SIROCCO

The bounty hunters of St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking who go up against a Middle Eastern terrorist bomber find their target far more chimerical than it seems.

The serial kidnapper that ex–U.S. Marshal Michael Finnigan and his partner, Katalin Fiero Dahar, tangled with in St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking (2019) is small potatoes compared to the Khamsin Sayef, or Storm of the Sword, a terrorist organization that blew up Paris CIA station chief Dinah Mariner and her husband and daughter three years ago and has gone on to more of the same. The latest casualty is nongovernmental organization leader Victor Wu, killed along with Pete Newsom, the contractor with Sooner Slye and Rydell responsible for keeping him safe. When senior European CIA director Annie Pryor, an old friend of Dinah and her family's, hires Spanish spymaster Hugo Llorente to identify and kill the parties responsible, Llorente naturally reaches out to Fiero, whom he formerly handled in the field, and her partner to fulfill the contract. Annie Pryor isn’t the only one who takes this mission personally. Col. Cole Sanger, of Sooner Slye and Rydell, knowing that his firm’s reputation for protecting important people is on the line, resolves that nobody will pull the trigger but SS&R’s own hirelings—either one of their regular employees or Syarhey Valazko, a colorless Belarussian who lives only for his work. As it turns out, the assassins’ race to the target turns out to be only Act 1 of a plot Haynes manages with professional dexterity and an uncanny sense of when to dish out more twists, deceptions, and action sequences.

Highly recommended to readers who don’t have enough to worry about already—or who’d rather swap their cares for bigger ones.