ECHOES OF FORTUNE

In Leng’s third thriller in a series, a Civil War–era conspiracy threatens to topple the United States, more than 150 years after the war’s conclusion.

In the winter of 1864, President Jefferson Davis makes plans for the looming defeat of his Confederate States of America. Warned by a mysterious visitor that the CSA’s “treasury could fund armies that die in months or endeavors that outlive you,” he arranges for shipments of weapons and gold to be stored in secret locations, known only to a select few, to be used in future centuries to help restore the CSA to its former glory. In 2017, historian Jack Sullivan begins to fear that the Knights of the Golden Circle, the organization that the CSA built to advance these aims, is still active. Approached by a man named Zeke Cater, who claims to be in possession of a code leading to “small caches of Confederate coins,” Sullivan soon finds himself attempting to recover the Phantom, an “advanced stealth prototype,” after that boat is stolen by a shadowy group that seems to have the backing of people working within the U.S. government. Meanwhile, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Evelyn Monroe, a populist Democrat whose antigovernment rhetoric has recently won national acclaim, seeks to engineer a crisis, and Sullivan and his band of comrades (among them his fiancée, Emma) seek to prevent it. To make matters worse, the nation is shaken by a series of “coordinated cyberattacks” resulting in deadly air crashes, and a boat bearing an electromagnetic-pulse device threatens to erase all the technological advances of the past 150 years.

Sullivan is one part Jack Reacher, one part Indiana Jones (he’s even nicknamed “Indy” by his colleagues). He returns in an impressively entertaining action thriller from an author who delights in employing all the pleasing tropes of the genre; at one point, for instance, a captured suspect bites down on a cyanide capsule to cut short an interrogation. Long-buried boxes are opened to reveal parchment bearing clues written in rhyming poetry. Late in the book, a woman says, “Please tell me they didn’t bring an entire SEAL team to our wedding,” to which her fiancé replies, “Not the whole team.” Although the novel feels slightly overlong, it never falters in its momentum, and the tone is a deft balance of levity and suspense. Leng knows that a story of this nature mustn’t take itself too seriously, so he provides plenty of quips and winkingly deploys cliches. Scenes of cabinet officials discussing previously depicted events feel redundant, and there’s an excess of characters’ voices “cracking” in anguish or terror. Yet Jack’s adventures are lent thematic unity by the timely, if shopworn, reminder that governments can manufacture or exploit crises to expand their power, which can lead to tyranny, if left unchecked: “Power centralizes during emergencies,” says Jack. “But it never decentralizes when the emergency ends.” Leng anchors the book in an understanding that civic freedoms are hard won but easily lost.

An enjoyably tense thriller that grapples with the notion that many people are willing to surrender freedom for security.