PANAMA RED

A military agent following his gut uncovers a government conspiracy in this thriller.

In this series opener, set in Manuel Noriega’s Panama, Edward’s protagonist is United States Army Special Agent Dirk Lasher. Loner Dirk is an undercover field agent collecting intelligence from low-level informants and funneling it back to analysts. One day, Dirk takes down two strangers who make the mistake of attempting to intimidate him. That’s when he learns that his informants are aware of his undercover status since U.S. agents keep rotating through the same house. Dirk also discovers that the two people he had brutalized are Drug Enforcement Administration agents coming to meet him. He searches for Army Sgt. Jack Williams, who was supposed to let him know about the DEA agents. Dirk rescues Williams, who is being held by the PDF, Noriega’s security force. Dirk also finds out that the PDF is involved with a group looking to crash the international financial market. Then the wife and daughter of Dirk’s informant Thomasito get abducted by Pablo Escobar’s Colombian thugs. Dirk and his volunteer team take part in a DEA assault to try to recover them. Despite suffering a significant loss, Dirk accomplishes his objective, taking intel to a prominent official. Edward, who has previously mostly focused on SF, wrote what he knew this time out. During his Army career, he served as the special agent in charge of the 1990 Panama Canal counterterrorism threat assessment report. That experience lends authenticity to this frenetic novel, as he brings the Panama of Noriega’s time to life. Dirk proves a second-generation soldier, raised by a grandfather who had served. But the protagonist’s doubts about the military bureaucracy shine through as he seeks a more effective way to aid the innocent. The author develops intriguing helpers for Dirk in Jack, a career desk jockey forced into the field, and Sarah Mariana, an ambitious, new Puerto Rican soldier who wants to make her mark on the world. Most of all, Edward has created an engaging hero in Dirk, bound for greater things in the series’ next entry.

Through sheer will, a lone wolf agent makes a big impact in this exciting tale.