OUT OF TIME

The second installment of Stoler’s mystery series featuring Nick Donahue pits the professional gambler against jihadists bent on world domination.

When Marina DiPietro—a former MI6 operative who owns an investigation firm based in London—accepts a new client who happens to be one of the richest men in the world, she and her partner (in love and espionage), Nick Donahue, come to learn that their assignment is much more complicated and dangerous than it initially appeared. The client, Adnan bin Haddad, owns a stable of racehorses, one of which is scheduled to run in the upcoming Kentucky Derby in just a few weeks’ time. But someone has threatened to maim all of his horses—including the pride of bin Haddad’s stable, Devil Wind—if he doesn’t cough up $100 million. As DiPietro and Donahue begin investigating, they discover that their billionaire client may be withholding information and soon uncover troubling connections between bin Haddad’s many businesses and radicalized Islamist terrorists targeting groundbreaking technology being developed at one of his companies that, if used by unscrupulous individuals, could affect every country on the planet. Complicating matters is a New York City mobster who wants to even an old score with Donahue and his partner. The novel has plenty for suspense fans to sink their teeth into, including relentless pacing, globe-hopping adventure, and a knotty storyline. Stoler’s flair for describing the various locales is an undeniable strength: Churchill Downs, on the day of the Kentucky Derby, was “a madhouse…a riot of color, of wall-to-wall people, over one hundred thousand strong. Champagne, mint juleps, and Bourbon were flowing.” The characters, unfortunately, are a bit two-dimensional; readers don’t know Donahue and DiPietro any better by novel’s end, and the secondary characters, particularly the villains, are cardboard stereotypes.

A solid but unexceptional mystery/thriller with high stakes and nonstop action throughout.