Pun Salad

I am an unabashed Jim Geraghty fan, been reading his stuff for literally decades. (First reference here at Pun Salad was when the blog was only a few weeks old back in 2005; unfortunately the link no longer works.) When he branched into writing fiction. I was on board. My reports on his previous books: The Weed Agency; Between Two Scorpions; Hunting Four Horsemen; and Gathering Five Storms.

I'm sorry to report that this one falls solidly in the "wish I liked it better" category. That's me, I may just have been grumpy, you can read all kinds of rave reviews at Amazon.

It starts out in roughly present-day Ukraine, where Alec and Katrina, members of the CIA's loose-cannon "Dangerous Clique" are off to interview a heavily-tattooed terrorist, held in custody. After nearly getting blown up by a Russian bomb, they arrive at the prison… only to find the terrorist has been brutally slain.

Then nothing much happens except talk, talk, talk for way too long. And I'm not sure they ever figured out who killed that guy. I could have missed it.

Eventually, the main plot point is revealed: a working, practical quantum computer has been developed and is initially used to break through the cryptographic safeguards on CIA computers blow the cover identities of its spies all around the globe. Including our heroes, putting them in even more danger than usual.

The problems I've had with Geraghty's previous books continue here: clunky dialogue, too much reliance on wisecracks and pop-culture references, yet another ludicrous plot. The CIA mole (who's been completely obvious to readers for a long time) is finally revealed to our protagonists, and they are surprised for some reason. And it seems to have become a trademark: a final action-packed showdown in a skyscraper, this one in Taipei.

But this time the plot has weird seemingly-supernatural overtones. Really? Well, it's left as a loose end, so I guess we'll see more in the next installment.

Which, yes, I plan on buying.