Action junkies will love this one.
The eighth danger-dripping crime thriller featuring Peter Ash.
One bitterly cold Wisconsin winter, Marine combat vet Peter Ash and his tight friend Lewis pay a visit to Teddy “Upstate” Wilson, a one-eyed ex-con, only to find him shivering in the snow while his cabin burns to the ground. Attackers have shot his dogs and stolen his notebooks, which are key to the story. As part of his therapy after having been shot in the head, Teddy has been writing down everything he can remember, from bowel movements to sex with his speech pathologist to the many crimes he’s committed—including dates, locations, and the names of everyone involved. Those latter details could get a lot of folks, Lewis included, offed or imprisoned. Series fans already know that Lewis occasionally heads an elusive group that robs and often kills upper-level bad guys. Said group is an underworld legend often called the Ghost Killers, and even law enforcement is unsure whether the group is more than a myth. Lewis has a strong moral code: “You only go after people the law can’t get,” and you never shoot anybody who has his hands up. Teddy is a bit simple, due in part to his brain injury. Before his attack, Teddy had even stopped slapping mosquitoes, but his character arc takes him far from that gentle self. Peter and Lewis, on the other hand, don’t change dramatically from story to story. Both have strong loyalty to family and to each other and are brave, smart, and deadly in a fight. Here the mortal enemy is an ex-CIA dude named Jay Streyling, a stereotypical killer lacking in redeeming qualities. Above him is a fearsome boss whose personal grief fuels an enduring over-the-top rage. On the good-guy side of the ledger, Peter and Lewis have June and Dinah, respectively, in their lives. They’re strong, take-no-crap women determined that their men—their families—stay alive. For sheer entertainment value, though, there’s no beating Teddy Wilson. All he wants is his set of notebooks and permission to fire tranquilizer darts. Oh, and maybe to hang someone by his ankles outside a 23rd-floor window.
Action junkies will love this one.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593540558
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.
The Oregon crew takes on a villain who bears a long-festering grudge.
In 1945, a captured American soldier unwillingly took part in a ghastly experiment. In the current day, a malign force has built on that research and plans to wreak unholy vengeance on Guam and, ultimately, on the United States. A mysterious, much-feared man called the Vendor, an arms purveyor whose increasingly dangerous weapons have just slaughtered soldiers in Niger, is testing his killing craft in the Indian Ocean. The Vendor’s reach extends as far as Kosovo and the Celebes Sea off the Philippines, where North Koreans try out some of his handiwork. Luckily, a modest-looking cargo ship plies the seas. It’s the Oregon, with all the internal wizardry one might wish for. It has a Cray computer, Cordon Bleu–trained chefs, and plenty of amenities to keep a top-notch crew dedicated. The seawater-powered ship can even change its outward appearance to disguise itself as the lowliest third-world rust bucket. In charge of this marvel is Juan Cabrillo, the protagonist. The crew of the Oregon are independent contractors and undertake an urgent mission from the CIA to investigate arms trafficking by the Taliban. That leads to an inevitable collision with the Vendor, whose tentacles reach far and wide. This might spell the end for Cabrillo because the Vendor “had proven himself unequaled in unarmed combat.” The Oregon Files series is always fun, and this episode is no exception. Cabrillo is a terrific leader in top physical shape, but he and the ship itself are tested to their limits. Of course, some of Oregon’s features beggar belief, but never you mind. They fit in well with the now-and-then over-the-top writing: “A giant piece of red-hot aluminum sliced through Juan’s fragile canopy like a drunken samurai’s katana through a rice-paper wall.” It’s hard to read a simile like that and not stop and smile. And in the same action sequence, the hero hits an object “like a speeding hockey forward cross-checking a parked Zamboni.” Ouch. It all “hurt like the dickens,” which is about as salty as the language gets.
Exciting adventure that’s worthy of the Cussler name.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593719244
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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