A colorful, if training-heavy, covert-ops tale with an appealing protagonist.
Decades after finding a top-secret courier pouch, 68-year-old J. Paul Kingston trains to join a clandestine mission to Peru to retrieve a spy plane in Cole’s thriller series starter.
In 1972, on his last day working at the Hughes Aircraft Company in Culver City, California, Kingston is thrilled that “the guards and their leadership trusted me enough to let me see Howard Hughes’ inner sanctum.” Kingston has been working the night shift full time at Hughes and “as an emergency cryptographer for the U.S. Air Force at the same facility on the weekends” while also attending business school. He’s just earned his MBA, so he’s leaving all these activities behind to take a job as a business analyst and spend more time with his wife and kids. To celebrate his last day, the Hughes guards bring Kingston to the company founder’s private area, which includes a racing plane. Kingston finds a pouch stamped “TOP SECRET TANGO” inside the craft and makes a decision to bring it home with him for safekeeping. Decades later, the 68-year-old Kingston, a recent widower, removes the pouch from his home safe. He reaches out to the contact listed in its materials, which leads to meetings with Washington, D.C.–area intelligence agencies. Soon, he’s on a mission to retrieve a B-17 spy plane, now in Peru and being used for “nefarious activities, such as drug trafficking,” by Russian criminals. Kingston undergoes weeks of rigorous testing and training before the team goes undercover as tourists in Peru. Kingston is tasked with drawing the “bad actors” away from the B-17 but ends up being tortured by a Russian, bit by an anaconda, and more.
Cole, a partner at a wealth-management firm who also has an intelligence background, appears to have had a lot of fun crafting this return-to-duty fantasy, which features an aging baby boomer hero and splashy appearances by a parrot and “a huge harpy eagle, with legs as thick as a person’s arms.” The novel has an intriguing beginning, linking the always-fascinating Howard Hughes to espionage activities, although the recluse tycoon then fades from the plot. The novel’s detailing of the various spy planes that could, like this book’s B-17, be overtaken by rogue players lends a sense of real-life urgency to this narrative. The book’s training section, which has the feel of insider knowledge, takes up a large part of the narrative; indeed, the team doesn’t advance from training to touchdown in Peru until more than midway through the novel. However, this mission prep, while a bit overextended, has its pleasurable elements, as when Kingston and his team stumble upon real FBI and Russian spy doings during what was supposed to be just a simple “weekend field exercise.” Some of the plot points are a bit puzzling, such as the reason why Kingston didn’t contact anyone about the pouch for so long. Overall, though, this book is an entertaining, wild ride that ably sets up a potential series recounting Kingston’s further adventures.
A colorful, if training-heavy, covert-ops tale with an appealing protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2022
ISBN: 9798370275395
Page Count: 403
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.
Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.
The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247327-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.
Simon Riske drives again but not as fast.
Plying his ostensible trade as a restorer of sexy European sports cars, freelance spy Riske is in California shepherding a classic Ferrari through an auction. The car sells for $102 million, a record, and everyone is happy. Well, not everyone. The restoration did not include a critical piece of original equipment, for the very good reason that the piece was lost. But suddenly the buyer, Sylvie Bettencourt, receives news that the piece does exist, and she demands Riske find it and complete the restoration. Of course it's not that easy. Riske and his team had already scoured the mechanical world for the piece, and though they resume the search, there are no new leads. As a sidebar to the search for the gearbox, Riske researched Bettencourt and learned she was a major player in the process of laundering the fortunes of Russian oligarchs. Then Bettencourt blackmails Riske into helping her steal back some money she claims her superior has taken, and Riske becomes a mole spying on Bettencourt. In a further plot development, Carl Bildt, a Danish banker who managed the accounts Bettencourt services, is murdered, and his daughter Anna undertakes to find the killers. With Riske unraveling the oligarchical knot from the Bettencourt end and Anna pursuing her father's killers, the extent of the laundering scheme is revealed. But these are Russian fortunes, and there is the obligatory presence of hulking violent enforcers, callous ultrarich misogynists, and even a teasing pirouette by Novichok, a nerve agent. Riske is a raffish rogue, ready to ride or preferably drive a Ferrari in whatever quixotic enterprise presents itself, but in this adventure he is somewhat subdued—still irresistible, still a seasoned street fighter, but somehow less visceral. Intricately plotted, the novel reaches a climax that is somewhat surprising yet disappointing, as if the magician had pulled a mouse from his hat.
Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-45609-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
