BLIND EYES

A Sydney restaurant murder, a submarine battle in the South China Sea, and an assassination attempt on a U.S. vice president set the international stage for the third book in Jacuzzi’s thriller series.

When Lachlan Doyle, a restaurant owner in Sydney, is gunned down after hours (“The back of his head shattered in a fog of blood, and Doyle’s body collapsed, overturning a table and smashing dishes”), the crime at first seems a local concern. But the killers’ true targets—two mysterious sealed boxes—link the scene to a sprawling international conspiracy. Soon, the action pivots from Australia to San Francisco, where Canadian intelligence operative Dalton Drake, a former CSIS agent turned private contractor, is pulled into a covert dinner meeting with U.S. Vice President Sally Garrison. She reveals a chilling pattern of coordinated strikes on Western military assets: “The only dots we’ve connected between these incidents is that the intel would have been only shared through Five Eyes...That’s a leak in a very big bucket.” From there, the story moves at a breakneck pace. In one standout sequence, an Australian nuclear submarine faces down a Chinese destroyer: “Conn, sonar. Torpedo in the water! Closing at thirty knots. Impact at…two minutes, fifteen seconds.” The prose’s sense of immediacy and technical precision recalls the work of Tom Clancy, while quieter moments—such as Drake’s easy banter with his wife, Abby—lend a touch of warmth (“Sally never makes social calls just to say hi,” Abby observes. “It sounds like something’s up, and she needs help”). Though character depth sometimes takes a back seat to exposition, the book thrives on its global sweep, convincing military detail, and nonstop momentum. Drake, aided by his battle-tested wife and determined son, proves to be a sturdy anchor in a world where information is the deadliest weapon.

A sprawling, cinematic spy thriller where family loyalty and global politics collide in explosive fashion.