Who is Lucas Page?
Lucas Page is a retired FBI agent. During his tenure he survived a horrific blast that claimed his eye, an arm and a leg. He struggles with PTSD and suffers flashbacks from the incident. Understandably, he is a bit of a curmudgeon and does not warm up to people easily. Yet he has a heart of gold, which is evident by his opening up his heart and home to several adopted children. Having been a foster child himself family means everything to him. To say that Page has a brilliant mind would be an understatement. By day he works as an astrophysicist and university professor. By night he solves crimes no one else can.
Why Do We Like Him?
I just loved Page’s wry sense of humor. His dry wit kept me laughing even though instances where people had died in the book. His relationship with Whittaker was a special one. They seemed to understand what the other one was thinking without having to say anything.
Page is an overcomer. We are given enough details to know that he had a hard childhood but we see him giving back rather than dwelling on the past. He pushes through his flashbacks and his pain. He never makes excuses. Instead he searches for a means to work around his problems. Page has an uncanny, perhaps supernatural, ability to see patterns amidst chaos. His analytical mind can map out a space in seconds and quickly recreate crime scenes.
Book 1: City of Windows
During the worst blizzard in memory, an FBI agent in a moving SUV in New York City is killed by a nearly impossible sniper shot. Unable to pinpoint where the shot came from, as the storm rapidly wipes out evidence, the agent-in-charge Brett Kehoe turns to the one man who might be able to help them–former FBI agent Lucas Page.
Book 2: Under Pressure
On a beautiful October evening, New York City’s iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company’s private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee—yet the damage to the building itself was minimal.
An explosion of that precision was no accident and, in response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team — but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Were all 702 victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there only one target and 701 unlucky bystanders? With too many victims and no known motive, the FBI turns once again to Dr. Lucas Page.
My Thoughts on the Series
This series was brought to my attention by Joseph Bresnan from Minotaur books. I enjoyed both books in this series and would recommend them to fans of Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X series. I appreciated Pobi’s representation of a disabled character and how he showed readers his challenges but also allowed us to see his talents. Throughout the books there were several extremely clever plot twists and as a woman in STEM I liked how he incorporated the science and technology.
Meet the Author
I found Lucas Page to be such a curious character I really had to find out more about the man who created him. Pobi seems to be quite a recluse and likes to have a bit of mystery surrounding him:
From Pobi’s author page: “He lives in the country, but spends most of the summer and fall months at his cabin on a lost lake in the mountains. He does not have telephone, internet, or television at the cabin; if he needs to check email, he has to drive eight miles to a tiny town hall for the free wifi at the picnic table inhabited by a gang of octogenarian chain smokers. When the cold starts chewing on the trees, he heads to a place he has on the beach, where his nearest neighbor—a retired cop who shares the same first name—makes the best whiskey sour he has ever tasted.”
“He writes at a desk that once belonged to Roberto ‘God’s Banker’ Calvi, and has (or definitely doesn’t have) a small collection of shrunken human heads (known as tsantsas in anthropological and collector circles) that continually weird out his housekeeper. He owns too many fountain pens and is constantly making notes in old-school Mead marble composition books.”
From Goodreads: “ROBERT POBI has fished for great whites off Montauk, chased coyotes with a dune buggy in the Mojave, and spelunked caves in the former Yugoslavia. He is a renowned expert in English period furniture and makes a mean coq au vin.”
Carry a Big Book 