Welcome to VIE. A spy organization of the people, by the people, and for the people. We are spies in plain sight. We make billionaires afraid.

A gripping, tense thriller with a hearing impaired main character from bestselling author Lynn Hightower.

Junie Lagard is a woman on a mission. With the help of her young team of citizen journalists, she’s determined to hold billionaires accountable for the environmental atrocities they commit. Their current target: Kentuckian billionaire “Daddy” Sullivan Carr, whose plans to open a bitcoin mine in Annecy, France, threaten to destroy the place Junie and her beloved hearing dog Leo now call home.

But locking horns with Daddy Carr plunges Junie into a waking nightmare. For the twisted billionaire has drawn the attention of a dark and lethal French secret society known as the Emerald Vipers – and for this he blames her.

Escaping only narrowly with her life from an assassination attempt, Junie’s determination to unmask Daddy Carr as a villain only grows stronger. But as her quest for justice leads her from the masked revels of Annecy’s Venetian carnival to the glittering excesses of Kentucky’s Derby, it will take all her strength to find not just the justice she burns for – but to face the shocking truth. That’s if she manages to stay alive . . .

Fans of fast-paced mysteries and thrillers with international settings, like those by David Hewson, Jeffrey Siger, Donna Leon and Louise Penny will love this series from award-winning author Lynn Hightower, who Lee Child praised as a “brave, bold writer”.