A competent, if unambitious, political thriller.
An FBI agent is forced to go underground after discovering a plot to blow up Washington, D.C., in Branam’s latest entry in his Wolfe Adventure series.
Thomas Wolfe is the assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, and he has knowledge of a terrorist plot. A cabal of billionaires called the Order is planning to stage a coup, the first stage of which involves detonating a nuclear bomb during the president’s State of the Union address. For some reason, Tom’s commanders have ordered him to back off the investigation, and when he presents his findings to the upper echelons of the government intelligence hierarchy, he’s met with ridicule. They suspend him from the bureau, and soon, federal marshals try to arrest him “for suspicion of murder, espionage, acts of terrorism, and sedition.”He avoids being taken into custody, but now he’s a high-profile fugitive pursued by all the powers of the government: “The Order has created a shadow state,” his former boss warns him, “by systematically placing people in key positions throughout the government—some in very high positions.” To prevent the impending attack, Tom needs to find and free his brother, John Wolfe, a master spy who’s being held at a blackout facility for his own attempts to bring down the Order. That will be no easy feat, especially with a Navy SEAL–turned-assassin hot on his trail. Branam’s novel is fast-paced and action-packed from the first scene. However, nearly every element—the descriptions, the characters, the explanations—rises merely to the level of functional and not one inch higher. This simplicity sometimes leads to rather cartoonish moments, as when U.S. Sen. Fetterson, the Order’s leader, lovingly caresses the nuclear bomb’s control box and thinks, “Soon I will be president for life!” There are numerous allusions to previous books in the Wolfe series, but readers will be able to make their way through this one fine without having read the others. Those who enjoy escapist fare, centered on a James Bond–style villain blowing up a city with a nuke, will largely find themselves content with this latest offering.
A competent, if unambitious, political thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2261-9
Page Count: 380
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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