Shadow Of Doubt by Brad Thor

Lots of balls being juggled here in Thor’s 24^th Scot Harvath story:

1.     A big Russian cargo plane has left Russian airspace and appears headed for Belarus. Destination and cargo both unknown.

2.     A high-level Russian defector walks across the border to Norway asking for asylum, but only if he can hand himself over to Sølvi Kolstad, a very senior officer in the Norwegian version of the CIA . . . who is also Harvath’s fiancé.

3.     A career French spy is set to meet with the CIA’s Chief of Station in Paris, but is brutally murdered in his apartment the night before the meeting. Paris cops and the French DGSI are at odds about jurisdictional conflicts.

4.     Russia is still mired down in Ukraine, wants it done and is looking into ways to finish off Ukraine without invoking a NATO response.

5.     Russian hit squads have been told my Moscow to drop their gloves and do what’s necessary to silence the defector, set up the contents on the mystery plane, and to make sure that whatever secrets the French agent had discovered remain hidden.

6.     And all of that has landed on the Russia Desk at Langley resulting in many sleepless nights for analysts and Directors alike.

For the bulk of the book, Harvath and Kolstad are moving the defector around while staying one step ahead of various hit squads while the French cops and DGSI dance around each other trying to keep the other knowing anything sensitive.

And as usual for any Thor/Harvath book, you can get your bottom dollar that ‘there will be blood.’ Lots of it.

When I started Thor’s latest book, I had the inkling that maybe this story line had cooled off for me. That maybe this might my last foray into the violent world of Scot Harvath.

And that would be wrong path to take. 

Thor gives the reader a (seemingly) thorough treatment of East-West geopolitics presenting reasons why Russia (the real and this fictional one) is doing what it’s doing. Hint: Chapter 37 is a succinct account on some of the reasons behind why Russia is involved with Ukraine and what the likely next steps might be. 

A chilling and frightening discussion of what the next decade might be.

So bring it on Thor. My apologies for having doubted you. Fall 2025 can’t get here soon enough.

East Coast Don

First Frost by Craig Johnson

Geez . . . I’ve got about 8-10 books in the queue to be reviewed. Why I can’t sit down and do it when I finish reading a book is beyond me. And I owe it to these first three cuz they are from three of my power rotation. Here goes nothing . . .

By my count, this is the 20^th in the Walt Longmire series, most of which have been reviewed here. If you’ve not met him, Longmire is an aging sheriff in the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming. As he said in an earlier book, “I am 911.” They guy everyone calls.

First Frost picks up where The Longmire Defense left off. Walt had been cornered in a cabin but managed to shoot his way out, killing a politically well-connected perp. In First Frost, we follow the preliminary hearing to see if there is sufficient evidence of jurisdictional overreach on Walt’s part. Meaning he was too quick to shoot vs de-escalate the situation.

But wait. A question during the hearing reminds Walt of an escapade that he and his lifelong best friend, Henry Standing Bear, had upon graduation from college. Both played football. Walt at Univ Southern Cal and Henry at Berkeley. It’s the mid 1960s and unless one has special circumstances, upon graduation, young men were receiving a letter that opened with “Greetings from the President of the United States.” If you are too young for that hint, that letter meant the recipient had been drafted into the Army and on the fast track to Vietnam. Both wanted to serve, but neither wanted the Army so Walt enlisted into the Marines and Henry joined the Navy.

Schools out and they pile their meager belongings into Walt’s truck to drive cross country to Parris Island with a stop in Illinois to drop Henry off for Naval basic training. They have lots of time and started off taking the scenic route through Arizona following the legendary Route 66. Walt gets distracted while driving, the truck goes off the road and busts up its front end.

The closest town is Bone Valley (AZ or CA? they don’t know) where a grizzled desert rat who runs a garage takes on the repair. The only thing notable they can find out about the town is that it was one of the many Japanese internment camps from World War 2. What remains is mostly ruins. Being the nosey sorts, they ask questions of anyone they can find.

And this is where Walt, who as sheriff always seems to be a magnet for trouble, gets a good start on life. Seems like anyone who will talk to him has something to hide. And each conversation makes him more curious to find out just what the hell has been going on in Bone Valley during and since World War 2.

The two stories are told in parallel with each chapter being split into current day and their drive along Route 66. When I’d finished, I wondered if the book began life as two novellas that either Johnson or his editors decided to combine into a single title.

For me, I couldn’t care less. It’s Walt Longmire. And that’s all that matters.

East Coast Don

The Wraith's Return

The Wraith’s Return is the second book in a trilogy called The Martha’s Vineyard Murders by Raemi A. Ray. The story is a thriller, a murder mystery, and a love story. In the first novel, A Chain of Pearls, we are introduced to Kyra Gibson, a London lawyer who is visiting Martha’s Vineyard where her estranged father was living at the time of his death. 

At the conclusion of the first novel in which her father’s death was solved as a murder, rather than selling the house, Kyra took it off the market in order to give herself some time to reach a decision about what she wanted to do about that. In this second book, after several months back in London where she resumed work in her law firm, she chose to take a leave of absence and return to Martha’s Vineyard for an undefined period of time. She had grown to like her neighbors on the island, as well as most of the town’s people. Also, she wanted to find out if her budding relationship with Detective Collins might be worth pursuing.

 At the time of her arrival, there was a discovery of a 300-year-old pirate ship which was rumored to be full of a vast treasure. It had sunk in 1712 in one of the island’s harbors during a hurricane. But then there were some murders of two of the people who was interested in learning about the scavenger operation. Very quickly Kyra got involved with the mystery of those deaths, and on vacation from his own work, Detective Collins returned to the island to see for himself if a relationship with Kyra was possible.

 I’ve not written much about the characters that Ms. Ray used to fill out the story, but I found them all to be compelling and helpful in the telling of this story. I thought the ending sequence was particularly intense and one I certainly could not put down. Now, I have to wait for the publication of book 3, Widow’s Walk, which I expect to be available in a couple months. I liked this book very much.

Chain of Pearls

 

Chain of Pearls is the first book in a trilogy called The Martha’s Vineyard Murders by Raemi A. Ray. The story is a thriller, a murder mystery, and a love story. We are introduced to Kyra Gibson, a London lawyer who is visiting Martha’s Vineyard where her estranged father was living at the time of his death. Ed Gibson had worked as a news correspondent who spent his life chasing stories around the world. He was a decorated writer and well-respected in his profession. He hardly knew his daughter when her mother died when Kyra was only 12 years old. He immediately shipped her from the US to London where she grew up with her aunt. He continued to chase stories and made no attempts to contact his daughter. But then, in his will, he left his home on Martha’s Vineyard to Kyra. Although Ed’s death, when he fell from a boat and drowned, was initially reported as not being suspicious, Kyra quickly suspected that the death may have been a murder as the result of a story he had been chasing – she just didn’t know what the story could have been.

 

The plot unfolded in a believable manner, and the characters that filled up the story were compelling ones. I need not say more expect to add that this novel gets my very strong recommendation. By the time I finished this book, I had already acquired the second book in the trilogy.

To Preserve, Protect and Defend

 To Preserve, Protect, and Destroy by Matthew D. Saeman is a political espionage novel with a bit of sci-fi thrown into the plot. The book opens on Mars where the US is in the early stages of a long-term plan to make Mars habitable for humans. The astronaut team is in the early stages of creating a mining project for precious minerals when a geologist discovered a rock with some odd properties. As he began to examine the rock and do some testing, it exploded with an incredible force that wiped out all evidence of the presence of the entire mining operation, killing all persons who were present.

Meanwhile on Earth, there was turmoil in the Middle East. Abu al-Hussein had recently brutally attacked and conquered all counties in the area (think ISIS magnified 100 fold) and then create a powerful and threatening force to other countries. At a NATO meeting U.S. President Dowd spoke aggressively about al-Hussein, warned that he was a security threat the likes of Hitler and that he had to militarily stopped. When Dowd sent a secret team of special forces to assassinate al-Hussein, the attempt was betrayed by a double agent, and the team was captured and brutally killed. One agent was spared, Jack Blythe, so he could personally inform and warn the President. Jack had been forced to watch the beheading of his best friend. He carried a videotape of the beheading to the President.

 

The President, perhaps the world’s most successful and deviant narcissist who was embarrassed by al-Hussein’s success and ridicule of the attempts to kill him, enacted his own plan to get even. An emergency vehicle had been sent to Mars to look for more such rocks, allegedly to keep them from devious use and to make the planet safe for human exploration. However, unknown to most other people who were engaged in the effort to secure the dangerous rocks, even though it would cost the lives of millions of innocent people, it was Dowd’s plan to use that explosive Martian force to wipe out all countries in the Middle East that were associated with terrorism. Dowd wanted to crash the ship loaded with the rocks into Iran. Jack was quickly put on the ship to Mars, along with some other team special force members who were in on the plan. It was a suicide mission, and their surviving family members were to be economically rewarded.

 

Meanwhile, there was disharmony among the new geologist on the mission, the special forces, and the astronauts. There was conflict between Dowd and the team at NASA. Meanwhile, Dowd continued to be successful politically by putting an innocent and trustworthy face on his attempts to deal with the Mars disaster and the Middle East troubles.

 

Although I’m not typically a sci-fi fan, the emphasis in this book was on the danger of decision making by a narcissist who only put his own needs forward as being important, who had no empathy for the rest of humanity. No doubt this is an extreme version of the current political climate as the US nears the next presidential election, but the novel successfully indicates the danger of having such a character in the White House. This book gets my strong recommendation – please read it before the 2024 election.

The Knife Slipped

 The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner (writing as A.A. Fair)

The Knife Slipped was written in 1939 and was to be the 2nd in what would become the Cool and Lam series of private eye novels. It was rejected by the publisher and lost for 75 years until found and published in 2016 by Hard Case Crime. The novel is classic pulp, set when Bertha Cool is the head of the agency and Donald Lam is still learning the ropes. The story is crackling- full of betrayal, adultery, and double crosses as Lam investigates a philandering husband. Bertha charges $25 a day, 4 day minimum. Let's see, $100 in 1939 would be about $2100 today. Her no nonsense attitude comes at no extra charge. 

The dialogue, especially as spoken by Bertha, is ahead (and a product) of its time and I imagine in 1939 might have been a bit much for the publisher. When it was rejected, Gardner refused to edit it and instead wrote a whole new story called Turn on the Heat. Including this one, there were 30 Cool and Lam books written, the last published in 1970, the same year Gardner died. 

Erle Stanley Gardner is of course best known for Perry Mason, a character in novels and short stories as well as television. Over 300 million books have been sold in the Perry Mason series, third only to Goosebumps and Harry Potter.  He wrote under several pseudonyms including A.A. Fair. 

If you enjoy old school private eye stories and want to read something lost for 75 years, check out The Knife Slipped 

Guilty by Definition

 Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

The editors of the Claredon English Dictionary, led by Martha Thornhill, receive an anonymous letter with literary allusions to secrets and lies. To Martha, it all points to the disappearance of her sister Charlotte ten years ago. Each chapter starts off with a word, its time of origin, and definition. The characters are compelling, especially the editing team and Martha's father. 

The writing is exceptional, weaving wordplay and lexicography through a fascinating mystery story. This is no surprise given that the author Susie Dent is a famous lexicographer and has been a commentator on the game show Countdown since 1992. I highly recommend this novel to fans of English mysteries, but especially those of us who love Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse stories. 

I bought the book on Amazon.uk as it is will not be released in the US until May 13, 2025.