Skip to main content

Night Watch

Review

Night Watch

The mother-and-son writing team of Iris and Roy Johansen collaborate once more on NIGHT WATCH, their fourth novel featuring Dr. Kendra Michaels. The blind-from-birth Kendra owes her now sighted world to the medical expertise of Dr. Charles Waldridge. Eight years earlier, she and her mother had put her fate in the experimental surgery that Dr. Waldridge performed, using her regenerated stem cells. From that successful procedure, Kendra had held the doctor in high esteem as a friend and benefactor.

"NIGHT WATCH contains all the heart-stopping drama that one pictures when involved in an international thriller."

Kendra’s clinical practice centers on the effects of music therapy on children. She has lectured on the adjustments personally made when she went from a dark world to a lighted one in a blink. She is also known for her occasional work with the FBI on cases where she can garner helpful clues, gleaned from the enhanced sight, smell and sound of her sightless days. These gifts will be challenged in the mystery she faces after a dinner with Dr. Waldridge, who visits California on a fund-raising trip for Night Watch, the group backing his research. He appears troubled but refuses to confide in Kendra when she presses. The following morning, Kendra returns from a run to find uniformed police officers outside her condo door. She learns that the good doctor is missing under suspicious circumstances, and she may be the last person to have seen him.

From this point, the Johansens wield a complicated plot that covers ground from southern to northern California, and crosses the Atlantic to London and outlying townships. Kendra’s previous feeling of gratitude when Night Watch is mentioned now becomes one of fear. She is convinced that Dr. Waldridge has been kidnapped and possibly murdered. Her apprehension becomes magnified upon the discovery of his former Night Watch colleague, face-down dead in the snow near Big Bear Lake, California. Kendra cooperates with the local police covering the case and insists on going to the hotel room where her friend stayed. There, she discovers a damp patch of carpet, wet with a strange liquid, and realizes that the room has been wiped of prints. Seeing that the situation is beyond her capabilities, Kendra contacts former FBI agent Adam Lynch. Together, they embark on the wild adventure that explodes on these pages.

NIGHT WATCH contains all the heart-stopping drama that one pictures when involved in an international thriller. The Johansens have penned a tale that may not be far removed from reality in today’s new world. We will thirst for more. 

Reviewed by Judy Gigstad on December 9, 2016

Night Watch
by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen

  • Publication Date: October 25, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • ISBN-10: 1250075971
  • ISBN-13: 9781250075970