A fast-paced, riveting, medically driven tale.
A surgeon fights to recover a vaccine for a virus the American government may have created in this third installment of a thriller series.
Dr. David Aaronson, who’s wanted by various United States agencies, is hiding in Fallon, Nevada. Though a small town of only 8,000 residents, it seemingly faces an epidemic when quite a few locals die after coughing up blood. But a mysterious man has shocking information for David. The U.S. government supposedly released lethal virus “CoVid23” in Fallon with the intent of testing a vaccine. Behind this deplorable plan is Col. Jonathan Neville, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency director. He claims China weaponized CoVid23 for an imminent biological strike against the U.S., but David believes this virus is homegrown. Neville, who’s chummy with powerful sorts, including the president, soon learns that Fallon’s town surgeon is piecing together the director’s scheme. Neville has people in Nevada to keep an eye on David and, if need be, to eliminate him. As the “supervirus” attacks multiple nations, David makes a daring attempt to get the vaccine Neville is harboring before many more die. Van Anderson quickly sets an unwavering narrative momentum with concise writing and succinct chapters. The subplots are gripping; David, for example, falls for local woman Nova Featherstone, who may be infected and whose murderous, drug-trafficking father poses a serious threat. The story is plausible as well, as the author, a former heart surgeon, vividly details medical procedures and describes a U.S. that’s simultaneously battling Covid-19. While David and others are often in peril, the final act, during which he tries infiltrating a secure lab, is particularly exciting. Despite copious references to earlier installments, this engaging book will appeal to new and returning readers alike.
A fast-paced, riveting, medically driven tale. (dedication, author's notes, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9907597-6-8
Page Count: 316
Publisher: White Light Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A sometimes shocking, sometimes mocking look at the Israeli-Iranian conflict.
In the latest novel by former CIA analyst McCloskey, a Swedish Jewish dentist of Iranian origins who becomes a Mossad operative in Tehran faces death after his capture by the enemy.
How Kamran Esfahani became part of a covert unit responsible for kidnappings, arms smuggling, and assassinations in Iran is laid out in the confession he is forced to write over and over by his chief torturer, known only as the General. Protective of crucial secrets, the confession takes the form of a novel within the novel, covering Kam’s recruitment by Israeli intelligence officer Arik Glitzman and his training in Albania. “Steady dental or surgical hands, it turns out, are quite useful for picking locks and capturing crystal-clear photographs on a wide range of subminiature cameras,” Kam writes. But other skills are required to recruit an Iranian woman whose husband was killed by Mossad and to elude the Jew-targeting Qods Force. With its snarky tone and its conflicted protagonist’s California dreams, McCloskey’s novel is reminiscent of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015). Musing on Glitzman’s comments about assassination-assigned Israeli forces “killing to save lives,” Kam writes, “Why not fuck for chastity while you’re at it?” But the humor is swept aside by a horrific drone attack on a Mossad couple’s Jerusalem apartment and the severed head of a suicide-bombing Palestinian boy “rocket[ing]” through a salon window. Responding to Glitzman’s claim that the Israelis never put a target’s family in danger, his opposite number, Col. Ghorbani, says, “How about the thousands of Palestinian women and children you’ve bombed or shot or starved?” In probing the deep moral and practical complexities of this shadow war, McCloskey’s novel could not be more timely or unsettling, all humor aside.
A sometimes shocking, sometimes mocking look at the Israeli-Iranian conflict.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781324123194
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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