Light It Up

October 15, 2017
An Iraq veteran stumbles into trouble when he signs on as security for a Colorado marijuana business. Peter Ash, suffering from PTSD (he's intensely claustrophobic), responds to an old friend's request to do a job for his daughter's security company. The woman has identified Colorado's cannabis retailers as lucrative clients. Since they deal mostly in cash, they are also particularly vulnerable. This entry in Petrie's (Burning Bright, 2017, etc.) Ash series gets underway with a long, sustained hijack scene that goes from one conflict to another, ending with Ash and his friend making their escape by navigating twisting mountain roads while riding a rapidly accelerating gurney. The carnage Ash has left behind marks him as a suspect to the cops investigating the case and leaves Ash wondering if the thieves, professional and ruthless, are after something more than cash. The trouble is that you can see the elements that have gone into the creation of Ash far more clearly than you can see him as a singular creation: the combination of combat experience and combat damage marks him as tough yet vulnerable and gives him a topical edge. And there is more than a trace of Jack Reacher in the character, though without Reacher's wiseacre ability to needle the people he comes up against. Both Ash and the slow reveal of the bigger forces he is up against all feel terribly familiar. This novel has a virtuoso opening over rugged terrain that soon turns into too-easily-recognizable territory.

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November 20, 2017
Thriller Award–winner Petrie’s propulsive third Peter Ash novel (after 2017’s Burning Bright) finds the hyperresourceful Marine veteran in Colorado, helping old friend Henry Nygaard’s Heavy Metal Protection team deliver a truckload of medical marijuana to Denver-area shops. Later, on a mountain road, hijackers ambush the truck and seize the money collected in Denver. Peter, the only team member to survive the violent encounter, manages to kill several hijackers and elude the rest. Eager to avenge his friends, Peter sets out to recover the stolen money and uncover the conspiracy behind the theft. With the help of Lewis, his faithful ex-Marine sidekick, and girlfriend June Cassidy—both as fearless as Peter himself—many bones are broken and gallons of blood are spilled in seeing justice done. The final hand-to-hand battle between Peter and the psychotic villain, involving a variety of guns, axes, and even a hammer, is a violent pièce de résistance. Petrie is a master of orchestrating convincing mayhem. Author tour. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

November 1, 2017
What would modern thriller writers do without war in the Middle East? The brutal conflicts in Iran and Afghanistan have produced a population of damaged men with deadly skills and a longing to fight a good fight and maybe cancel out the bad things they've seen. And done. Petrie's series hero, Peter Ash, who looks like he was made mostly of ax handles and shovel heads, is helping a fledgling security company protect the profits of a marijuana entrepreneur. After a cash haul is hijacked in a freshly imagined scenethe hijackers use a wrecker, an ambulance, and a cop car, making them safe from being questionedAsh reminds himself that he was a trained killer. A lovely series of fights and chases follows. Some are wildly funny, like a downhill getaway atop an out-of-control hospital gurney. Readers may seize up at the introduction of a stock figure we thought we'd gone beyond: the woman who tries to help and muddles everything. But Petrie knows what he's doing. It all works just fine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2017

Peter Ash, an ex-Marine battling PTSD claustrophobia, responds to a friend's request for short-term help in Denver's booming marijuana business. As part of a four-man security team transporting cash to a secret storage site, he ends up killing four people and being the sole survivor of a hijacking gone badly awry. Soon he is the target of the mysterious Big Dog and a conspiracy involving a ruthless billionaire who hires others to get his way--including murder. Coming to help are Ash's girlfriend June and gangster friend Louis. After June is kidnapped and Louis is shot, Ash heads to a confrontation in a blizzard, in which he has only himself to rely on. Like Robert Parker's Spenser, Ash is a self-contained, unstoppable force with very useful friends. Vividly troubled yet likable, he intrigues the reader even while managing to save a little part of his world--again. VERDICT The action in this third outing (after Burning Bright) is nonstop; the drug scene is timely; the characters, including the villains, are deftly drawn, and the tension keeps rising. [See Prepub Alert, 7/24/17.]--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017

After The Drifter (ITW Thriller Award winner for Best First Novel) and Burning Bright, troubled veteran Peter Ash finds relief from his stress with a new case: helping a Denver security company that protects wealthy cannabis entrepreneurs from those who would lift their money.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.