|
Francine Mathews is a former CIA analyst who began her writing career authoring a number of impressive mystery novels. A few years ago she began writing about the world she knew best --- the world of espionage. THE CUTOUT was Mathews's first work of espionage fiction, an intriguing work of duplicity, mayhem, and death. Some four years later, Mathews has returned to the characters and the world of THE CUTOUT with a riveting sequel titled BLOWN.
BLOWN reintroduces Caroline Carmichael, the troubled CIA field agent who first appeared in THE CUTOUT. After a brilliantly frightening introduction, we find Carmichael cleaning out her desk, having tendered her resignation due to the duplicity of Scottie Sorensen, the CIA's Chief of Counterterrorism and Carmichael's boss. Carmichael is pressed back into duty when a domestic terrorist named Daniel Becker commits an act of mass murder and silently slips away, only to strike again several hours later by assassinating a high-ranking government official.
Carmichael's expertise is required because it appears that Becker is a member of a domestic component of 30 April, the international terrorist group whose leader was murdered by Carmichael in THE CUTOUT. Becker, who seems to be waging a one-man war on the United States government, is seemingly untouchable and unstoppable as he moves across the eastern United States cutting a swath of violence and death in his wake.
Meanwhile, Eric Carmichael, Caroline's husband, is hiding in Berlin with every hand raised against him. Believed by everyone --- including Caroline --- to have died three years previously, Eric in fact has been functioning at the behest of Sorensen as a double agent against 30 April. When his mission goes horribly, irrevocably wrong, Eric finds himself pursued by both sides in the war on terror. When captured, he becomes a liability to Sorensen --- one that must be eliminated right away.
BLOWN picks up almost immediately from where THE CUTOUT left off. While it is not entirely necessary to read THE CUTOUT before picking up BLOWN, your enjoyment of the latter will be increased dramatically by doing so. Mathews does not scrimp on the tension, the excitement, or the surprises. From the opening pages, where a domestic terrorist executes a fiendishly brilliant attack upon a highly publicized gathering, to the conclusion, which contains surprise after surprise (at least one of which you'll never see coming), Mathews creates the sense that the reader should be holding BLOWN in one hand and a ticking stopwatch in the other.
Mathews also introduces a number of new and interesting supporting characters. Among them is an off-kilter genius named Raphael, who literally hijacks the book. He is so intriguing, however, that you won't care.
Full of excitement, emotion and action, BLOWN is a definite page-turner.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
