Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsTechnically implausible
Reviewed in Australia on 12 January 2017
The book assumes a law enforcement technical utopia:
Speak the word “bomb” over a cellular phone and a few minutes later the FBI have your details, any public or private security camera can be accessed and the images transmitted in real time to a remote site, face recognition can identify a person at just about any public place and instantly notify the FBI, a hacker can extract information from any database within an hour and cellular phones work underground, in aeroplanes and in the basements of secure buildings
Despite these implausibilities the book is a page turner with lots of action. There is a mystery about who is killing the ex-Delta force team members and why and the author skilfully strings out the resolution to keep the reader interested.
There is much inter-agency rivalry and while there is co-operation at lower levels in the upper levels there is much obfuscation. The good guys are the FBI and villains are the CIA in this rivalry.
There is no romantic action except for a muted attraction between Reznick and FBI Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein. He is a widower with a teenage daughter and she is a divorcee with two small children. After three books in the series it is about time they got together and discovered the joys of blended families, although the possibility is left open on the last page. Martha Meyerstein is an unfortunate name that brings to mind a frumpy middle aged gorgon but it turns out that she is very attractive and in her thirties. There seems to be no glass ceiling in the FBI.
