thriller – The PolyBlog

Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry (2011) – BR00193 (2021) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

June 9 2021

Plot or Premise

Jane Whitefield is a Seneca woman living in NY state. She honours her ancestors and helps those who are in trouble to disappear and start a new life.

What I Liked

The premise of the main character’s “job” of helping people escape bad situations and start a new life — serving as their guide — is a fantastic premise, and the first half of the book is primarily about how she goes about doing her job. While some clients are eased into the process a bit more gradually, her latest client is all-in from day 1.

What I Didn’t Like

You know as the story unfolds that something is going to go wrong, you just don’t know what or when. Despite some initial success, some of it seems even TOO easy for her to do with a minimum of fuss. Mid-book, the type of story changes considerably, as the hunted becomes the hunter, and it isn’t as good as her other books that have a bit more mystery to them rather than action.

The Bottom Line

A great first book in the series, Whitefield is awesome.

By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

February 18 2001

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

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The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00057 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

June 5 1999

Connor Fitzgerald is an assassin for the CIA. Black ops at its best. But when the CIA director orders a hit, and then wants to hide her involvement from the President, she tries to send Fitzgerald on an one-way futile assignment to Russia to prepare an assassination of the Russian Premier. Fitzgerald’s ex-mentor gets involved and figures out the plan, but too late to save CF from getting caught. A couple of twists later, however, and Fitzgerald is back in the States with the same mission — kill the Premier while he sits next to the President.