The Detonator

December 11, 2017
This dynamite standalone from Thriller Award–winner Zandri (Orchard Grove) pits demolition expert Ike Singer against Alison Darling, an assistant professor at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, N.Y., where she’s studying “major-league explosions created by very small explosives.” Alison, who’s the daughter of Ike’s former partner, seeks revenge on Ike because she blames him for her father’s suicide in 1999, the mental breakdown of her mother (with whom Ike had a brief affair the same year), and the subsequent abuse she suffered in foster homes. To frighten Ike, Alison plants a series of small bombs, targeting a judge, a priest, and a Planned Parenthood director, as well as some Albany landmarks. The tension mounts as Alison threatens to kill Ike, his wife, and their 19-year-old son, whose progeria makes him a vulnerable target, as painfully as possible. Zandri makes the most of this thriller’s one sustained note. Agent: Chip MacGregor, MacGregory Literary.

January 1, 2018
Crime novels now come staffed with women police commissioners, women street cops, and women PIs in abundance, but women murderers have been a little late getting to the table in equal numbers. Zoe Kohler, the hotel ripper in Lawrence Sanders' excellent 1981 The Third Deadly Sin, was ahead of her time. We've had to wait for other women every bit as cruel, destructive, and bats as men, but here's one now. Zandri's psychopath, Alison Darling, makes Zoe look like a dabbler. Alison's an expert in nano-thermites, which narrator Ike Singer knows are very small explosives that cause major league explosions. He knows because he once co-owned Master Blasters, a company specializing in imploding abandoned buildings. Alison is the daughter of Ike's late partner, who committed a spectacular suicide via imploded building because Ike had sex with his wife. Alison has decreed that Ike, along with his family, must also meet a fiery death. Zandri introduces a sins of the fathers theme here, since Ike half-believes he deserves what's coming down on him. The tension as the firestorm approaches is palpable, the ending spectacular.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)