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A LETHAL INVOLVEMENT

Though finally separated from Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, hard-to-handle agent Peter Ashton (Death Throes, 1995, etc.) is now recalled to duty by his erstwhile masters to investigate a seemingly simple case that soon turns complicated. When a British Army captain who was being vetted for a computer post with SIS goes missing, his would-be employer assigns Ashton to make discreet inquiries. Any hopes of a quiet probe are immediately dashed by the bizarre murder of a retired major known to have had a youthful homosexual fling at a Swiss ski resort with the AWOL officer. Following background checks on the presumptive principals, Ashton determines that the ultimate answers to his questions lie in Hong Kong, where the military men in question were stationed together during the Vietnam War. Once in the Crown Colony (a restive venue on the eve of its return to mainland China), the boat-rocking operative turns over one rock too many and is nearly gunned down in a Triad ambush that takes the life of an Aussie colleague. On the evidence of a crooked inquest that hushed up the suspicious death of a young American woman more than two decades earlier, however, Ashton discovers a CIA link that puts him on a twisty trail to the US. The body count ratchets up a half dozen more notches before the relentless sleuth can get to the bottom of a long-lived plot hatched by an unreconstructed cold warrior who, despite the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, remains hell-bent on equipping any breakaway regime that will take arms against the hated Russians. Another of Egleton's complex but solid espionage procedurals. Here, the mysteries are revealed with edgy ambiance (courtesy of the professional paranoia induced by downsizing democracies) in much the same way as one peels away an onion's layers to reach the pearl at the center.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-312-14313-3

Page Count: 352

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.

Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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A KILLER EDITION

An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.

Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.

Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.

An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.

Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

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