Thread of Betrayal

In Thread of Betrayal, the third novel in the seven book Joe Tyler series, author Jeff Shelby picks up the chase for Elizabeth, Tyler’s daughter who was kidnapped eight years earlier when she was just eight years old. She was taken right out of Joe’s front yard in Coronado, a community in San Diego. Having finally found evidence that she is alive, Joe learned that Elizabeth just become a runaway teen who has fled from her “foster home” in Minneapolis and headed towards Denver. After having chased phantom leads about his daughter’s whereabouts for the last eight years which he never wanted to share with his ex-wife, Joe contacted his ex-wife Lauren who still lived in the home in Coronado where Elizabeth was taken. Lauren joined him in Minnesota and headed to Denver with him.

But, Joe became suspicious of his contacts in Coronado, the very contacts in the police department there who had seemed to be assisting him as he had searched for his daughter over the years, now thinking that someone there may have been instrumental in his daughter’s disappearance. This is the betrayal hinted at in the book’s title. Joe and Lauren found the boyfriend who drove Elizabeth (currently known by her foster name of Ellie Corzine) to Denver, but by then, she had a fight with her boyfriend and made him drop her off. Then they found the friend’s house where she had gone only to find that they had missed her by seconds as she borrowed enough money to get onto a plane for LA. It seems that Elizabeth was recovering some memories of her kidnapping that she was determined to follow back to California. When Joe she was on the plane as the doors to the jet way closed, he completely lost it when the ground crew would not let him board the plane or halt the plane from pulling away from the gate. One can’t go crazy in an airport without drawing a lot of attention, and Joe was arrested and put on a no-fly list. After having been so close, Joe and Lauren had lost Elizabeth once again.

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There was much more to the plot, but this story has a happy ending, sort of. Joe and Lauren do succeed in making direct contact with Elizabeth, but she was confused by her old memories, the lies she had been told by her “foster family,’ and these new strange people who were telling her that they were her parents. Then, there were new traumas that had occurred in the process of her running away. Still a minor, finally aware that she was a kidnap victim and that her “foster parents” had not really adopted her, Elizabeth got protection from the foster child system in California, and as the book ended, she was unsure of how she wanted to proceed with all this new information. As the book ended, she was willing to meet with Joe and Lauren, and the fourth book Thread of Innocence promises a possible rapprochement for the family.

Thread of Suspicion

Thread of Suspicion is the second of a six-book series by the rather prolific crime writer, Jeff Shelby. The first book, Thread of Fear, was a well-written story that had a cliff-hanging ending (see my review). I was already invested in Shelby’s characters, so of course I jumped right into this book which did not leave me disappointed, except for another ending that led me to the third book. Joe Tyler was a cop in Coronado, an island that is just a bridge away from San Diego. His 8-year-old daughter had been kidnapped right out of his front yard. He no longer could work as a cop and his marriage came undone as he spent the next eight years searching for his lost Elizabeth. At the end of the first book, as he solved other cases of missing children, he got his first credible evidence that his daughter was alive and living in Minneapolis.

As Joe tried to learn his way around the world of runaway teens in Minneapolis, he encountered Isabel Balzone, a woman who had dedicated herself to helping these teens. She didn’t ask anything of them and just provided them with food, blankets, and other things they needed to survive on the streets. Joe and Isabel were able to help each other, but Joe did not even have his daughter’s current name and address, only an outdated picture of Elizabeth with a friend, a picture that had been taken in Minneapolis. Then he found the friend, and then he figured out a name for Elizabeth (Ellie Corzine), and then her home address. But by the time he got to her home, she had just had a row with her “foster parents” and she had runaway only three days earlier. So the chase was on once again.

Certain of the reality of the chase for Elizabeth this time, unlike so many of the phantom chases he had been on for the last eight years, Joe called his ex-wife Lauren to come to Minneapolis to help. She still lived in Coronado in the house where the kidnapping had occurred.

Joe still needed more info, and in order to get it, he agreed to help find the missing son of a dying mob boss, a son who wanted nothing to do with his father. Shelby did a great job intertwining these plots (and more) along with stories of other missing kids. By the end of the book, Joe had begun to suspect that somebody at the Coronado Police Department, people who he had always leaned on for the last eight years to get strands of information about possible sightings of Elizabeth, might have actually been involved in her disappearance. He had never gotten along with Lt. Bazer who had eventually forced Joe out of the department, but what about Mike Lorenzo, Joe’s former mentor who had always seemed to be nearly as desperate to locate Elizabeth (Ellie) as Joe was.

The cliff-hanging ending to this story had multiple unfinished story lines, and I’m not quitting here – I already have the next book, Thread of Betrayal.

The List

The List is Mick Herron’s third book in the Slough House series, except this one is a novella which can be read in an hour. I’ve raved about the first two full-length novels, so check out the blog for those reviews. It seems that he has used this book to set up a clever new character for the ensuring stories. In the process, Herron explained the world of spies, double agents, and triple agents. Which of those will Hannah Weiss turn out to be?

Dieter Hess was thought by MI6 to be a double agent. He was an East German who had come over to the West, retired in England. But then Dieter died and of course, “When a spy passes, his cupboards need clearing out.” His papers indicated that he had a previously unknown source of income, something MI6 hadn’t know about, and his handler, John Bachelor was called on the carpet for not knowing about it. By deciphering Dieter’s coded language, Bachelor figured out that Dieter had been running a network of spies. But the list of them did not make sense until Bachelor determined that the list was a “phantom network.” Dieter had just stolen the identities of some apparently innocent folks, all with vague German ties, so he could demand some money to pay them, but then keep the money for himself. His spy retirement funds were so meager, that small amounts of money made a big difference to his quality of life.

Of course, the Germans (allies yes, but there were still these spy things going on) knew the names of Dieter’s alleged spies, and Bachelor wondered if he could use one of them and turn them against the Germans, to create a spy where none had existed before. That’s where Hannah Weiss comes into the story. She was the one who Bachelor chose and she was a willing participant – but what if the whole thing was a setup by the Germans to begin with? That’s where this series of very well written espionage novels seems to be headed.

In the course of this book, Herron further developed the character his main protagonist, Jackson Lamb, and of Diana Taverner, “the ice queen,” one of the bosses at Regent’s Park, the MI6 headquarters. This author and this series get my strong recommendation. I’ve already acquired the fourth book in the series.

The Prisoner by Alex Berenson

Two seemingly unrelated tasks are at play. First, a Tunisian with substantial education in chemistry has been a loyal ISIS soldier for a couple years. He finagles a meeting with an ISIS honcho and convinces him that he can manufacture Sarin gas. 

Second, a simple extraction in the border between Turkey and Kush-held provinces goes wrong and two of the CIA’s best middle east operatives are ambushed. Rather than be captured and tortured, they both committed suicide. The powers that be on the seventh floor of Langley start doing some soul searching. ISIS must have a mole inside the CIA.

We all know that Guantanamo is just the most visible place for ‘detainees’ and that there are other off-book sites scattered around the globe. One is called The Castle in Bulgaria. At one time it was a castle, but it’s now one of those sites. And it’s been heavily remodeled for its current role in detaining middle east terrorists. The CIA suggested that the Bulgarians make sure that there was a prayer room in the remodel. What the Bulgarian’s didn’t tell the CIA is that they wired the place for sound to eavesdrop on conversations. And they heard a doozy. A mid-level commander in ISIS suggested that they’ve been receiving advance warning of various actions.

When you’ve been in the espionage business as long as John Wells, you develop lots of enemies and some good friends. Kirkov is the head of the Bulgarian security services and is one of John’s really good friends. He contacts Wells instead to the CIA because who knows who might receive his warning. Kirkov tells Wells and Wells contacts his former handler (and now the grandfatherly Shafer who is an annoying curmudgeon within Langley). They take this info to President ‘Vinny’ Duto (their former CIA boss) and get backhanded approval to try and set a trap to uncover the mole. Problem is no one in the CIA can know about it. No telling how high up the mole might be placed.

The trap requires some pretty sketchy undercover work by Wells. He must try to resurrect his history as an undercover agent in Al Qaeda, assume a false identity, hide in remote Pakistan, get captured by the US, undergo some rendition before getting transferred to The Castle. There he must gain the trust of the ISIS prisoner, try to wiggle some tidbit of information about the mole, alert Shafer, and then flush out the mole.

Everything comes to a head in Paris with an intricate plot developed by an previously unknown ISIS sympathizer who goes by the name of The Puma. One attack will trigger an outpouring of sympathy which will be followed by an even more devastating assault.

The book is a logical (or as logical as a thriller can be) buildup from first blood to initial awareness to plot to execution. But once Wells gets out of prison, Berenson throws the chase into overdrive by ramping up the tension and pace to a point where you might almost be breathless. I was. For my two cents, Berenson remains this is the real deal in political action thrillers. Relentless tension. Believable plot. Expert pacing. An absolute first rate espionage thriller that hits on all cylinders from first page to the light speed conclusion.

A must-read because Berenson delivers.

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