Imagine an alternate history of the present, a time where one percent of American kids born after 1986 display a dazzling new intelligence. The opposite of “idiot savants,” the Brilliants seem normal in all other respects. Which, as part of the human condition, includes the ability to sometimes cause trouble, particularly when they're bullied. Parents no longer want their children to be smart, because a few of these kids have forced Wall Street to shut down through clever financial manipulation, while others have used violent confrontation to bring the country to the edge of civil war.

Nick Cooper is a member of Equitable Services—the perfect blandly named black-budgeted Federal agency—who's been tasked to use lethal force to stop the violent Brilliants, AKA “abnorm terrorists,” from destroying society.

Unfortunately for Nick, he's not only a divorced dad, he's a Brilliant, too. His talent is reading micro-expressions, which make him near-telepathic in his ability to predict a person's next move. But in his cat-and-mouse game against the Brilliants' elusive leader, John Smith (Sakey admits to being influenced by Ayn Rand's John Galt), Nick's talent isn't enough to stop a bombing by Smith's agent, nick-named “The Woman Who Walks Through Walls.”

Does her name sound like a Heinlein influence? Yeah, I think so, too.

It seems that many of the Brilliants have moved to a Reservation in Montana—private land, where they won't be bothered by the federal government or harassed by “normals.” Outside the Rez, the most highly gifted of the Brilliant kids are forced to attend special Federal schools from the age of five until eighteen. During that time, their names are changed, they're not allowed to see their families, and they're taught to trust nothing and no one except good old Uncle Sam. No one can opt out.

Nick belatedly discovers the terrible agenda of these schools shortly before his beloved four-year-old daughter Kate is reported by some busybody as “likely top-tier Brilliant.” He's immediately desperate to keep her out of brainwashing school, which in her case would start ASAP.

He offers his boss a deal: in exchange for his daughter never having to go to one of these soul-crushing “schools,” he'll pretend to go rogue, go to the Montana reservation and talk the Brilliants into letting him join up, and then kill John Smith. Who nobody in Equitable Services has ever seen.

As you might imagine, John Smith and the Woman Who Walks Through Walls are at least as Brilliant as poor Nick, who's also fighting off a serious attraction to this dangerous woman.

And this is where the story takes off like a hypersonic rocket. If you love sharply-written Libertarian thrillers, you've got to read this one. Oh, and the book is already being made into a movie, with a sequel due in 2014.