An often engrossing spy novel on an international scale.
Rainer offers the eighth continent-spanning installment in his Jeff Trask thriller series, in which the hero must help avert a plan for nuclear armageddon.
In 2021, CIA agent “Buck” Buckley is mere months into a new posting in Athens, Greece, when Yuri Mikhail Gilfoy, a senior Mossad official from Tel Aviv, appears. Yuri hasn’t left his office to catch up with an old friend. Instead, he warns Buck about recent intel he’s received from an anonymous source, nicknamed “Oracle,” regarding a possible nuclear attack. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it appears, aims to take retaliatory measures following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, in which several Arabic nations recognized the state of Israel and agreed to normalize relations. Yuri’s source has suggested that Athens, the “original cradle of Western civilization and democracy,” represents a likely target. Shortly after delivering this jaw-dropping news, Yuri departs, leaving Buck and his colleagues at the U.S. embassy to brace for any possibility. Meanwhile, in Tehran, a former champion wrestler-turned-colonel of the Iran Revolutionary Guards, Ahmed Jafari, plays games of Football Megastars online and keeps his head down as the Supreme Leader speculates about a mole in his office. Back in Kansas City, Missouri, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Trask and his wife, Lynn, prepare for a long-awaited vacation to Greece—where they become entangled in Rainer’s serpentine narrative. Over the course of this espionage thriller, the author ably weaves together the various threads of his capacious and complex international doomsday narrative. Some readers may be surprised that the chief player is not Trask; indeed, it isn’t any one character, but more of an ensemble piece, and the action moves too fast for any real interior character development. However, the author’s sleek, propulsive prose effectively drives readers toward a promised climax. Some bits of dialogue feel a bit clichéd, but for this, Rainer can be forgiven, as the book is clearly written in the spirit of good, gripping fun. In this sense, it’s successful—explosively so.
An often engrossing spy novel on an international scale.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 253
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Jack Ryan is in good hands with Cameron. There’s plenty of action for Clancy fans.
A generic title for Jack Ryan’s umpteenth encounter with mortal danger.
An aide tells President Ryan that he is “the kind of man who creates his own weather,” but that weather tends to be a violent storm. This time, Ryan plans a flight to Argentina but decides to first make a secret stop in Panama to visit President Botero. The secret leaks, of course, resulting in mucho mayhem as Ryan stumbles into the middle of a coup attempt. Meanwhile, the CIA’s Ground Branch kills the Venezuelan Russian assassin Joaquín Gorshkov, incurring the wrath of his batbleep-crazy sister, Sabine Gorshkova. Not much of a family person, she decides to have her younger sister, Blanca, killed and fed to the pigs. Sabine lays blame for her brother’s death on Mary Pat Foley, Director of National Intelligence, and swears claw-hammer vengeance. “I have a special interest in a little bird traveling with the President,” she declares. Oh yes, and a plot is afoot to murder Panama’s president and vice president to “liberate” the country. Russian naval vessels linger near the Panama Canal, ostensibly ready to help should the need arise. Ryan must tread carefully so as not to make the situation worse than it already is. The action-filled tale carries on the late Clancy's tradition, for example including great dollops of detail without hurting the storyline. There's almost enough about the Panama Canal for a Wikipedia entry and yet the facts flow as well as water through the Miraflores Locks. And readers will learn all seven types of weaponry on the Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, aka The Black Terror, and the handy fact that a Bowers Group suppressor needs lithium grease. Bombs explode, bullets fly, and a Panamanian major shows her heroic mettle.
Jack Ryan is in good hands with Cameron. There’s plenty of action for Clancy fans.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422847
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
