Freveletti turbocharges tension to nonstop levels in this Covert-One thriller.
The ninth in Ludlum’s Covert-One series (The Ares Decision, 2011, etc.) again joins the perilous adventures of Lt. Col. Jon Smith of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.
Series fans will forgive a clunky first chapter wherein extraneous exposition interferes with the play-by-play of a terrorist attack on the Grand Royal Hotel at The Hague. Smith is in the Netherlands for a World Health Organization conference on Third-World infectious diseases. Coincidently, Oman Dattar is incarcerated at The Hague by the International Criminal Court. Dattar and Smith have a history. Dattar is wont to employ population “cleansing,” and once Smith extorted the warlord into allowing treatment to stem a cholera outbreak. Dattar seeks vengeance on Smith and on Great Britain and the U.S. Thus, the hotel attack was also a diversion to help engineer Dattar’s escape, with henchmen tasked specifically to kill Smith and to purloin conference bacteria and virus samples from the hotel’s safe. Action flies to the U.S., with the CIA’s Randi Russell brought into the mix because Smith found a target list on his assassin. Besides his own name and that of old friend and fellow covert operator Peter Howell, there’s a photograph of a mysterious woman. Internet hacking by Smith’s longtime friend and computer expert, Marty, discovers the woman is Rebecca Nolan, a high-wattage Wall Street money manager. Dattar wants her captured rather than dead. Every chapter ricochets with need-to-know action, especially after a bioweapon attack on Russell at her home. An analysis of the substance reveals Dattar may be developing a near-unsurvivable form of avian flu virus mated with Shewanella MR-1 bacteria, a life form that can conduct through metal, something akin to a microbial fuel cell. Good guys and bad meet in New York City. Smith finds and then loses an uncooperative Nolan, a woman with a secret that makes her a target for Dattar, in town to conduct a terrorist attack.
Freveletti turbocharges tension to nonstop levels in this Covert-One thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-53984-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security.
Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There’s little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-53109-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
