Sam and Lucy Capra have a great life. Both work in the CIAs London office and are expecting a baby boy. Sure, he does some undercover work as a smuggler trying to track down a money launderer who works with some rogue governments, but his job is all about manipulating bad guys for information. Hasn’t been dangerous so far.
Sam has to present some updates at a company meeting when his wife calls in a panic telling him to get out of the building immediately. He does on the pretense of a bad cell connection and when he hits the street, the building blows up taking out the entire office at this location. And Sam sees his wife being whisked away in a car. The ensuing investigation focuses on Sam and his wife because they survived. But Sam is taken into custody to a number of different safe houses where he is questioned, beaten, and tortured. Only one conclusion makes sense. Sam may be clean, but clearly Lucy isn’t, meaning Sam was both blinded by love and used by whatever enemy she works for. It’s a cabal calling itself Novem Soles (9 Suns) bent in creating anarchy.
Essentially under house arrest in NYC, Sam works as a bartender and is watched round the clock. Combine months of that with being sure that Lucy hadn’t been turned, Sam works up a plan to shed his watchers, stowaway on a freighter to Rotterdam and start looking for Lucy and her captors.
In Rotterdam and then Amsterdam, Sam meets up with Mila, a member of the mysterious Round Table, who says she can help Sam but he has to help her first to save the daughter of some hot shot industrialist whose daughter has been kidnapped and turned a la Patty Hurst. Begrudgingly, he agrees and sets out on a roller coaster ride of bad guys, terrorists, murderers, blackmailers, and double crossers who get in his way, all the while being aided, guided, and mentored by Mila.
The grieving father makes weapons and he has a doozy. A process where a person’s DNA can be coded into a bullet making it a hand fired guided missile – the perfect weapon for an assassin or sniper. Sam finds computer files with 50 sets of DNA for the weapon.
My biggest issue was Mila. She turns up everywhere with the ability to get Sam out of any jam using anything from her telescoping club to a Glock to poison to the skills to hack into any network and connections virtually everwhere. I read her as a vehicle that allows Sam to make leaps of faith for the reader. The whole contorted plot just kept getting a bit hard to handle or believe. I know thriller fiction is supposed to be escapism, but a little bit can go a long way. Abbott is a 3-time Edgar nominee, but even with that pedigree, I’m guessing it’ll be a while before I look up another Abbott offering. Can’t please everyone.
East Coast Don
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