Moving Target

November 25, 2013
At the start of Jance’s engrossing ninth Ali Reynolds novel (after 2013’s Deadly Stakes), Ali, eager to escape the chaos surrounding her upcoming wedding to B. Simpson, travels from Sedona, Ariz., to England with her 80-something majordomo, Leland Brooks. Sixty years earlier, Leland’s family disowned him, and he left the country in disgrace. Now he and Ali discover there’s more to the story—including a long-unsolved murder. Meanwhile, someone succeeds in severely burning Lance Tucker, a teen hacker B. helped incriminate, at the San Leandro, Tex., juvenile facility where he’s being held. Feeling responsible and seeing himself in Lance, B. investigates who wants the boy dead and why, aided by his colleagues at the cybersecurity firm High Noon and Sister Anselm, an elderly nun with a Taser, who guards Lance’s hospital room. Jance provides enough backstory to orient readers new to the series, and longtime fans should enjoy insights into B.’s and Leland’s pasts. Agent: Alice Volpe, Northwest Literary Agency.

January 1, 2014
Just weeks before her wedding, Ali Reynolds accompanies eightysomething Leland Brooks, her longtime beloved majordomo, to England for his first trip back to his homeland in almost 60 years, a visit that reveals shocking family secrets. Meanwhile, Ali's fianc', B. Simpson, head of high-tech security company High Noon Enterprises, is diverted from his international business by the plight of teenage computer wunderkind Lance Tucker. Put in juvenile detention after breaking into his Texas school district's computer system, Lance is almost fatally injured in what is deemed an accident. But as the bodies pile up, including those of Lance's math teacher and a maintenance man at the detention center, it's clear that someone badly wants GHOST, the cyber version of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak that allows undetected web surfing, developed by Lance and his late teacher. In the ninth Ali Reynolds outing (after Deadly Stakes, 2013), Jance adroitly combines well-rounded characterizations and brisk storytelling with high-tech exploits, arson, kidnappings, and a shootout for an entertaining and suspenseful addition to this solid series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)