#1505. Second Shot by Cindy Dees

It’s tough being Helen Warwick. She’s 55yo. Recently retired from the CIA, not of her own accord. She was a highly accomplished field agent. She’d get her assignment and go wherever in the world she was needed. Kill America’s enemies. Escape by any means necessary. Plenty of kills to her credit. One of the CIAs most valued assets. Toss aside because of some arbitrary date on a calendar.

Now she’s at home in the DC suburbs. An unaccustomed field of fire. Her CIA job was a secret. Her cover story with her family was that she was as a State Department analyst of international trade agreements. She was an absent parent while her husband raised their 3 children. Her new mission is to repair her relationship with her family. A mission she is uniquely unqualified to undertake.

First chore: dog-sit her son Peter’s and his boyfriend/fiancé Liang’s new puppy on New Year’s Eve. Peter is a fine art dealer and Liang has a hush hush job with the NSA. No sooner than they leave and a 4-man hit squad hits the house. Helen puts her old skills to good use by taking out 3 bad guys and protecting the dog. When the cops arrive, she goes into full desperate/frightened middle-aged woman mode saying, between gasps and tears, that she was shooting blindly. Someone is after her even though she is no longer in the game.

Her other son, Mitchell, is an ADA in Washington, DC. He tells mom that a friend of his, a defense attorney, has noticed a troubling trend in some murder convictions. He asks his mother to see this lawyer, review the evidence and offer an opinion.

Unrelated (at this time at least) is the resurfacing of a serial killer. Make that a serial killer and a copycat killer. The identity of each may contain clues about the attack on her at her son’s house as well as those wrongly imprisoned.

And with any luck, just might open a tiny crack in the wall between her and her family.

I picked up this on a lark solely based on it’s cover jacket description. I’d never heard on Cindy Dees. After reading her webpage bio, I’m not surprised I’d never heard of her. Her catalogue of books is primarily a unique corner of the market. Her books might be best described as romantic thrillers. Romantic novels involving spies/SEALs/detectives, etc. This effort is part 1 of a series of Helen Warwick novels that is decidedly not a romance book.

Further down the bio are interesting details about Dees . . . licensed pilot before she got her driver’s license . . . left high school at 15 to attend University of Michigan . . . studied Russian and eastern European studies . . . joined the USAF upon graduation . . . one of the first female fighter pilots . . . piloted the big C-5 Galaxy . . . did some intelligence work during her time flying for Uncle Sam . . . who now is a craft loving gardener who, based on her literary productivity (20+ books with well over 2 million sold), must constantly be writing. Safe bet to say that her primary subject matter isn’t something any of the MRB boys would pick up, but I’m here to say that when part 2 of the Helen Warwick books gets published, betting 2024, I’ll be first in line. Why? Because Dees writes an entertaining story about a middle-aged women, albeit one with ‘a particular skill set’, that moves along at a brisk and unpredictable pace. One that kept me reading almost non-stop during a car trip to/from Disney World with the family. Travel entertainment at its best.

Publication date: May 23, 2023.

ECD