An engrossing, twisty spy caper with strong relationships that enrich its central mystery.
When terrorist attacks imitate the events of a bestselling novel, a spy couple goes undercover to figure out if the book’s ghostwriter is in on the plot in Miller’s series thriller.
Caleb Rye is a teacher with overdue bills, an unsellable fantasy novel, and a baby on the way. He accepts an assignment to ghostwrite a political thriller from an anonymous outline, and he’s delighted when The Payback sells well. But just as he starts work on the follow-up, real-world terrorist incidents occur that mirror the plot of his book. Meanwhile, married couple Leo Connelly and Sasha McCandless-Connelly must go undercover at Caleb’s school and figure out if he’s connected to the attacks. They quickly discover a decades-old plot involving international conspiracies, archives, and a forbidden romance. This is the latest in a series of legal thrillers following Sasha’s adventures, but it also marks a new chapter: After years of operating in different classified departments, Sasha and Leo are finally working together in the top-secret organization called The Lighthouse. Their mutually supportive partnership provides the story’s emotional core, balancing the story’s global affairs with the comfortable mundanity of married life. Miller takes time to establish Sasha and Leo’s routine with their twins, Finn and Fiona, giving the story relatable stakes. It’s also refreshing to read a spy novel in which the central romance is loving and passionate without veering into familiar Mr. & Mrs. Smith territory. Similarly, Caleb’s relationship with his wife, Emmaline, captures the thrill and terror of new parenthood with more grace than most legal thrillers would offer. The central mystery is cohesive and concise, and Miller’s background as a litigator helps to ensure that the legal details are accurate without alienating non-lawyers. Although the book is likely best appreciated in the context of the 16 novels that have preceded it, even new readers will be instantly hooked, thanks to Miller’s expert characterization and gripping plot.
An engrossing, twisty spy caper with strong relationships that enrich its central mystery.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781961427280
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Brown Street Books
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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