There’s “no rest for Team Texarkana” in this entertaining diversion.
The United States faces destruction unless an undercover CIA agent and Team Texarkana can foil an intricately conceived conspiracy in Davis’ thriller.
The diabolical plans James Bond villains concoct to rule the world are kid stuff compared to the Great Reset, a far-reaching, decades-in-the-making plot to “take down the United States.” Who is involved? Perhaps the question should be, “who is not involved?” Spearheaded by German multi-billionaire Klaus Burger, the Great Reset is a partnership between “some disillusioned Russians and Chinese officials in prominent positions in governments and private enterprises,” in addition to “a secret underground group of carefully selected green-energy zealots” and “one of Washington, DC’s most influential and known political leaders who was at the cusp of taking power.” The Chinese discovery of cobalt in a meteorite crater has game-changing implications for energy efficiency and battery performance. This development, coupled with a covert Chinese scheme to buy “immense swaths of farmland in the US, Canada, and other countries that permitted the selling of land to foreign companies,” promises to give them control of food and energy production in those countries. “No country, not even the Americans or their allies, will be able to stop us,” Burger proclaims. Enter Team Texarkana, introduced in Davis’ Flames of Deception (2022). Tex and his elite, first-names-only team of four is black ops–funded and can be placed anywhere in the world within 18 hours. The team is dispatched into action when Mary Johnson, a deep undercover CIA agent (by way of the Culinary Institute of America; “CIA squared”) disappears, along with her sister, Janet, who has fallen into Burger’s unspeakable clutches. As in the previous installment, this sophomore outing gets much of its energy from drawing on ripped-from-the-headlines situations. The fantastical conspiracy is “out there” to the extreme and the writing is not subtle (Burger also operates a sex-trafficking ring), but the briskly paced action covers the globe from Washington, D.C., to North Korea to the Gobi Desert and Mongolia, providing the requisite escapism.
There’s “no rest for Team Texarkana” in this entertaining diversion.Pub Date: May 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781959677314
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Defiance Press & Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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