THE BREAKER

Thwarting what seems like a run-of-the-mill holdup thrusts an ex-Marine into an international cybercrime plot.

What seems simple and predictable turns complex and surprising in this thriller, the sixth in the Peter Ash series. The swiftly paced, action-dominated plot rushes headlong from its outset. Freelance journalist June Cassidy alerts series protagonist Ash to a bearded and “weird-looking dude” as she, Ash, and his sidekick, Lewis, meet for an outdoor coffee near the Milwaukee Public Market on a sunny October afternoon. The bearded man of interest holds up another man with an assault rifle and Ash tries to intervene. Ash momentarily throws the gunman off with two well-tossed honeycrisps, but not before the gunman takes a phone from his quarry and then escapes on an electric bike, leaving behind a pair of shades. “You don’t steal a phone with an AK-74,” Ash says, his curiosity about the incident compelling him to find out what the attacker was up to. Ash works with handicaps. An ex-Marine veteran of the Iraq War, he suffers from PTSD. Worse, the FBI wants him for the murder of a government employee Ash didn’t commit, so the shaggy-haired Ash must work out of police sight. Ash doesn’t work alone. Cassidy joins him, bringing keen investigative reportorial skills to the pursuit that do as much to solve the case as Ash and Lewis do with their athletics—this turns out not to be the macho-male dominated thriller it first seems to be. When the house Ash and Cassidy share is burgled, the sunglasses from the crime scene go missing. Then Cassidy is menaced by a thug in a van. To find out what they’ve stumbled on, they traverse the city, which Petrie describes sharply. The pair grab at straws—sharply sketched characters with seemingly tangential connections to the case—until a source offers a major clue: The holdup near the market may be connected to a Russian hacking attempt.

Brisk, terse, and diverting.