If you’ve ever wondered what Indiana Jones might be like in the modern day, Alex Dekker may be giving us a glimpse in his debut thriller, Desert Heist.

Raised on history and archaelogy by his academic father, Nathan Wilde is a Green Beret who left the US Army after years of service in the Middle East, culminating in a fierce battle in Yemen which left several teammates dead. Throwing himself back in to his studies, Nathan is working on his PhD, and his dissertation proposal is to search for the lost city of Ubar in present-day Saudi Arabia. When the proposal is rejected by the Harvard doctoral committee, Wilde decides to pursue the search on his own, convinced of the possibility of his own research.

Ultimately, he arrives at the conclusion that the only way he can move on is to throw caution to the wind and seek out the city himself. With all legal means of entering Saudi Arabia blocked, Wilde decides to enter the country’s infamous Empty Quarter through a place he’d like to forget: Yemen. Doing so means he’ll need help, and he turns to former Special Forces teammates for that. Along the way they are joined by Ana Metry, a geologist searching for her missing father, whom Nathan was attempting to contact, given his research on underground water tables in Saudi Arabia could prove helpful in locating Ubar.

The entire group is hunted by a former Spetsnaz operative, now working for a private client, which wants the information the elder Metry had discovered to remain secret. Not to mention dealing with Al Qaeda terrorists using the border towns of Yemen and Saudi Arabia as staging posts, and the utter harshness of the Empty Quarter itself.

Dekker brings his own background as a member of the elite Green Berets, and his love of history, to bear in Desert Heist. His knowledge in both areas shines through, lending weight and credibility to the plot and characters without weighing the story down. Nathan is far from a unstoppable Jack Reacher-like character. He is very human, and Dekker allows all the emotions of frustration, anger, and love flow through him for the reader to take in as the story progresses.

All in all, a solid debut, and one thriller fans should love!

4/5 phins
Amazon: Hardcover, ebook
Bookshop: Hardcover, ebook