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
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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