A compelling thriller that combines a healthy mix of real-world action and nefarious online activities.
Bach explores politics and technology in this international thriller.
The year is 2023; Phoenix Humboldt is attending Aragon High School in a suburb of San Francisco. When shots are fired from the school roof, Phoenix springs into action and attempts to protect other students with her body, getting hit in the process. It turns out the shooting was the work of a professional, who used “high-end military-grade equipment.” The shooter also managed to escape the scene without any problem. But why was Phoenix the only one who was shot? Phoenix’s father, Johnny Humboldt, is a divorced man who happens to be dating a U.S. senator and decorated Air Force veteran named Tamika Smith. Tamika received some perplexing emails on the morning of the shooting—threats from Air Force Capt. Derrick Tomlinson. This would be troubling enough, as Tomlinson sexually assaulted Tamika while they were in the military together, but Tomlinson is also supposed to be dead. Soon enough, Johnny is kidnapped. It becomes clear that a wealthy man named Lee Bowen is behind these events, but what exactly does he want? When Bowen anticipates that the “chaos he was creating would be epic,” the narrative does not disappoint. Bach’s eventful yarn takes readers from an “an autonomous firing nest” in an arboretum to trouble in the Netherlands to technological machinations that send the narrative “into cryptoland and across the dark web”; the school shooting is merely the beginning. While the reader is kept engaged and eager to see where all of this will lead, following the characters through their investigations is not always thrilling. Readers know who the bad guys are—it takes quite some time for the characters to catch up. Nevertheless, there is great excitement to be had in finding out if the malefactors can be stopped.
A compelling thriller that combines a healthy mix of real-world action and nefarious online activities.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798886454000
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The youngest Ryans will please fans of the genre.
The U.S. president’s son lands in the middle of a West African coup in this latest Clancy thriller.
Kyle Ryan is part of a three-man Defense Intelligence Agency team covertly installing cyber communications in Luanda, Angola. His two colleagues are murdered, and he must “run or die.” The Naval Academy grad isn’t a warrior like his older brother, Jack Junior, who sits out this story. President Ryan doesn’t even know his son is in Africa, let alone how much trouble Kyle is in. Then the unit of Navy Lieutenant Commander (and big sister) Katie Ryan gets the call to rescue Americans as an Angolan man, Victor Baptista, tries to overthrow the current democratically elected president. “Fear was the most powerful weapon in Angola,” and Baptista inspires a great deal of it. Too bad for him that the Ryan family never knuckles under to fear. Captured, hooded, and in danger of execution, Kyle has a steadfast bravery that reflects the Ryan DNA. Baptista doesn’t realize at first that among his American prisoners is President Ryan’s son. Oops. Well, with U.S. warships fast approaching Angolan shores, he thinks he can strike a deal with the “fickle and feckless Americans.” A more tuned-in advisor lets Baptista know that President Ryan will never negotiate, even with his son’s life on the line. So this isn’t just the United States the terrorist is dealing with, but the Ryan family. Katie and Kyle use their intelligence, not brute force, while a pissed-off papa bear wields his awesome executive power from the White House. Meanwhile, Baptista’s murderous cruelty leaves his aides and lackeys trembling in fear. This novel looks like Katie and Kyle’s debuts as central characters, and they are Ryans through and through—they run toward trouble, and they have no faults worth mentioning. Parental and filial loyalty mix well with the action and add interest to an otherwise standard (but good) Clancy thriller.
The youngest Ryans will please fans of the genre.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718063
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
All the narrative propulsion of escapist fiction without the escape.
Paced like a prophetic thriller, this novel suggests that "pandemic" is a continuing series.
Shepard has frequently employed research as a foundation for his literary creations, but never before in such pulse-racing fashion. He's set this narrative in the near future, when the threat of Covid-19 has passed but provides a cautionary lesson. And what have we learned from it? Not enough, apparently, as an outbreak within an extremely isolated settlement of Greenland begins its viral spread around the globe. Readers will find themselves in territory that feels eerily familiar—panic, politics, uncertainty, fear, a resistance to quarantine, an overload of media noise—as Shepard's command of tone never lets the tension ease. Eleven-year-old Aleq somehow survives the initial outbreak, which takes the lives of everyone close to him, and he may provide the key to some resolution if anyone can get him to talk. The novel follows the boy and the pandemic from Greenland to a laboratory facility in Montana as, in little more than a month, the virus or whatever it is, spread by touching, traveling, breathing, has infected some 14 million around the world. Jeannine Dziri and Danice Torrone, a pair of young researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who have dubbed themselves the “Junior Certain Death Squad,” find themselves on the front lines as they attempt to balance personal relationships (which occasionally read like plot contrivances) with all-consuming professional responsibilities. Meanwhile, the pandemic proceeds relentlessly. “APOCALYPSE II?” screams a Fox graphic amid “the social media cacophony,” as mass hysteria shows how human nature can take a horrible situation and make it so much worse. And though the novel builds to a sort of redemption, it suggests that there will be no resolution to the current pandemic beyond nervous anticipation toward the ones to come. Channeling Pasteur, Shepard promises—or threatens—“It will always be the microbes that have the last word.”
All the narrative propulsion of escapist fiction without the escape.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-65545-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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