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Action & Adventure

Review

The Chaos Agent

by Jeff Ayers

Cort Gentry, the Gray Man; and his girlfriend, Zoya Zakharova, have assumed new identities while trying to live off the grid for a few months. But they can only hide for so long. A colleague of Zoya’s arrives in the Central American town where Cort and Zoya felt safe and asks her help in rescuing a Russian scientist who is one of several engineers and computer experts with targets on their backs. Shortly after the meeting, Cort and Zoya must flee to avoid the weaponized drones and army of killers sent to take them out. One of those soldiers has a past with Cort and a reputation of being as good an assassin as Cort was in his prime. The mayhem grows in intensity as the truth unveils itself; a mystery controller named Cyrus calls all the shots and does not care about any collateral damage. Greaney combines the best of special-ops novels with a dash of James Bond, and though the page length is significant, the story never bores or lags. The Chaos Agent is another winner, and whether you are a fan or new to the Gray Man, this is a blast (no pun intended).

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Review

The Last True Templar

by Jeff Ayers

The brother/sister team of Boyd and Beth Morrison delivers a stellar sequel to The Lawless Land. Gerard Fox and Lady Willa are adventuring together in 1351 Italy, hoping to overcome their problematic societal pasts to marry. They stumble upon an ambush and help an older woman, Luciana, escape the attack. That act of kindness plunges them into a decade-old search for the location of the Templar treasure. It doesn’t help that Luciana’s greedy husband wants her dead and the treasure for himself. To succeed in their quest, Gerard and Willa must overcome betrayal, villainy, and deception while keeping the truth of their heritage secret. The Middle Ages comes to glorious life mixed with a plot from a Clive Cussler novel. The Last True Templar is adventure at its finest, and the pacing never slows down for a second. The story reads like the authors somehow have a time machine and are merely transcribing actual events. Readers will be anxious for the next book in the series, and hopefully a big-screen adaptation is not far behind.

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Review

Starter Villain

by Jeff Ayers

Charlie’s life is nothing special. He makes a pittance taking occasional substitute-teaching gigs and lives with his two cats in his dad’s house, to the detriment of his other siblings. When his uncle passes away, his will stipulates that Charlie oversees the funeral, and then will receive his inheritance. The only people who show up at the service are his uncle’s enemies, and they all go out of their way to ensure the body inside the coffin is dead. After the service, Charlie learns that his inheritance is a lair built inside a dormant volcano, and his uncle was a supervillain. With Charlie becoming the new head of his uncle’s business practices, he will need a crash course on being ruthless and bloodthirsty if he can stay alive long enough. James Bond villainy meets Despicable Me in this hilarious and intense journey into the other side of the battle between good and evil, featuring mostly shady characters mixed with a team that is unlike any seen anywhere before in a thriller. Starter Villain is a blast. Fans of Scalzi will consider it one of his best, and thriller fans who want humor and a different perspective into the world of criminals will treasure it.

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Review

Dead of Winter

by Brian Kenney

Have we been holding back on the raw carnage? If so, this book will more than make up for that. It’s winter, and Christa, our narrator, and her boyfriend, Kiernan, join a tour group of eight headed to a splendid lodge in the Rocky Mountains. But en route the weather turns nasty, a huge pine tree blocks their road, and they are forced to seek shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin as the snow piles up. Alarm bells ringing yet? The plot is squarely in the tradition of locked-room mysteries, more often locked mansions or islands these days, and we can expect our eight participants to slowly get bumped off thanks to poison, asphyxiation, or other genteel means. Well, that’s half correct. For most of the novel, the characters are locked in, thanks to the storm, unable to stray much beyond the cabin. But death in this novel is anything but genteel. In fact, it’s downright terrifying. But even more disturbing is Christa’s plight; obsessively assessing her peers to determine whom, if anyone, she can trust. Coates is also a horror author, and there’s a good dollop of that genre woven through this novel of high suspense. Keep a cat or two on your lap when reading this one.

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Review

The Lost Pope

by Brian Kenney

A wonderfully constructed thriller with several narratives, ranging from the 1st century to the present, that eventually come together in the most satisfying of ways. At the outset we have a newly elected pope who has created havoc within the Church with his appointment of a nun, Elisabetta Celestino, as his secretary of state. At the same time, a strip of ancient papyrus that comes from the long-lost Gospel of Mary Magdalene is discovered in a Cairo museum; just a snippet, it still manages to contain shocking information about the role of women in the early Church. It’s stolen and sold to a powerful, conservative U.S. billionaire—and collector of early Christian writings—who wants nothing more than to suppress the content. Alternating with the present-day narratives is the story of Mary Magdalene herself as we follow her from Jerusalem to Egypt to Ancient Rome. At the book’s center is Harvard Divinity School professor Cal Donovan, the protagonist of several of Cooper’s novels, the lynch pin who connects all the narratives. Often thrillers with historical backgrounds like this get weighed down with too much information and overly elaborate plots. But readers will move through this book like a hot knife through butter. For fans of Dan Brown and Steve Berry.

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Review

The Handler

by Henrietta Thornton

Meredith Morris-Dale used to work with her husband, John. Now they’re divorced and moving on, their daughter grown and out on her own and John retired and pursing his passion as an artist. Meredith’s job needs John for one last gig, though. That wouldn’t be too unusual except that the task is for him to re-up in the CIA and re-establish contact with a scientist who’s sabotaging Iran’s effort to build a nuclear bomb. John was suspended from “the company” for an operation that went wrong, the traumatic details of which are slowly revealed; he also doesn’t want back in, but Cerberus, as the Iranian scientist is known to the CIA, won’t deal with anyone else. Soon John’s on a perilous journey to find Cerberus, a journey on which he’s pursued by other global bad guys who are using him to pin down details of the international spy network and move up in the superpower ranks. From the opening, this is like the best kind of action movie—fast moving, smart subplots, hair-raising escapes from death. Adding to the action is John’s decency toward the good people he meets and ruthlessness with all the rest. If you’ve ever wondered what a much scruffier James Bond would be like, this is the book for you.

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Review

Self-Portrait with Nothing

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s strange and then there’s this bizarre-in-the-best-way, thought-provoking debut. It opens with a missing-person case. The subject is artist Ula Frost, who’s known for A) being reclusive and B) painting portraits that allow another version of the subject to appear from another world. At least, that’s the rumor; there have long been investigations of whether the phenomenon is real, and stories of those who have been found dead with their portrait in tatters nearby, adding a tinge of horror to the rumors. Either way, Ula is now missing, which sets in motion legal proceedings she arranged to give her possessions, including her paintings, to a forensic anthropologist named Pepper Rafferty, who didn’t know Ula and wasn’t expecting this. Now Pepper is the focus of attention from both Ula’s cult-like following and the frightening Everett Group, quasi-corporate thugs who want a particular painting that’s very much not for sale. Pepper, who normally goes through her life quietly wondering if another Pepper in another world likes her husband better and is more satisfied overall, is thrust into danger and science-fiction-tinged partnerships in her quest for a way out of the predicament she’s been dropped into. By the end, readers will have been treated to both a quirky love story and a great philosophical debate (what if you could produce other yous?). In other worlds, there might be other Ettas who are reading longer versions of Pokwatka’s fascinating puzzle, but in this world, I’m so sad this book is over.

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Review

The Old Woman with the Knife

by Henrietta Thornton

This startling work upends every stereotype of old ladies and killers. Known as Hornclaw, our protagonist is only 65 but welcomes the invisibleness of appearing elderly so as to better function as a disease control specialist: a hired killer. Under her baggy, mismatched clothes, Hornclaw has such a fearsome body that a TV producer at the gym asks her to be on a show about unusual people. But she fears being forced into retirement soon, a euphemism for being killed by the other specialists at the disease control agency. As we observe the abusive childhood that led Hornclaw to obsessively love her dog, Deadweight, but blithely kill strangers, we’re led toward a hairpin turn in her personality, when she finally cares for someone but it is part of a deadly trap. The story, which immerses readers into everyday life in Seoul, is made unforgettable by Gu’s language as she draws readers into the chilling, beautiful wanderings of Hornclaw’s mind, which flits from contemplating someone eating a peach (“she watches a perfect small world being smashed inside his mouth”) to considering the home of a newly butchered man (“the hallway to the living room seemed to loll like a dead person’s tongue”). For lovers of literary fiction and book clubs that will try something different.

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Review

Who Took Eden Mulligan

by Henrietta Thornton

Perhaps inspired by the real-life disappearance of Northern Ireland mother Jean McConville, Dempsey invites us inside two crimes. The first is a murderous attack on five roommates, and then there’s the cold case resurrected by the message scrawled on their wall: Who Took Eden Mulligan? Eden’s children, now adults, have been adamant in the decades since her disappearance that she wouldn’t leave them, but the woman was an enigmatic outsider in “a pit of savagery and subterfuge.” A Protestant living in a Catholic area of Belfast, she looked a mite too good for neighbors to care about her fate. Detective Danny Stowe has lots to lose in his inquiries—he’s on thin ice after smashing a perpetrator’s head against a wall and needs this win. For that, and more personal reasons, he persuades his best friend from college, a forensic psychologist who’s enduring her own issues, to join the investigation. The old and new cases, and the broken families involved, bring forth the weariness of living in sectarian strife, a mundanity that’s broken by moments of horror. Dempsey excels in portraying the anger that emerges when the dreamy veil of struggle lifts to reveal political violence as “a cover for psychopaths.” Read this for both a satisfying puzzle and an inside look at a culture turned sour.

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Review

Deep Sleep

by Henrietta Thornton

Konkoly, Steven. Deep Sleep. January 2022. Thomas & Mercer.
Fans of espionage and breakneck action are the audience for this political thriller from Konkoly (Black Flagged series). Unusually, the catalyst for the action is a dead woman: former CIA agent Helen Grey meets her end early in the book on a mysterious solo mission to kidnap a man from a retirement home. Her son, Devin, is not surprised to hear that his mother is behind this bizarre crime; she’s been paranoid about a government conspiracy for years. But carefully coded messages she left in anticipation of her death lead Devin to the truth of the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Devin and his former-Marine friend Marnie (will they or won’t they get together by book’s end?) realize that long-swirling rumors about Russian agents infiltrating the U.S. government, working to sabotage the country from within, might be true. While the premise here is interesting, the action makes the book; it’s almost one long fight scene, and those who are nerdy for specs on drones, weapons, and surveillance tech will eat it up. A must for Tom Clancy devotees.

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