producer.
A native of Long Island, John now resides in Los Angeles.
