Albuquerque is as dangerous as Afghanistan for two Army buddies.
Gordon Sweeney and Charlie Henry are enjoying a barbecue with police sergeant Nancy Medina and her life partner, lawyer Gina Sinclair, when all hell breaks loose at the house across the alley. Shots and screams bring the pair dashing to save Sam and Margaret Randal from a gang attempting to kidnap Sam. The housebreaking may be part of a series of recent burglaries, but this latest incident doesn’t seem to fit the pattern. So Sam, wondering if he’s been specifically targeted, hires the two former Army Rangers, who luckily have a good team running their pawn shop, to protect him and his wife until the case is solved. Charlie identifies one of the invaders as Ray Geiger, who operates a martial arts school specializing in troubled teens. Ray’s father is a former NYPD cop who left the force early under suspicious circumstances. Although Sam and Margaret can’t think of anyone who’d want to harm them, it’s clear that they have some serious enemies when Charlie and Gordon are targeted for injury or death and a sniper shoots up Sam’s place of business. It’s lucky that the dynamic duo has a good history with the Albuquerque police (Grave Consequences, 2015, etc.), because every day they get into more trouble trying to escape booby traps and what seems like an endless stream of people out to kill Charlie and kidnap Sam. Until the good guys can figure out why Sam’s on the spot, they’re all in danger.
A little mystery and a lot of mayhem keep the pot boiling in another wild tale of former military men putting their skills to good use in civilian life.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07889-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Categories: MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | THRILLER
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One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
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Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stone Barrington under siege.
Stone’s name is the 10th and last on the list that crosses his desk. But since it’s accompanied by an unsigned note that adds, “Dead, no special order, starting soon. Figure it out,” he wastes no time shoring up his defenses. And a good thing too, since his nemesis straightaway shoots three other victims and makes three clean getaways, along the way breaching the perimeter of Stone’s swanky East Side building and short-circuiting his security system. But Stone’s idea of going to ground isn’t quite the same as yours or mine. When Vanessa Baker, the baker he slept with in Treason (2020), phones him, he responds without ado to her overtures, and she’s soon ensconced in his place. He huddles with his old NYPD partner, police commissioner Dino Bacchetti, and CIA director Lance Cabot to identify his aspiring executioner. His efforts, first to shake off, then to track down the predator, lead him and his Gulfstream 500 to his estate in England, to his place in Cold Harbor, Maine, and eventually to Santa Fe. When he’s attacked by a hired killer during a shopping trip in Turnbull & Asser, he shoots the assailant, then seeks to apply pressure that will lead him to the paymaster. He even finds time to proposition Holly Barker, the secretary of state whose presidential campaign would be mortally wounded by news of any assignation with him. More people will die but not anyone you care about, and certainly not Stone, whom Dino describes, with pardonable understatement, as “the luckiest guy I know.”
Strictly for fans prepared to worry that Woods’ highflying franchise hero may actually breathe his last this time.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08322-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER
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