Olen Steinhauer’s AN AMERICAN SPY focuses mainly on Milo Weaver, the beleaguered CIA agent featured in two previous novels (THE TOURIST and THE NEAREST EXIT). It follows the narrative thread of those earlier stories, but manages to thrust Weaver into confrontations he never anticipated in his entire career of intelligence gathering and espionage.
Weaver is a member of the CIA’s “Department of Tourism,” a secret section of highly trained assassins who clandestinely perform the blackest of the agency’s black ops. But thanks to a mission previously launched by Xin Zhu, a member of the Socialist Chinese spy organization, 33 American agents have been killed — wiping out almost the entire team of Tourists.
[click to continue…]
Dublin-born, now London-residing author Jane Casey’s second novel, the new-to-paperback THE BURNING, introduces a proposed series character in Detective Inspector Maeve Kerrigan of the London Metro Police. If this debut is any indication, we are in for plenty of intriguing psychological suspense presented in the format of police procedurals.
The Burning Man, a serial killer of women — so-named because of his method of burning the bodies of his victims and leaving them in abandoned areas outside of town — is haunting London. Kerrigan is part of Operation Mandrake, the police team assigned to investigate and capture him.
[click to continue…]
George Pelecanos launched a promising new series late last summer with THE CUT, but apparently felt he still had one more story to tell about Derek Strange, the black Washington, D.C.-based P.I. previously featured in RIGHT AS RAIN, HELL TO PAY, SOUL CIRCUS and a prequel, HARD REVOLUTION. Whatever the reason, we should be grateful for WHAT IT WAS, since it ranks right up there with his finest works.
In 1972, Strange has left the D.C. police force to set up his own private investigation business in his old neighborhood. One day, an attractive young woman employs him to find her missing ring. The case seems odd from the jump, especially since the ring is mostly cheap costume jewelry. But the woman insists it holds sentimental value, and anyway, her cash is good.
[click to continue…]
Robert Harris’ THE FEAR INDEX is a science fiction-tinged thriller that works impressively well, especially if you’ve not read much science fiction. Those of us well-immersed in the genre, however, regardless of medium, will inevitably recognize the source of the central conflict long before Harris reveals it. Yet the author manages to overcome this somewhat, thanks to his unexpected approach to the theme.
Dr. Alex Hoffman is long noted as an innovator of algorithmic computer programming, along with his experiments in artificial intelligence — or “autonomous machine learning,” as he calls it. His dream to “create an algorithm which, when given a task, would be able to operate independently and teach itself at a rate far beyond the capacity of human beings” was realized several years ago.
[click to continue…]
That James Sallis decided to write a sequel to DRIVE comes as no real surprise. Not only was that 2005 novel the basis of one of last year’s most critically acclaimed films, it was also a stunning example of contemporary noir fiction and perhaps his best-known work. So expectations for DRIVEN, not surprisingly, are unusually high. If they are not completely met, it’s because Sallis is also an author for whom the unexpected comes naturally.
Seven years have passed since the man known simply as Driver — movie stunt driver by day, heist wheelman by night — took revenge on those who double-crossed him, killing Bernie Rose, the “only one he ever mourned.” Now, he has taken the name Paul West and has set up a mildly successful car restoration business back in Phoenix.
[click to continue…]
