A riveting spy tale that delivers a CIA hero fighting Islamic terrorists.
A debut thriller features a CIA officer who must stop a terrorist attack.
In Paris, a van carrying two “briefcase-size parcels” to the U.S. Embassy is ambushed, sparking an international crisis. The driver of the van is beheaded in the assault, suggesting merciless terrorists are involved. Enter American Tom Rivers, a CIA officer who formerly worked in Army intelligence. With his Luminox watch and ability to take a beating in the line of duty, he’s tasked with figuring out what’s going on. He meets a “smart, beautiful and dangerous” woman named Raz Jackson in Paris. Raz is a former CIA agent who uses her old connections to provide upscale hotels and businesses with security systems. Raz and Rivers hit it off, but there’s still plenty of perilous work to be done. It soon becomes apparent that terrorists are planning an attack in the United States. A key conspirator is an American-born woman and former FBI/CIA asset called Susan Owens, who took classes in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky and now goes by the name Umm al-Nasr. In college, she befriended many people from the Middle East and wound up keeping an eye on them for the FBI. But she became radicalized while spending time in Damascus. She eventually married a top-ranking Islamic State terrorist known as Omar the Chechen, who was subsequently killed in a 2017 airstrike. Umm now has vengeance on her mind. She has no qualms about training girls to become suicide bombers and working with an unsavory Chechen named Dogu Matsoy, who aims to be the next Osama bin Laden. It will take concerted efforts by people like Rivers and Raz to prevent extensive bloodshed.
Naturally, Rivers encounters trouble wherever he goes in McQuay’s energetic tale. The dangers include all sorts of violent attacks, ranging from an attempted garroting in Odessa to a shootout in Tampa. The hero is often up against incredible odds, as when he’s wounded, alone in the Syrian desert, actively pursued by terrorists and “exposed in the open with a short-range AK and a close-contact handgun.” Such moments are undeniably tense. Readers will speculate how Rivers will manage to live to fight another day. What often keeps him alive is his training or what seems to be just plain good luck. Yet the bracing action can be broken up by tedious meetings and bureaucratic hurdles. While the fact that Rivers is not a rampaging gunslinger who can act with impunity whenever he wants lends the story believability, his interactions with his superiors are not always entertaining. Sometimes previous events wind up as bullet points for a report. Take, for example, part of the summation of the crime that begins the book: “Video shows one of the thieves decapitated the courier and other thieves appear agitated by the event.” Readers already know this information, and encountering it again doesn’t add much to the tale. Still, the story offers plenty of gripping scenes. Umm is not the typical Islamic terrorist found in spy thrillers, and she’s highly motivated to boot. Considering her ferocity, readers will wonder what it will take to finally stop her.
A riveting spy tale that delivers a CIA hero fighting Islamic terrorists.Pub Date: April 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798218374808
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Hot Type Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
