A Line in the Sand

December 1, 2022

In The Lock-Up, Booker Prize winner Banville returns to 1950s Dublin, where pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford are investigating the murder of a young history scholar when her sister points them to a powerful German family newly arrived in town after World War II (100,000-copy first printing). In Barclay's The Lie Maker, struggling author Jack is offered big money to write false histories for people in the witness protection program and now has the means to find his father, who vanished into the program when Jack was just a child (100,000-copy first printing). Bentley's Tom Clancy Flash Point gives Jack Ryan Jr. a terrorist plot to crack, but it turns out to be part of a larger, grimmer scheme. On the island paradise of Prospera, residents live contentedly until they're warned by a monitor embedded in their forearms that it's time for renewal and board the ferry for the Nursery, but The Ferryman (and some island resisters) begin to suspect that all is not as benevolent as it seems; a stand-alone from Cronin, seven years after he wrapped up his "Passage" series. With Bad, Bad Seymour Brown, New York Times best-selling author Isaacs brings back former FBI agent Corie Geller and her father, a retired NYPD cop, who must solve a cold case to prevent the murder of the crime's only survivor--unassuming professor April Brown, whose father laundered money for the Russian mob. Lawton's Moscow Exile moves from 1950s Washington, DC, where British-born socialite Charlotte has a pack of secrets to pass on to old flame Charlie Leigh Hunt at the British embassy, and 1969, with Joe Wilderness trapped behind the Iron Curtain and the stories converging in Berlin. Maden's Untitled new Cussler adventure brings back Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon for more fun and games. In Nakamura's latest, two detectives investigate the murder of The Rope Artist--an instructor in kinbaku, a form of rope bondage with both spiritual and sexual overtones--with Togashi finding himself pulled toward his own unorthodox desires and straight-arrow colleague Hayama seeking the truth in a case that's getting out of control. In The 23rd Midnight, Patterson and Paetro team up for another visit with the Women's Murder Club, as someone copycats the methods of a serial killer jailed by Det. Lindsay Boxer and profiled in a best seller by reporter Cindy Thomas, both women's murder clubbers. In multi-award-finalist Pochada's Sing Her Down, the imprisoned Diosmary Sandoval suspects that cellmate Florence "Florida" Baum isn't the innocent victim she claims to be and hounds her relentlessly when both are unexpectedly released (100,000-copy first printing). National Book Award finalist Powers (The Yellow Birds) draws A Line in the Sand with his first thriller, about former Iraqi interpreter Arman Bajalan, working at the Sea Breeze Motel in Norfolk, VA, after having barely survived the assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, who discovers a dead body on the beach (60,000-copy first printing). When her roommate is killed at the first party they throw at their Baltimore-area apartment, Morgan learns that she was the intended victim of the assailant, who steals each target's Identity and then kills her; a million-copy first printing for Roberts. After more than four decades of thrillers reflecting Soviet/Russian events, Smith drops longtime protagonist Arkady Renko in Independence Square in Kyiv, where Renko has gone to find the anti-Putin daughter of an acquaintance. Meanwhile, Renko discovers that he has Parkinson's Disease, as does Smith.

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March 13, 2023
In this uneven but eminently readable crime thriller from Powers (The Yellow Birds), Norfolk, Va., detective Catherine Wheel is called in to investigate after Iraq war interpreter-turned-janitor Arman Bajalan discovers a dead body during an early-morning ocean swim. Catherine and her partner soon learn that Arman knew the victim during his time in Iraq, and is in the U.S. to seek refuge from a group that has already killed the rest of his family. As more bodies pile up and the investigation leads Wheel to a local journalist, the detective makes it her mission to protect Arman, who it appears might be the ultimate target. Powers generates a satisfying sense of suspense, and his strength lies in drawing fully realized characters, from the protagonists down to the support players. The prose, though, varies, ranging from refined to purple and unnatural (“Salus populi suprema lex esto,” proclaims one character, conveniently recalling a slice of high school Latin). Still, this is an enjoyable outing that will have readers hoping for future Wheel adventures. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW Literary.

April 15, 2023
In Norfolk, Virginia, a sloppy attempted hit draws hard-shelled police detective Catherine Wheel and her new partner, Lamar Adams, into a defense contractor's ruthless scheme to hide war crimes. After his daily swim, Arman Bajalan, a former translator for American soldiers in Afghanistan, discovers a man's body on the beach. It's clearly murder, and Arman knows instantly that the bullet was meant for him. His family was killed in Afghanistan after he provided evidence of a unit of U.S. contract soldiers' crimes against civilians, and he barely escaped with his life. Catherine finally extracts Arman's story and his suspicions, but not before the next wave of assassins arrive. On the run in Tidewater country, Catherine, Lamar, Arman, and a well-connected cub reporter evade hit squads as they race to expose the defense contractor's crimes. PEN/Hemingway award-winner Powers' skill as a fiction writer, as well as his experience as an Iraq War veteran, are both on display here, especially in the thoughtfully developed relationships between veterans, which add insight and heart to this thriller's unrelenting suspense.

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Starred review from March 15, 2023
A taut thriller linking war crimes, politics, and police work. Powers returns to the subject of war and its collateral damage that he first studied in The Yellow Birds (2012), an acclaimed debut published after his own Army service in Iraq. A Shout in the Ruins (2018) followed fallout from the Civil War and slavery. In the new book, the pivotal character is Arman Bajalan, a refugee from Iraq living in the U.S., who worked as an interpreter for the American military in Mosul in 2004. He finds a dead man in a suit lying on a Norfolk, Virginia, beach. He carries no ID, and the labels are missing from his clothes. The police team is led by the oddly named Det. Catherine Wheel. A second narrative line concerns journalist Sally Ewell, whose brother was killed in Iraq and whose current reporting centers on Decision Tree, a private military contractor on the verge of a $2 billion government deal if it can get past a congressional investigation of its roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two narratives intersect through Bajalan, who filmed a massacre of unarmed Iraqi university students by Decision Tree operatives. A week later an assassination attempt killed Bajalan's wife and child and had him seeking a U.S. immigrant visa. It soon becomes clear that he's still a target. Powers has a strong female character in Det. Wheel--a cool professional mercifully free of the dire flaws with which thriller writers tend to baste their lead cops. A couple of older civilians familiar with guns come in handy when the mercenaries visit. Powers has a clearly negative message about military contractors and the business of war, starting with the epigraph ("War is a racket..."), but there's a moral ambivalence to the novel's resolution that should spark debate. Masterful in its structure and pacing; a great read.

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