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THE BOMB SQUAD

A gripping page-turner with an improbable plot involving wartime espionage.

This World War I historical novel pivots between New York City and Germany as a police detective plays cat and mouse with a sinister physician.

The Army’s munitions storage facility on Black Tom Island has been blown up. Germans are suspected, and New York Police Department Detective Max Rothman is ordered to put together a bomb squad to get to the bottom of the incident and conduct espionage for as long as needed. He assembles the squad using Jung’s archetypes as a guide. This crack team goes up against the German spies’ machinations. In a subplot, the philandering Dr. Harold Schwartz, a secret German sympathizer and the head of the Public Health Service on Ellis Island, has gotten nurse Caitlin Ryan pregnant and must deal with that. Meanwhile, Rothman, a widower, falls in love with Maria Richter in a whirlwind courtship. Eventually—after many plot twists—Rothman and Maria decamp for Germany to find the son she had been forced to give up. There, they intersect with Schwartz, who plans to alert the Kaiser to the crown prince’s perfidy and thus prevent a coup. Schwartz winds up in cahoots with Maria’s son’s father, Stefan Zeller. In a very uneasy arrangement, all four sail back to New York on a fishing boat. The fun lies in seeing what will happen next. In this riveting tale, Gordon is a busy plotmeister. The chapters are short and punchy, and circumstances—and allegiances—change with dizzying speed. But those upheavals are sometimes a problem. Even fiction of this kind has to be in accord with life as readers know it. So, for example, when Schwartz, who has ordered the pregnant Caitlin killed, finds himself suddenly in love with her, most readers’ jaws will drop. Later in the story, a character’s remark, “A novel of fiction could not have dreamed this up,” will speak for many in the audience. Some of the scenes are effective as set pieces, but more than once readers will feel their credulity imposed upon.

A gripping page-turner with an improbable plot involving wartime espionage.

Pub Date: April 6, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-73266-777-8

Page Count: 411

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020

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ENEMY AT THE GATES

A serviceable thriller with plenty of satisfying action.

Mitch Rapp protects the world’s richest man and faces down a psychopath in his 20th adventure.

The CIA asks Rapp to protect Nicholas Ward, the first trillionaire ever, who has big plans for improving the planet. In the coming decades, Ward’s technologies will help make Saudi oil worthless. And with Dr. David Chism, he hopes to transform health care worldwide. In a lab in Uganda, Chism is working on creating a single vaccine that could wipe out the entire coronavirus category: no Covid-19, no SARS, no colds. These damn do-gooders are unquestionably an existential threat to the general world order, and the Saudis want them gone. Ruthless U.S. President Anthony Cook is down with that. “The human race can’t absorb that many fundamental changes all at once,” he opines. So the Saudis, with secret encouragement from Cook, hire the crazed warlord Gideon Auma, aka God’s representative on Earth, to neutralize David Chism and stop the research. “Bullets can’t harm me,” Auma brags, and his followers believe him. Soon Chism’s research facility in Uganda is a pile of ashes, and Auma even sees a chance to kidnap Ward, who’d funded the lab. But Ward didn’t make a trillion dollars by just giving up when things turn ugly. President Cook is angry that Rapp is interfering, saving lives and stuff. Indeed, the first lady calls Rapp “the guy every man wants to be.” He lives in South Africa these days, but his loyalty to his homeland is steadfast. When a Saudi considers torturing the hero, he asks, “Do you know your weakness, Mitch?…It’s your unwavering belief in America.” That’s wrong, of course, because Rapp has no obvious weaknesses. Even so, he and his protectees have many powerful and capable enemies. He’s not the edgiest protagonist ever, but he’s hard to kill and easy to root for.

A serviceable thriller with plenty of satisfying action.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-9821-6488-1

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria

Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021

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THE CHAOS KIND

Another high-fatality, high-spirited revenge fantasy in which most of the casualties don’t even have names.

The world keeps supplying Eisler’s franchise heroes with real-life prototypes of serial child rapists.

Wealthy financier/predator Andrew Schrader was caught seven years ago importing young girls for sex to his South Carolina compound on an industrial scale. But his success in capturing so many high-level government types on video disporting themselves on the premises allowed him to grab a plea bargain to a single misdemeanor, with no jail time. Now that he’s moved to a Washington island and is back to his old tricks, assistant U.S. Attorney Alondra Diaz intends to drag him over the coals. She has the unstinting support of Seattle PD Detective Livia Lone, who has excellent reasons for going after men who prey on underage victims, and the logistical assistance of retired assassin John Rain, nonretired assassin Marvin Manus, the CIA’s Tom Kanezaki, and his helpers, tech whiz Maya and sniper Dox. It’s a formidable lineup, and it needs to be, because the same insiders who kept Schrader out of jail to save their own faces last time are even more firmly ensconced in the seats of power. U.S. Attorney General Uriah Hobbs, Director of National Intelligence Pierce Devereaux, and CIA director Lisa Rispel can command endless squads of tech-busters and hit men to keep Schrader from talking or activating the dead man’s switch that would release all those compromising videos posthumously. The heroes with the white hats would seem to be hopelessly outgunned and outspent—unless the forces arrayed against them should turn on each other.

Another high-fatality, high-spirited revenge fantasy in which most of the casualties don’t even have names.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5420-0561-6

Page Count: 445

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

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