EPA Special Agent Sophie Grant has faced countless dangerous situations while chasing criminal polluters, from boarding tankers at sea to Somali refugee camps. But when she is assigned to Italy’s tourist-filled Amalfi Coast in pursuit of a toxic waste dumping cartel, she finds herself in the crosshairs of legendary Camorra assassin Il Ramingo Mezzanotte – The Midnight Rambler – and is forced to do the most harrowing thing of all, ask her disgraced ex-cop father for help.
As more everyday people are impacted by industrial pollution and climate disasters, the story of an EPA special agent pursuing the criminals benefiting from our planet’s destruction has never been timelier. The Midnight Rambler uses a family broken by tragedy and reunited in conflict to champion the criminally ignored work of EPA special agents.
Often mocked as a “water cop,” Sophie is driven to protect the vulnerable by the loss of her own mother at a young age. For decades, shady international corporations have paid the Camorra crime syndicate millions to dump their toxic industrial waste on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Cancer deaths skyrocketed in the area. It wasn’t until pollutants threatened a nearby US naval base that the EPA’s top investigator was brought in.
But like the deadly polluted water flowing below the sun-splashed Amalfi bedrock, nothing is as it appears. The CIA aims to use her as bait to draw out the Camorra’s legendary top assassin– the Midnight Rambler. But Il Ramingo hasn’t killed seemingly impossible to reach politicians, judges, and Camorra rivals for years without smelling out a trap.
Not unlike how Jack Ryan thwarts terrorists for the CIA and Clarice Starling hunts serial killers for the FBI, the EPA’s Sophie Grant is a crime-fighting protagonist, a hero seeking justice for poverty-stricken communities choking on toxic water and air. The Midnight Rambler has the adrenaline rush of The Sum of All Fears, an unforgettable hero like Erin Brockovich, and the environmental urgency of The Deluge.
