Aftershock

A veteran spy seeks to avenge his father and restore his reputation in Spence's thriller.

It's 1998, and CIA officer David Jourbet is on the hunt for the woman who gunned down his father, a mining captain and amateur gemologist, in Brussels in 1980. Jourbet catches a break when another man, posing as his father, is murdered in Zurich, and he's assigned to investigate. The investigation leads him to Alexander Navarro, former CIA agent who defected to Russia and whose longtime lover, Selena Walsh, is the woman who killed Jourbet's father for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, someone else inside the CIA sends an assassin to eliminate Jourbet before he gets to the truth about his dad's demise. After a showdown with Selena in Bulgaria, Jourbet recovers a document that reveals a larger conspiracy, which, in turn, sends him off to Russia in search of Navarro. Later, aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, Jourbet must collaborate with a handful of new allies to save its passengers and, potentially, a great many others. In his second book featuring Jourbet, following Devil's Brew (2001), Spence crams a spectacular amount of action into fewer than 300 pages. The nonstop activity will leave the reader breathless as the story flies along. The lead character comes off a bit too much like a superhero, but that's hardly unusual for the genre. Jourbet is accompanied by a sizable supporting cast, although, fortunately, he only interacts with two or three of them at a time; skillful characterization gives this effort a more layered quality than typical thriller fare. The author also engagingly depicts the morality of the various players in compelling shades of gray-a choice that's fitting for an espionage tale. The resolution ties things up nicely while leaving room for future volumes; hopefully, a follow-up will arrive sooner rather than later.

A frenetic and engaging page-turner with an edgy protagonist.

- Kirkus Reviews

"Powered by a cat-and-mouse game of pursuit, attack, and ultimatums that change not just politics, but individual lives... builds to a crescendo of action and realizations many won't see coming."

- Midwest Book Review