The Night Agent by Matthew Quirk

The book opens with an obviously pissed off FBI agent Peter Sutherland walking up the path to a DC mansion carrying a long handle axe.

Got your attention?

Sutherland works the emergency phone desk in the White House’s situation room complex. When someone connected to the White House is in trouble, they call, and these ‘night agents’ direct the call to the best possible source of help. A job with months of nothing until 'that call' comes in.

He was hired by Diane Farr, the chief of staff of President Travers; an outsider whose good fortune (or not, depending on your outlook) ended up winning the job in a colossal upset. Peter had impressed Farr when both were working in Boston and she filed his name away . . . just in case.

Peter has some baggage. Serious baggage. Seems his father was also FBI, but on his watch, some secrets were leaked to the Russians than resulted in a lot of dead assets. The death of his father, under suspicious circumstances, did little to prove innocence or guilt. Peter’s whole life in and out of the FBI has been a race to prove he is not his father’s son.

'That call' comes in. The caller says her aunt and uncle told her to call the number, give a code, and act on instructions given. Turns out auntie and uncle have been undercover assets for the FBI for decades. And dang good at it. So good, that the Russians are at the door, guns blazing, to kill both and obtain a red ledger full of incriminating information on how the Russians were manipulating the US system in order to get assets of their own into power and into the White House.

While specifically told to stay away from the crime scene, Peter goes and stands at the periphery to watch the beginning of the investigation. When headed back to his car, the caller, Rose, intuitively catches his eye and she realizes it was he with whom she talked.

This sets off an ever escalating chain of events as both sides want this red ledger. Over the next week, every safe house, every cop, every Escalade, every fed is a potential threat. No matter who tells Peter to bring her in, he ignores the command and takes her deeper and deeper into the depths of DC to protect her from danger and the multitude of twists and deceptions. His only loyalty is to her safety, not to that which he swore an oath.

Learned about this book from The Real Book Spy who listed it as one of the best political thrillers of 2019. Have to say if I was savvy enough to make up such a list, The Night Agent would certainly be on it. Think of it as a more modern take on the classic Six Days of the Condor. An agent trapped and hunted by both sides with no where to hide from both sides that have reason to stop an innocent from making information public. This books adds a treatment of whether the sins of the father are also the sins of the son. Top drawer political thriller with only one issue: you’ll want to keep reading just one more chapter each night and end up getting too little sleep.

East Coast Don

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Going Dark by Jolene Grace

Amelia Sinclair was once on the front lines as an embedded journalist in one of the Gulf

wars. Now, she works for some network covering the UN. One morning, she gets a poor quality video clip showing 4 American journalists being kidnapped in Syria. They went over there to bag an interview with the current Syrian President.

She takes it to her editor who freaks and drags her off to an apartment of his in Brooklyn to try and look deeper into the clip. He then calls on a source of his, Gabriel Jets to come in and look it over. Editor wants to get a few burner phones and heads off to a corner market about the same time Jets arrives via an alley entrance. Loud screams tip off Amelia and Gabriel to the editor being killed on the sidewalk. When they look out the window, a sniper tries to take Amelia out. Jets and Amelia escape using a fire escape and a wild chase ensues. A chase that jumps around between NYC, Philly, lots of DC locations (including the Oval Office), Syria, Kuwait, and Turkey.

It appears that the abduction is an ISIS attempt at swaying public opinion. But in reality, it’s really just the first step in an attempted coup within the US. The goal was to make the President look weak and open up an avenue for those who truly want the US to stay as the one true megapower to take over.

OK, a coup is an interesting take on the political thriller genre and the premise has promise. For me, the problem in the presentation was that there seemed to be some liberties made with the proverbial space-time continuum as well as with grammar:

1.     People seemed to jump back and forth across the Atlantic as though they were using the Enterprise’s transporter. The time and location issues could have been alleviated had the author used day/time/location headings between and within chapters.

2.     There are a lot of speaking parts in this drama. Would’ve helped the reader keep up with each if they were identified maybe every 2^nd or 3^rd chapter. Instead of just saying ‘McKaine’, it might’ve help to occasionally remind the reader that he is the Chief of Staff. Especially for the numerous minor characters.

3.     I sure hope the NetGalley copy I had was still a work in progress because there were so many issues with wording, grammar, sentence structure, and general clarity. Especially in the 2^nd half of the book. The multitude of errors distracted me from being fully vested in the plot.

4.     Character development could’ve been fleshed out better with some backstory as to the why behind everyone’s motivation.

All in all, that’s too bad because the premise is pretty good. My best suggestion to the publisher would be to keep the book in the development process and let an experienced editor work with the author to make the story more coherent and readable.

ECD

Won’t Back Down by J.D. Rhoades

Jack Keller just can’t catch a break. Iraq war vet. Former skip tracer. Bit of a temper and a real sense of right and wrong. Think of him as a pony-tailed redneck Jack Reacher. He’s recently been paroled from an Arizona prison and he’s come back to North Carolina to be near girlfriend Marie, their 5yo son Francis and Marie’s teenage son Ben. Marie lives in rural Harnett County south of Raleigh; probably the primary ethnicity of the county is Redneck. She is a county cop serving as the high school resource officer.

[Jack and Marie have a history beyond Francis. Back when Ben was about 5 or 6yo, Ben’s dad was hooked up with some really bad people. Jack stepped in to help. In the final confrontation, Jack ended up killing Ben’s dad and then executed the main bad guy. Ben watched both. Yeah, teenage Ben’s a little messed up.]

Now back in NC, Jack is headed to the local high school to interview for a job as the school custodian. On the way in, he sees Brandon, a real turd, bullying Alia Khoury (and her little brother Bassim), steps in to help just before Marie arrives to cool things off. When Jack interviews with the vice-principal, he’s turned away. Convicted felons not wanted.

Adnan Khoury and his children are Iraqi and managed to get out right before Saddam fell. When Adnan finds out that Jack had helped his kids, he offers Jack a job to watch over them. As Jack soon finds out, other folks are also interested in the Khoury family.

The threads of treachery reach back to Iraq. It’s never quite clear if the CIA or Homeland Security want him or are protecting him, adding to the ‘just who is the bad guy’ debate. Two mercs have been contracted to find Adnan and the contractor decides to bring in a second set . . . from Chechnya.

And for what? Probably money, and if that many folks are after it, the final count must be substantial.

Rhoades has put together perhaps his most taught thriller to date involving political issues, murder, and sadistic torture. And he put it not in some third world shithole, but right here in our backyard (and I mean that literally. I write this from the Raleigh area. Harnett County may be the next county south of us, but it’s a world away from living in the capitol’s county. Besides, Rhoades lives in Carthage in the next county west. He knows the people and the lay of the land). I mentioned about that Keller is a Tar Heel Jack Reacher. Has the same sense of right and wrong, the law be damned. He just doesn't ride around on a bus like Reacher. Those who mess with Keller’s family and friends do so at their own risk. The setting, the characters, the action all cement Rhoades in the throne of one of my favorite literary genres as the Crown Prince of Redneck Noir. Rhoades is a bit under the radar and you are unlikely to find his books in the supermarket or the front table at Barnes and Noble. Seriously, if backwoods country crime is your bag and you’ve not read J.D. Rhoades, you are really missing out. This is the 7th Jack Keller book, so get moving. 

East Coast Don

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Lethal Agent by Kyle Mills

Remote village in Yemen. A small Doctors Without Borders team is trying to care for a small village that has been afflicted with a SARS-like virus. An American Doctor, a German nurse, and a French microbiologist can only treat the villagers symptomatically. No cure. No hope.

ISIS is on the ropes. Command and control is failing. Leadership is dying faster than they can be replaced. Sayid Halabi is one of the few remaining, now hiding in a northern Iraq set of caves. ISIS leadership has nightmares: the bearded face of Mitch Rapp. When Rapp’s team tracks down Halabi, the cave is brought down by massive number of grenades killing all within. Except Halabi. Despite considerable injury, he crawls out an exit tunnel known only to him. After action reports find plenty of bodies and blood, but not 100% proof that Halabi was killed. Assumption by the media was that no one could’ve survived.

Rapp returns to his home in rural Virginia to a country fractured by partisanship politics of hate. He wonders if this is the same country to which he has risked his life for the past 20 years. President Alexander is coming to the end of his 2^nd term and the chair of the senate intelligence committee, Christine Barnett, is the opposition’s front running candidate. She despises everything Rapp and CIA chief Irene Kennedy stand for and have done. 

Barnett is an expert at the blame game. Kennedy and Rapp are her prime targets. Her hated is all-consuming. Perceived offenses committed by Rapp have pushed him off the CIA payroll and into the role of a contractor. Even more off the books than usual. And while he still communicates with Irene Kennedy, he has an even longer leash than usual. He frequently thinks that cutting it altogether would be best.

The medical community knows about that village in Yemen. So do the Saudis who want to firebomb the village to stop the virus in its tracks. But if Saudi intelligence knows, you can bet what’s remaining of ISIS does, too. Halabi gathers a few trusted troops, goes to the village, captures the medical team, herds any remaining villagers into a building and burns it. He has plans for the medical group. Especially the microbiologist.

Halabi is a planner. Of big things. Plans that he feels his God has given him and only him to carry out. He manages to negotiate with a rising cartel leader in Mexico to transport middle east heroin into the US. But he changes the deal. He wants a specific package to be smuggled in with the pure heroin to be delivered to a specific recipient in southern California.

The special task for the microbiologist? Anthrax. Getting across the border should’ve been the easy part. Unfortunately, a random test of a NASA satellite shows the tunnel and the shipment is intercepted. A second misfortune was the when a few of the bricks of product are pulled for examination, the anthrax brick was also selected. Dumb luck. Bad for the cartel/Halabi, but good for the DEA.

The delivery guys were captured, but they are hardened coyotes and the DEA isn’t getting anything out of them. The chain of command in Washington can’t seem to get things done so Mitch goes to the safe house where the drivers are being held and shows the DEA what real interrogation means. Which forces him to run to Mexico to avoid prosecution and the media storm that would follow.

Using long perfected skills, he manages to insert himself into the cartel (that one sentence is about 25% of the book). He wants to stop another anthrax delivery, but convinces the cartel he is in it for the money because the US has shit on him one time too many.

When Halabi’s next shipment arrives in Mexico, it’s not anthrax. It’s six devotees to the cause. Seems Halabi didn’t kill everyone in the village. He isolated a couple and used a group of suicide bombers, not to wear a vest, but to be exposed to the virus, get transported across the border and infect population and transportation centers in the US. Halabi’s goal is to make it look like his God has struck directly at the Great Satan.

This 18^th installment combines Rapp’s battles in the middle east with cartel-based trafficking. And it kicks some serious butt. Not just in the deserts, but in Mexico and the halls of the Senate. Rapp and Kennedy are faced with multiple fronts with no military or political support either from the US or any other country be it friend of foe. A no-win situation. Little probability of success. Rapp really is out on the weakest of limbs. Terrific thriller. Absolutely terrific. You have to wonder how many more villains Kyle Mills can dream up. But fans can only hope he keeps doing just that.My favorite parts were the push-pull in Washington, DC.

East Coast Don

p.s. buried in the book is the very best job description of those elected to the House and Senate: do anything to ‘enhance their status, increase personal wealth, and destroy the careers of rivals. Everything else is just noise.” Sure seems like it applies to Rapp's world as much as our own.

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