HUNTING SEASON

This seventh thriller from Deutermann, a retired Navy captain and arms-control specialist, begins like a steel bear trap with, indeed, two young men stepping into immovable bear traps by a stream, then nearly getting struck by lightning that batters a nearby tree, and who then face a thunderstorm and rising flash flood as they writhe in place while a five-foot wall of mud sweeps toward them. With them is Lynn Kreiss, daughter of Edwin Kreiss, a former top-secret sweeper from a US intelligence service—as in Deutermann’s earlier novel Sweepers (1997) about the Navy’s contract killers who clean up messes too hot to handle in-house. When Lynn is kidnapped (or disappeared by sweepers?), Edwin goes after her using all his smarts, only to find himself a target for sweepers.

Deutermann has sold three novels to Hollywood already. They’re blind if they pass on this one.