The Missing Peace: An Explosive International Spy Thriller

The Missing Peace, Winner of the 2022 Page Turner Awards for Best Book [Fiction], Best Contemporary Fiction, Best Action & Adventure and Golden Author Award, as well as Winner of the 2022 International Press Awards for Best Thriller and Best New Fiction, blurs all traditional boundaries between fiction and fact, romance and adventure, intrigue and literature.

Israeli scholar, Sonya Aronovsky, enlists a Harvard Jesuit professor to help her translate and locate the source of a mysterious manuscript she has found in her late mother's possessions, believing it holds the key to where her father, a Soviet-era helicopter pilot, went missing in action twenty years ago.

But Father Daniel Callan's brilliant student-and former lover-is not who he thinks she is. In fact, Sonya is a deep-cover Mossad agent running a sting operation to ensnare "Wild Boar," the sadistic arms dealer who brokers missiles to conflict zones and traffics girls for his sex club in Istanbul. Sonya's irresistible bait is a dozen "suitcase" tactical nuclear weapons, which she believes her father was secretly transporting out of Afghanistan in 1989 when his gunship mysteriously disappeared in the Hindu Kush mountains.

The action and smoldering romance ignite as Sonya and Danny are tracked by Ukrainian hit men, Russian mercenaries and CIA drones. Their expedition leads them to a fantastic archaeological find where Sonya must sift through an arcane history for clues to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance, and race against time to locate his deadly cargo before Wild Boar does.

The world is a better place for having authors like Mr. Joyce. His style is smooth and articulate. At times it is wonderfully cinematic. No small feat with the written word.

--Thomas Henry Pope,  author of  Imperfect Burials.
"The Missing Peace reads like a F-22 on afterburner.It's got action, romance, gritty details of life in the Hindu Kush, and the realities of Cold War politics."

--Terry Irving, author of Courier, Warrior  and The Last American Wizard

The Missing Peace has a cinematic quality to both the prose and the way the story moves between different characters and countries that I found wildly engaging. The setting was described with an aerial quality and an eye for detail emphasizing its sweeping scope.

-- Masie Cochran, senior editor at Tin House

Red Sparrow meets The Kite Runner. Beautiful, so well-written and a compelling story.

-- Holly Lynn Payne, author of The Virgin's Knot, The Sound of Blue and Damascena

A great story, powerful characters and a plot that rings devastatingly true.

--Frank Viviano, National Geographic journalist, former war correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of Blood Washes Blood

Joyce's novel is one that overflows with vivid particulars. The thrills come in seeing how all the aspects of this multifaceted world will eventually come together. This gripping spy tale offers entertaining and realistic details.

-- Kirkus Reviews