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Espionage

Review

January and July

by Jeff Ayers

January Holte works for an intelligence agency nicknamed the Annex. An op in Paris crashes and burns, and she’s deemed responsible. Now back home and trying to make amends, she secretly sets out to uncover someone in the Annex who’s selling secrets. The clues lead her to a small town in Texas and a possible suspect named Bill Connors. July Whitlock begins a job as a bodyguard-for-hire, and his first client, Bill Connors, convinces him to wait outside while he meets with someone for a few minutes. Bill vanishes, and feeling guilty for leaving his side, July goes searching. His investigation takes him to a small town in Texas. January and July might not find Bill, but they do find deception, animosity, and their lives threatened. Abbott has crafted two terrific characters in January and July, and readers will quickly become invested in how things work out for them, even though they might be on opposite sides. The pacing is lightning-fast, the mysteries are complex and hard to decipher, and the story begs for a sequel featuring more of their adventures.—Jeff Ayers

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Review

The Ghost City

by Jeff Ayers

A ruthless billionaire discovers a method of creating more durable concrete, courtesy of an ancient manuscript written by Marco Polo, in Pote’s terrific follow-up to Blood and Treasure. This building material will be necessary for the future construction boom if Shan Zhang and his company succeed. An ecological disaster in Vietnam dries up an entire river, and what treasure hunter and adventurer Ethan Cain doesn’t realize is that this event is only the beginning of Zhang’s plans. An ancient city under the Antarctic ice holds the key to a dangerous technology that Zhang sees as the method to reach his goals, and who cares if Antarctica’s ice disappears in the aftermath? Ethan, with the help of his on-and-off journalist girlfriend, Lana, must work together at the bottom of the world to save millions of lives, even if it means they won’t survive. Pote combines the adventure of a Clive Cussler novel, the special-ops missions of a Brad Thor thriller, and the tech focus of a Tom Clancy story to create a fun and engaging tale. The slow build intensifies, making the last half of the book so gripping that readers will get paper cuts from turning the pages so fast.—Jeff Ayers

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Review

Three Hitmen and a Baby

by Jeff Ayers

A missing brother, the Russian mob, a sick child, and a kill-order all add up to just another typical day in Hart’s latest thriller. The members of Assassins Anonymous all want to put their killing days behind them. Valencia leaves her toddler in the capable hands of Mark, Astrid, and Booker so she can try to find her brother. When the little girl gets a high fever, Astrid and Booker take her to the emergency room, triggering red flags at the hospital when they can’t answer simple questions such as, “What’s the girl’s last name?” The police get involved, and the protagonists find themselves running, avoiding every camera they can. While they are regretting not just giving the girl Tylenol, Mark visits a Russian mob boss, who demands that he either kill Astrid or they will kill a woman he used to love and her son. The boy doesn’t know that Mark is his father, and his former girlfriend has not seen or spoken to Mark since his attempt at recovery. Hart has crafted a solid action thriller with humor and emotion, and as the pages fly, the intensity increases. At three books in, with all of them terrific, give this one a shot.

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Review

Such a Perfect Family

by Henrietta Thornton

Tavish Advani has found an idyllic new life. He’s newly arrived in New Zealand, having eagerly left Los Angeles to live with the love of his life, Diya Prasad, in her home country. But Tavish can’t leave behind a dogged LA cop’s suspicion that he caused the deaths of several women he was involved with there. When a fire consumes the lavish home he lives in with Diya and her wealthy doctor parents, is he responsible? The savvy local police officer assigned to the case thinks so. Case notes by that officer and the LA cop who still suspects Tavish of murder are sprinkled throughout the story of the young man’s desperate efforts to clear his name and will lead readers to think that the legal picture doesn’t look so good for him. But as the details of Diya’s earlier life with her family and their friends unspools, a toxicity emerges that makes things far less clear cut. A suffocating family is perfectly drawn here, and Tavish’s early life has its own surprises; with the brilliant twists bestselling Singh drops in, it all adds up to a gripping tale.

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Review

Desperate Spies

by Charlotte Del Vecchio

At 75 years old, retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater returns for another case of digging up dirt and showing up perps. Ethel may have hung up her badge, but that does not make her any less active on the cases that impact the people closest to her, especially the steady stream of FBI agents she rents rooms to in her home. When an old colleague calls in a favor, she accepts without question. But as she dives deeper into the case, Ethel discovers that it originates in the very sting-operation-gone-bad that sent her into retirement, involving the murder of a college student and the Russian mob. Now, 18 years later, Ethel is back on the case with a new team and even more to lose. De Castrique’s (Secret Lives) sharp protagonist must use her skills and resources in the form of some tech-savvy spies, including Jesse, her beloved double-first-cousin-twice-removed, to keep state secrets out of the wrong hands once and for all. Fans of elderly sleuths will enjoy this political thriller, as well as Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series and Deanna Rayborn’s Killers of a Certain Age.

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Review

The Second Son

by Jeff Ayers

Chase Burke works as a sommelier for a restaurant in New York’s Chrysler Building and has put his military life behind him. He’s about to ask out a pretty government official, Tanya, who is visiting him on the job, when armed men attack, and she seems to be their target. Chase kills some of the men, but Tanya is hurt. Detective James Campbell and his partner, Detective Alice Doyle, are assigned the case and are told to work closely with Federal authorities. They soon determine that Chase has a lot of skeletons in his closet, and he immediately becomes the prime suspect. Chase realizes he must uncover the truth if he’s not going to rot in jail for the rest of his life, but digging for answers puts him in the crosshairs of a secret group of killers that thinks he knows too much. Whom can he trust while his face is plastered all over every news channel? From the opening page to the last, this book is a relentless force of non-stop action and thrills. Gervais and Steck write great books and have crafted a stellar story together. Comparisons to Mark Greaney and Jack Carr are warranted, but this first in a series might be even better. The next one cannot come fast enough.

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Review

Blood and Treasure

by Jeff Ayers

Pote’s debut thriller mixes the best of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, and Dan Brown to weave an unputdownable tale. An incident on the International Space Station leads to more questions than answers and appears to be a prelude to gaining access to a satellite and its tech. Ethan Cain and his team take on big-pocket clients to find hidden treasures and artifacts. Their current client initially had them track down a scroll, and the information revealed on it leads to the location of an ancient weapon hidden for centuries. Evil people and entire governments want to utilize its capabilities, and whoever has this weapon could change the world. Cain learns the coordinates for this device’s underwater hidden location, but when trying to recover it, he watches as a space capsule slams into the water close to them. Inside is an unconscious woman, ejected from the event that occurred onboard the International Space Station. How did she survive, and does she also have an ulterior motive? Pote’s writing captures what makes fans of action-adventure and historical conspiracy thriller writers like Brad Thor and Steve Berry deliver every book. Make this a mandatory addition to your reading pile; you will treasure it forever.

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Review

Kills Well with Others

by Henrietta Thornton

They’re back! The trained assassins readers first met and loved in Killers of a Certain Age (2022) are on another mission, but things are odd this time. The group of women, which resembles nothing so much as a book club that’s enjoying itself a bit too much, is summoned to a new job, but given tickets for coach airfare…decidedly not the style they’re accustomed to. The usual impeccable preparedness is lacking in other ways, too—no backup murder weapon provided? What is this?—and things go completely off the rails—pun intended, as the worldwide escapades after looted art and to flee revenge end up with the women on a lethal train journey through Montenegro. The Bond-type exploits are exciting and the art-history details absorbing, but as in the previous book, it’s the realistic friendships and love—including same-sex romance—that will keep readers wanting more from Raybourn. An invigorating read that will lift readers’ spirits.

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Review

Ted Bell’s Monarch

by Jeff Ayers

Ted Bell passed away last year, and Ryan Steck (Out for Blood) has continued the series with this terrific entry into the world of Alex Hawke. Hawke wants nothing more than to settle down with his fiancée and son, but a crisis intervenes, and he must become the ruthless spy England needs him to be. A referendum to split Scotland from the United Kingdom is upcoming, and King Charles III mysteriously vanishes while out on a hunt with his friends, baffling his security detail. Hawke and his allies have 72 hours to find the King—the monarchy and the entire United Kingdom will never be the same if they don’t. Of course, there is more in play than the King’s whereabouts, and failure means the toppling of the entire British government. Steck is the perfect author to continue Hawke’s adventures. He channels Ted Bell, creating a story that seems to come from Ted himself. The story is a terrific launch point for newcomers, as Steck brilliantly juggles the details from previous books while not making them seem repetitive. Fans of the series will love seeing their favorite characters back in action, while readers new and old will enjoy this mix of Clive Cussler and James Bond and be eager to see what Steck has in mind next for our hero.

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Review

Gabriel’s Moon

by Willy Williams

In his 2013 James Bond novel, Solo, Boyd sent the iconic secret agent to 1969 Nigeria. While the protagonist of his new book shares Bond’s love of good liquor and beautiful women, he is a reluctant spy, and the author here is interested in exploring the morally murky world of Cold War espionage, double dealings, political murders, and defections. It is August 1960, and British travel writer Gabriel Dax is interviewing Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo. Lumumba, who insists the interview be recorded, mentions that certain foreign powers aim to assassinate him. On the flight back to London, Gabriel notices an attractive older woman reading one of his travel books. Other odd incidents occur. Gabriel’s editor cancels the Lumumba piece and demands his notes and tapes, which is not standard journalistic practice. Instead, Gabriel buries the tapes in his garden. The woman on the plane, Faith Green, turns up at Gabriel’s door and asks him to do “small favors” for MI6, similar to the ones he does for his elder brother, Sefton, in the Foreign Office. Gabriel initially refuses but falls under Faith’s seductive spell and embarks on his first assignment in Spain. The writer is soon caught in a twisty labyrinth of lies and betrayals, and, like Michael Corleone in Godfather, Part III, gets pulled back into the spy game each time he tries to extricate himself from the manipulative Faith’s machinations. At the same time, Gabriel struggles to understand, through analysis, the childhood trauma—his mother’s death in a fire—that has scarred his life. This first-rate complex and suspenseful historical thriller will resonate with fans of John le Carré and Alan Furst.

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