BLACKWATER

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.