November 1, 2022
Blockbuster Baldacci takes a break with Simply Lies, forsaking his various series for the moment to write a stand-alone (a million-copy first printing). In Where Are the Children Now? Burke springboards from the Higgins Clark classic Where Are the Children? as a grown-up Missy and Mike rely on what they learned during their own childhood abduction to rescue Missy's snatched stepdaughter. In Graham's Shadow of Death, Amy Larson of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and FBI special agent Hunter Forrest head to Denver to find the lethal doomsday cult they tracked through Danger in Numbers and Crimson Summer. In Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Rendition, Hood brings back Adam Hayes, who rushes in to help former partner Abdul Nassir and his family, who are terrified of both the Taliban and the rogue CIA contractors gone violent as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan. Mary Pat Fennessey's teenage daughter goes missing and a young Black man is struck and killed by a subway train on the same steamy night in 1974 Boston, and there are no Small Mercies as Mary Pat's hunt for Jules riles the Irish mob; following Lehane's multi-best-booked Since We Fell (150,000-copy first printing). Two cold cases are Standing in the Shadows in this latest from Edgar and CWA Dagger in the Library honoree Robinson; in 1980, Nick Hartley is suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend and spends a lifetime seeking the killer, while in 2019 a modern-day skeleton found at an archaeological dig keeps Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team busy. In Sandford's Dark Angel, Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter Letty poses as a rogue programmer for hire to help the Department of Homeland Security forestall the takeover of Minneapolis's power grid by some ominous hackers. While facing down angry competitors when he moves to the West Coast and its City of Dreams, young, widowed mob underboss Danny Ryan visits the set of a movie depicting his crew's involvement in the New England crime war and encounters the actress playing his late wife; following Winslow's New York Times best-selling series launcher, City on Fire (250,000-copy first printing).
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January 2, 2023
Set in 2021, Hood’s hard-hitting fourth contribution to this spin-off series from the late Ludlum’s Jason Bourne franchise (after 2022’s The Treadstone Transgression) finds Adam Hayes, no longer an operative for the CIA unit Treadstone, working as a private security contractor in Mumbai, where he gets a call from Abdul Nassim, the Afghan army captain who saved his life 10 years earlier. Nassim has evidence—a photograph and a thumb drive—that an American CIA paramilitary officer, Dominic Porter, has been selling American weapons to the Taliban, but Porter is on to Nassim and will kill him and his wife and three children if Hayes can’t get them all out of Afghanistan fast. Hayes heads into the chaos of the Afghanistan war’s final days on an against-all-odds rescue mission. Because he’s no longer allied with Treadstone, he’s on his own, and it’s a long grueling battle from beginning to end as he’s pitted against the treasonous Porter as well as the deadly commander of the Taliban elite Blood Unit. Treadstone fans will get their money’s worth. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune.
Starred review from February 15, 2023
The rocket-propelled fourth installment in Robert Ludlum's Treadstone series starring Adam Hayes. The American presence in Afghanistan is crumbling fast. The Taliban is rapidly taking control, with help from some corrupt Americans. Ex-Navy SEAL Dominic Porter has made a tidy sum by stealing American military equipment and selling it to the enemy. Now it's time for him to go home and put this all behind him, and he wants to cover his tracks by killing everyone he has ever done business with. "All that remained was covering up the evidence," he muses, "burying the haji bastards who knew what he'd done." But he notices a witness taking a video of one of his crimes, and if it becomes public, he will be imprisoned or worse. Then ex-Treadstone operative Adam Hayes receives a desperate plea for help from Abdul Nassim, who'd taken the video and knows he's being hunted. Nassim had saved Hayes' life 10 years ago, and now it's time to return the favor. Luckily, Hayes is a man of honor, skill, and bravery, and he will stop at nothing to save his friend and his family. Desperate for assistance, Hayes begs a favor from an unfriendly Treadstone contact: "He's being hunted, Levi. By Americans. One of us." You can bet that Treadstone favor will come at a cost. Oh, and there's a thumb drive with a terabyte of data that Porter will kill to get. Guess who has it? Meanwhile, Porter has been dealing with the bloodthirsty Taliban commander Mohammed Ghul, who seems like he's willing to kill just about anybody. He's a ghoul, all right. In the best tradition of military thrillers, the story is one damn thing after another--plenty of intense action interspersed with fear and anticipation. The novel captures a sense of the deep chaos wrenching Afghanistan as American forces departed and the troops they tried so hard to train disappeared into the desert. First-class excitement for thriller fans.
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