The Friday 56 (With Book Beginnings): Hostile Takeover (John Lago Thriller #2) by Shane Kuhn

Welcome to The Friday 56, a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

I'm also taking part in Book Beginnings, a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. The rules are pretty simple - you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires. Don't forget to link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.

This week I'm spotlighting my current read, Hostile Takeover (John Lago Thriller #2) by Shane Kuhn. I had no idea The Intern got a sequel (which was released in July) until recently and I'm really excited to jump back into John Lago's world. The original is so darkly funny and action-packed that I knew I had to come back for the follow up. I'm also really excited for the movie adaptation of the first book and from what I've heard Dave Franco has been cast as John Lago.

Book Beginning:

Federal Bureau of Investigation -- National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), Quantico, Virginia
Present Day

This is the first day of the rest of your life, I think to myself as I squint under the bright fluorescent lights in a windowless interrogation room. In the reflection of the two-way mirror, I look like a bug in a jar, quietly waiting for a mentally disturbed five-year-old to fill it with water and watch me stiffly gallop to a slow and painful death. But my executioner doesn't come in the form of a bored suburban brat. He comes in the form of Assistant Director Winton Fletcher - a fifty-something FBI poster boy with a scrubbed red face (Ivory soap), machine-precision haircut (Floyd the barber), cheap, ill-fitting suit and prep school knockoff tie (Joseph A. Bank), and high-polish wing tips with skid-proof rubber soles (Florsheim).

56:

He took a Ted Williams cut at me with the baseball bat he'd been gripping under the bar since I sat down. I stopped the bat barrel with one hand and knocked him out cold with the other. And it was on. Weapons were flashing.