Action-filled revenge fantasy for desk-bound Terminators.
In the latest ground-war thriller from Coyle (They Are Soldiers, 2004, etc.) and Tillman (Dauntless, 1992, etc.), al-Qaeda sends disease-injected human time bombs to the Great Satan, so the Great Satan sends a private commando force to Pakistan to put a stop to the nonsense.
Who you gonna call when political correctness means you can’t use profiling or when your own army is stretched to the limit in Iraq? Strategic Solutions, Inc. Located conveniently in the Northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. and staffed with the baddest, toughest, smartest, most disaffected ex-servicemen available in the U.S., SSI and its Naval Academy ex-admiral founder Mike Derringer stand ready to take on those odd jobs efficiently and on time. Time being of the essence when evil veterinarian-turned-viral-assassin Dr. Ali is busily sending out already fatally ill jihadists loaded with the deadly Marburg filovirus, hoping to wipe out as many Crusaders and other infidels as possible. Derringer assembles a crack testosteronic team to send to Pakistan to identify, hunt down and eradicate Dr. Ali and his henchmen. The team’s special secret weapon is beautiful, rich, rock-climbing Dr. Carolyn Padgett-Smith, a British specialist in filovirus diseases. But there are no secrets in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda loyalists outnumber the good guys. Dr. Ali quickly gets wind of the strike force, and he’s especially enraged to know that a woman is included in the force. A woman with a gun! The province of Baluchistan starts to run with blood as the SSI specialists and Dr. Ali’s troops shoot, stab, whip and otherwise torture each other in their frequent encounters. And while the blood is spilling, the sinister veterinarian purchases two boys from an impoverished family and sets them on a fatal course.
Action-filled revenge fantasy for desk-bound Terminators.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2007
ISBN: 0-765-31371-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory,...
The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Breaking Point, 2013, etc.) works the area around Yellowstone National Park in this stand-alone about a long-haul trucker with sex and murder on his mind.
The Lizard King, as he calls himself, normally targets lot lizards—prostitutes who work the parking lots adjacent to the rest stops that dot interstate highways. But he’s more than happy to move up to a higher class of victim when he runs across the Sullivan sisters. Danielle, 18, and Gracie, 16, are supposed to be driving from their mother’s home in Denver to their father’s in Omaha, but Danielle has had the bright idea of heading instead to Bozeman, Mont., to visit her boyfriend, Justin Hoyt. Far from home, their whereabouts known to only a few people, the girls are the perfect victims even before they nearly collide with the Lizard King’s rig and Danielle flips him off. Hours later, very shortly after he’s caught up with them in the depths of Yellowstone and done his best to eradicate every trace of his abduction, Justin, worried that Danielle refused his last phone call, tells his father that something bad has happened. Cody Hoyt, an investigator for the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department, is already having a tough day: At the insistence of his crooked boss, Sheriff Tubman, his longtime student and new partner, Cassandra Dewell, has just caught him planting evidence in an unrelated murder, and he’s been suspended from his job. If he’s lost his badge, though, Cody’s got plenty of time on his hands to drive downstate and meet with State Trooper Rick Legerski, the ex-husband of his dispatcher’s sister, to talk about what to do next. And so the countdown begins.
Box handles this foolproof formula with complete assurance, keeping the pot at a full boil until the perfunctory, anticlimactic and unsatisfactory ending.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-58320-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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