An entertaining thriller with plenty of intrigue and fast-paced, collaborative action.
In this novel, two criminal masterminds play a long game of retribution against their enemies— and three spies are the only ones standing in their way.
Raymond Charles Brickman III and Kathy Ann Erickson, aka Viktoriya Ratimirovna Popova, have prepared all their lives to enact revenge against those who have wronged them. Brickman, a self-proclaimed proud Southerner and Confederate, has a bone of contention with the United States, specifically against the North and those who oppressed Southerners and destroyed their fortunes following the Civil War. Erickson plans to retaliate against the Russian government, which is responsible for the death of her beloved family years ago in Afghanistan. Coincidentally, their separate plans come to fruition at the same time in March 2018. Brickman sets up the catastrophic destruction of critical U.S. weather satellites, and Erickson hacks into the direct line of communication between Russian President Vladimir Putin and American President Donald Trump, starting a chain of events that she expects will lead to an all-out nuclear war. The two governments’ secret services scramble for a response. That’s when Russian spy Dmitri Smirnov’s serendipitous visit to the U.S. proves a bonus when he meets his two friends Linda Kipling and Victor Silverstein, two scientists with the Naval Research Laboratory who happen to be CIA agents. These allies may find the only way to prevent World War III. Tag’s spy thriller offers a swiftly paced, tautly plotted series of episodes that encompass topical U.S. and Russian politics (including America’s growing number of domestic terrorists), diplomatic entanglements, and the cooperative work behind the scenes to keep peace in the world. The dynamics among Smirnov, Kipling, and Silverstein are engaging, and each character brings different specialties to the fight to save the world. The plot-driven narrative features adequate prose that’s focused on telling rather than showing. But despite this flawed approach and an overly enthusiastic use of exclamation marks (“No amount of planning or foresight can take the place of pure dumb luck!”), the tale smoothly sails to its climax. Fans of spy novels will greatly enjoy this story.
An entertaining thriller with plenty of intrigue and fast-paced, collaborative action.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66322-254-1
Page Count: 398
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.
Murder disrupts the filming of—what else?—The Word Is Murder, based on the first novel starring author Horowitz and his sometime partner, ex-copper Daniel Hawthorne.
With commendably dramatic timing, gofer Izzy Mays bursts into the middle of a pivotal shot on location at The Stade in Hastings to announce that Hawthorne’s been murdered. Of course, what she means (though Horowitz takes his time clarifying this ambiguity) is that David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, has been fatally stabbed in the neck. Suspicion falls on James Aubrey, the agent Caine had just fired; Izzy, because Caine had caused her to be fired, too, though he ended up making his exit first; Ralph Seymour, the washed-up actor who’d returned from New Zealand to play Horowitz opposite Caine, his mortal enemy; and producer Teresa de León, who’s abruptly lost an important source of funding for the project; director Cy Truman; and screenwriter Shanika Harris, because why not? After Hawthorne builds meticulous hypothetical cases against several of these suspects, provoking Teresa’s apt rejoinder, “All those questions in the script and now you’re asking them for real,” he responds to Horowitz’s theory that he may have been the intended target after all by sharing a story from his early days as a private investigator in what ends up looking like the most elaborately extended red herring in the history of detective fiction. The two plots, past and present—or, to be more precise, past and present-day-adaptation-of-a-story-from-the-less-distant-past, are eventually woven together in ways only Horowitz’s most devoted fans will celebrate.
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780063305748
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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