Daughter of War

October 22, 2018
Bestseller Taylor’s meticulously plotted 13th Pike Logan thriller (after 2017’s Operator Down) supplements the derring-do of Pike and the other Taskforce counterterrorism agents with the story of Amena, a 13-year-old Syrian refugee. Amena has landed with her family in Monaco, where she and her younger brother steal valuables from tourists to survive. But when they steal an iPhone from a Syrian intelligence agent, they find themselves in big trouble. The phone contains information about a Syrian plan to use a North Korean biological agent known as Red Mercury, a deadly poison that kills then renders itself safe and untraceable, on an American Special Forces outpost. Pike and his team are in Monaco on a separate mission when they stumble on the Red Mercury plot. Soon Amena is fleeing from the Russians, the Syrians, and the North Koreans, all of whom want the phone. Pike and his fellow agent/love interest, Jennifer Cahill, display their usual resourcefulness, but it’s the plight of Amena that makes this entry particularly gripping. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune.

November 15, 2018
An elite U.S. task force tries to prevent North Korea from selling lethal chemical weapons to the Syrian regimeA retired lieutenant colonel whose service included time in special operations with the legendary Delta Force, Taylor (Operator Down, 2018, etc.) clearly has the qualifications to provide a military thriller with realistic details, and he does just that in this latest addition to the Pike Logan series. In this outing, Logan and his team are in Monaco on the trail of what they presume to be a plan by North Korea to sell the Syrians Chinese-hacked data containing the identities of U.S. government employees with security clearances. The assignment becomes convoluted when it turns out that, in fact, North Korea is selling Syria something called Red Mercury, a deadly chemical compound which is both mythical and mysterious. This increasingly intricate mission becomes downright explosive when a Syrian refugee street urchin pickpockets an iPhone X containing data crucial to the pending deal between the Syrians and North Koreans. Logan's team will have to find the phone before a Russian mercenary/mixed martial arts fighter who will stop at nothing to get it back, including killing anyone who gets in his way. Now, throw in a pencil-pushing CIA case officer who makes questionable decisions in handling a crucial Syrian asset along with all the petty personal politics so prevalent even at the highest levels of government and you have the makings of a fast-paced thriller.A believable story with the kind of interesting details that keep the pages turning.

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Starred review from November 15, 2018
Taylor's latest Taskforce novel finds Pike Logan, Jennifer Cahill, and their team trying to stop the sale of a deadly nerve agent. The lethal substance is rumored to be Red Mercury, a gas so horrible that it has achieved a near-mythical status, though nobody in the intelligence community truly believes it can actually be manufactured. Has North Korea found a way to do the seemingly impossible? The sale hits a snag when a young woman who steals to survive takes the wrong man's cell phone. With the entire operation laid out in detail on the device, an order is given to find the thief and kill her and anyone else who might have seen the material. Double crosses and a bold plot to start WWIII all hinge on whether Logan and his team can get to the woman first. Taylor has already established himself as a master of special-ops thrillers, and this one will only add to his stellar reputation. By focusing less on his near-superheroes and more on secondary characters this time around, Taylor adds human depth to his usually plot-driven novels, and the result is one of his best books to date.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2018

Even as North Korea seeks to sell U.S. intelligence to Syria, which plans to fool the West with an attack to be blamed on terrorists, it aims to execute a double cross involving a deadly substance called Red Mercury. Now Pike Logan and the Taskforce must find a refugee somewhere in Europe who can stop these machinations. With a five-city tour.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.