When his New England prep school’s taken hostage by a ruthless mercenary, a brilliant but reluctant seventeen-year-old — armed only with smarts and martial arts — must outwit a dozen techno terrorists while trying to keep up with the girl of his dreams.
CLICK BELOW to READ or LISTEN to LOST ONE STANDING by HECTOR HILL
A KIRKUS REVIEWS’ BEST BOOK OF 2020
“Delivers all of the suspense and action of a heist film for the YA crowd and is a tense, high-stakes thriller with an extremely likeable protagonist” - IndieReader
"Cade Dixon is part Holden Caulfield, part Jason Bourne, with a touch of MacGyver” – Kirkus Reviews
Seventeen-year-old CADE DIXON has always been an outsider.
Unlike his wealthy classmates at St. Frederick Academy, a prestigious prep school tucked into the New England countryside, Cade’s a working class kid — raised by a single mother whose administrative gig at the school enables him to attend and with whom Cade shares a troubled past.
Cade’s a young man of integrity and quiet leadership, but not one without contradictions — notably his side business of selling term papers to his rich and entitled peers. He’s also crushing hard on the fiercely intelligent and pretty KIRA, but hasn’t yet kissed a girl and can only bring himself to watch Kira from afar — and from the rafters of classes he’s not taking.
It’s Cade’s brilliant, perspicacious mind and his knowledge of the campus grounds that put him at an advantage — however slight — when St. Frederick is taken hostage by the ruthless mercenary REILLY, who’s employed 14 heavily armed men to lay siege to the school.
What’s more, the techno terrorists have extremely sophisticated, encrypted communication devices enabling them to jam all cellphones and electronics on campus and to tap into law enforcement agencies’ feeds.
They also may or may not have a bomb.
But Cade’s a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and incredibly resourceful. After avoiding the initial student roundup and working to prevent what horrors he can; he manages to enlist Kira’s aid — or does Kira enlist him?
Meanwhile, Reilly announces his plan to the tough-as-nails PRUITT and the cops and feds she commands outside the gates: The 10 richest parents of the hostages must transfer as much money as they can raise in an hour into an offshore account. The child whose parents raise the least will be eliminated.
Now, with the fate of their peers on the line and the life of Cade’s own mother hanging in the balance, Cade and Kira must use their wits and recent knowledge of physics, chemistry and psychology to outsmart Reilly and his crew. But can they throw enough wrenches into Reilly's complicated gears to put an end to his terror?
And on a scale of one to ten — would this be a really awkward time for Cade to tell Kira how he feels?
Lost One Standing is the first in a series of high concept, action-packed thrillers starring Cade Dixon — an every man hero in the mold of a young Jack Ryan or Jason Bourne but with the unique perspective and inherent challenges of being a teenager.
Equally exploitable for both film or television, the first novel in the Cade Dixon series will be adapted as a first film in the franchise or the first season of a multi-season TV property.
The second installment in the series (currently being written by Hector Hill) will adapt to a first sequel or second season, respectively, and sees Cade and Kira recruited into a black ops spy program for teens and forced into the field before they’re ready in order to stop a duplicitous billionaire humanitarian in cahoots with a shadowy government organization.
