THE FIRST CASUALTY

Soldier of fortune Jason Peters (Hot Ice, 2013, etc.) is back in the saddle to neutralize the terrorists who’ve armed themselves with a laser beam that can play havoc with airliners around the world.

Not many people know this, but shortly before his death in 1943, Nikola Tesla, who discovered alternating currents and built the first Tesla coil, was so desperate to get his nephew out of military service that he offered the Nazis his design for a death ray in return for a deferment. It’s more commonly known that the Reich, unequipped with a death ray, went on to lose the war, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of Tesla’s rumored invention since then. Until now, that is, when the only explanation investigators can devise for the crash of an Air France flight is that it disintegrated in midair. Clearly, nefarious Middle Eastern types shot it down with a modern-day version of the death ray, and clearly, it’s a job for Jason Peters. Even though he says he’d rather be painting at his home in the Channel Islands and he knows his pacifist girlfriend, Maria Bergenghetti, would disapprove, Jason’s been a sucker for anti-terrorist jobs ever since he was widowed by 9/11; when Momma, the Haitian-born owner of Narcom, the freelance group of operatives tasked with saving the world annually, offers him $1 million to fix the problem, he sets out to recruit his team. Many pages and many thrill-free scenic interludes later, he’s gathered together Emphani, a veteran of the Foreign Legion; munitions expert Viktor Karavich; and Native American James Whitefoot Andrews, who’s retired from the U.S. Navy. Readers will just have to guess whether this crack team, beset by remarkably few obstacles, actually succeeds in its mission against the nondescript villains.

Generic and toothless.