WHERE LOVE MEANS NOTHING

In Gimple’s thriller, an assassin joins with a military contractor to take down an association of vigilantes.

Jake Marks is a professional tennis player primed for success at the U.S. Open. He is also an assassin who operates under the moniker “The Lone Ranger.” Employed by the Millennium Society—a purported think tank that is more like a politically-motivated band of vigilantes—Jake is regularly tasked with the killings of alleged bad guys who, more often than not, just seem to interfere with potential warmongering. Such is the case with Jake’s latest target, Russell Townsend, a physicist who desires “the end of the nuclear arms race.” When Jake kills him, the reporter interviewing Townsend also gets shot, leading Jake to reevaluate his murderous moonlighting gig. The deceased reporter was the wife of Col. James Kelleher, a rough and ballsy military contractor. In an effort to suss out his wife’s killer, Kelleher winds up with the leaders of the Millennium Society, who tell him to go after the Lone Ranger. It is at about this point that the plot grows difficult to parse: The disillusioned Jake attempts to quit his assassin gig, and the main players in the Millennium Society pit Jake and Kelleher against each other, charging each with murdering the other. The situation becomes more complex when Jake manipulates Kelleher’s estranged daughter, Maggie, into training him and traveling with him to London. Once there, the two quickly fall in love. Further developments include the attempted assassination of a famous musician and the kidnapping of Maggie. Gimple’s intricately woven tale is admirably ambitious, and the detailed settings, from New York streets to London landmarks, are impressively rendered. The characters, though, fall flat. Kelleher’s brashness is one-note, and when he warns Maggie of Jake’s true identity, she requests a chance to prove that the accusation is baseless—which she almost immediately fails to do, instead choosing to bask in her naïveté.

An intriguing but overcomplicated thriller lumbered with flat characters.