Two durable heroes anchor a briskly paced tale of retribution, intrigue, and a daring mission.
A thriller focuses on terrorism, international political unrest, and a married couple who always find themselves on the run.
This fourth installment of Freda’s action series featuring Samantha and James Coppi begins at a heavily attended Baptist church service in northwest Texas where Sam’s father is the pastor. It’s also where a van full of armed Palestinian nationalists lie in wait, primed to swoop in and terrorize the congregation. Unlucky for the Palestinians is the appearance of James, an Army veteran, CIA operative, and private detective, whose scheduled pulpit speech is interrupted by the violence. He courageously intervenes and saves most of the congregants from harm but, in doing so, has now become the target of a Palestinian terrorist group and its ruthless leader. The main henchman, Faakhir, is sent back to exact lethal vengeance (“qisas”) on James and his entire family for thwarting the terrorist plot at the church, even after the detective receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his bravery. Sam and James regroup at their tony Colorado horse ranch, but this respite is short-lived, as they turn their attention to selling the family fashion empire, embarking on a railroad venture, and negotiating a business contract with a royal prince. After James rushes off to Iran to aid in the exile efforts of the shah, Sam is viciously kidnapped and held as bait to get to her husband. Set against the political unrest of the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, when Middle Eastern terrorism expanded outward, the violence is harrowing and palpable. Thankfully, several subplots involving the evolution of Sam and James’ relationship and their loving interactions with their children and extended family inject much-needed humanity into a story that at times is overwhelmingly brutal. The mad dash to save Sam puts James in mortal danger as the novel globe-trots through Afghanistan, Paris, Lebanon, Monaco, and Pakistan. As evidenced in previous volumes, Freda’s protagonists remain a uniquely daring duo, and the author’s knack for high-speed plotting, dastardly villains, and consistent action is once again on full display in this exciting thrill ride. International suspense fans new to the series will find this thriller satisfying but may want to familiarize themselves with the beginning of Sam and James’ adventures in the inaugural volume, A Police Action (2017).
Two durable heroes anchor a briskly paced tale of retribution, intrigue, and a daring mission.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66321-220-7
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Iuniverse Inc
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.
A widowed Pennsylvania dad hears from his estranged daughter on the occasion of her marriage into the 1 percent.
Frank Szatowski, 52, has achievements he’s proud of: “I started driving young, straight out of the army, and I was recently inducted into the Circle of Honor, an elite group of UPS drivers who’ve worked twenty-five years without an accident.” What Frank doesn’t feel so good about is his relationship with his daughter, Maggie, who cut him off a few years ago when he failed her in some as-yet-unrevealed way. But now the "Unknown Caller" on his phone is her, inviting him to Boston to meet her fiance, Aidan Gardner, and to walk her down the aisle at their wedding. From the moment he steps from the elevator into the penthouse Maggie and Aidan share, Frank feels like a fish out of water, and things only get more uncomfortable when Aidan shows no interest in connecting with his future father-in-law. The wedding is held at a private camp in New Hampshire, exquisitely imagined from the waterfront cottages to the brunch buffets to the 10-foot-high security fence. Even before he’s given a 56-page “privacy doc” to sign and ordered to turn his watch ahead 15 minutes to “Gardner Standard Time,” Frank knows there’s something deeply wrong—for one thing, he’s received a flyer in the mail linking Aidan to a local missing person. But his sister, Tammy, is having the time of her life, as is her 10-year-old foster kid, Abigail, and he’s finally mending fences with Maggie; can’t he just kick back and enjoy? Actually…no. In addition to creating a fun, propulsive plot, Rekulak does a great job on all the status details and supporting characters, from the sleazy family lawyer with his barely legal wife to the younger crowd at the wedding. At the welcome dinner, a woman with “a starfish tattoo and long blond hair braided into ropes” offers Frank an Altoids tin of gummy bears. “These are THC with a little extra wild card,” she tells him encouragingly. Hoo boy. There are some wild cards, all right.
How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781250895783
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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