“Three-Edged Sword,” by Jeff Lindsay (Dutton)
After the Chilly Warfare, former Soviet spy Ivo Balodis constructed himself a fortress in an deserted missile web site on an island within the Baltic Sea. There, he has continued to deal in secrets and techniques — however for revenue as an alternative of for nation.
Balodis is now in possession of America’s most significant protection secret and is accepting bids on it, anticipating to web $2 billion {dollars}.
Chase Prescott, an insufferably haughty CIA agent, is determined to retrieve it. However how? The key is on a flash drive saved in a state-of-the-art vault. The vault lies on the backside of a missile silo on Balodis’s Island. And the island is fortified and guarded by a staff of former Russian particular forces troops.
So Prescott turns to Riley Wolfe, self-proclaimed world’s biggest thief — a person motivated much less by revenue than by the fun of doing the unimaginable. As readers of Jeff Lindsay’s first two books on this collection know, Wolfe is a chameleon who can alter his look, a parkour grasp capable of scale the edges of buildings, and he has confirmed he can steal something, regardless of how properly guarded.
As “Double Edged Sword” opens, Prescott abducts Wolfe and presents him with a proposition. If Wolfe can retrieve the flash drive, Prescott will organize immunity for his previous crimes. If he doesn’t, the agent will kill each Wolfe’s unwell mom and his finest good friend, an artwork forger named Monique.
Nonetheless, Prescott additionally affords Wolfe an extra enticement. If he succeeds, he can hold the rest of worth in Balodis’s vault, together with priceless Russian Orthodox icons the previous spy has collected.
Wolfe agrees, though he has little question that Prescott may have him killed as quickly as he delivers.
Wolfe just isn’t the primary anti-hero Lindsay has created. He’s additionally the creator of eight thrillers that includes Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who murdered solely different serial killers. These novels supplied the inspiration for “Dexter,” a preferred Showtime TV collection.
As regular with a Lindsay thriller, the darkly humorous story is tightly written. For probably the most half, the ingenious plot unfolds on the livid tempo the creator’s followers have come to count on. Often, nonetheless, it slows in poignant sections about Monique. The younger lady is simply awakening from a coma, the results of an assault on her in a earlier Wolfe novel, and Lindsay does a tremendous job of portraying her wrestle as she tries to recollect who she is.
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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Thriller Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the creator of the Mulligan crime novels together with “The Dread Line.”
