Triple Cross

Former U.S. Special Agent Mickey Hennessy faces the challenge of his career when the private resort for which he is security director is attacked by anti-globalists. Among the hostages are his teenage triplets. The terrorists begin killing off the leaders of capitalism in staged trials on the Internet, and hunting down the kids, who have made a break for it and are working against them. Lloyd James employs a low-key style that provides a steady bass line for this suspense novel. Against that, he builds the rising suspense. Between the calm manner of Hennessy and the deadly coldness of the terrorist leader, James fits in a cast of characters who are filled with fear and shock at what is happening to them. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

February 2, 2009
Bestseller Sullivan's first thriller since 2003's The Serpent's Kiss
displays his usual knack for setting and scenario. On New Year's Eve during a snowstorm, members of the Third Position Army, a group devoted to fighting corporate greed, seize the Jefferson Club, “a twelve-thousand-acre ultra-private resort for the super-rich,” in southwest Montana. General Anarchy, the group's leader, and his troops free most of the vacationers, but take the world's six richest men hostage and sequentially put them on trials broadcast over the Internet. Summary executions follow in most cases. The twist: the 14-year-old triplets of the club's security chief, Mickey Hennessy, manage to squirrel themselves away within the resort's back rooms and stealthily work to foil the terrorists. Vile villains, the inevitable romance and the children-in-peril dynamic move the plot efficiently if predictably toward the harrowing finale in the rugged wilderness. This is a solid return for Sullivan, but a place keeper at best.