An intriguing, complex hero emerges in this riveting espionage tale.
The past reaches out and grabs an ex–intelligence agent in this debut spy thriller.
Dalton Drake, a former Canadian Security Investigation Service agent–turned–private eye, is drinking after work at his favorite Winnipeg bar when a stranger delivers the message “Ice Castle is falling. Find Farhad.” He also learns that his former MI6 colleague Alexander Marshall-Page has died under suspicious circumstances. By the next morning, the messenger is also dead. Soon, Dalton gets summoned to Washington, D.C., where he is quickly assigned to Operation Blackwater, which seeks to recover nuclear material stolen by terrorists. Dalton teams up with MI5’s Kenton Stone, Royal Air Force Second Lt. Kathleen Baker, and, later, his long-lost former lover Beverley Foster. They’re chasing terrorists Layla Farhad, who Dalton thought was dead, and her lover, Hassan Taheri, who are smuggling their radioactive prize first by cargo ship and then by submarine. In the background of this dogged pursuit through Africa and Europe, scientists work with the military to develop alternate defenses in case Blackwater fails. All involved also have to determine the target of the terrorists’ nuclear missile. What results is a ton of close calls in this high-stakes global game of cat and mouse. Old bonds are revisited and new relationships form as a multinational force races to avoid Armageddon at the hands of Farhad and Taheri. Jacuzzi has successfully found a way to blend his multiple interests in travel, history, weapons systems, intelligence services, and aviation in this electrifying novel. He skillfully has set up a Dalton Drake series by creating a longtime spy and seducer who has reached a point when he’s considering settling down, if only his past will let him. By having Dalton be a private investigator in the author’s hometown of Winnipeg, Jacuzzi creates the flexibility to place him on an international stage or give him a complex local case to solve. And by leaving most of his characters alive, the author has positioned himself to pick and choose from his large cast for future volumes in the series. Based on this exhilarating series opener, he certainly knows how to pen a breakneck narrative. Here’s hoping Jacuzzi can continue to build on this promising beginning.
An intriguing, complex hero emerges in this riveting espionage tale.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781039160651
Page Count: 420
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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