Rasputin's Shadow

August 26, 2013
In the prologue to bestseller Khoury’s lively, if conventional, fourth Templar thriller (after 2011’s The Devil’s Elixir), some Ural Mountain miners go berserk one day in 1916 and start killing each other until an explosion puts them all out of their misery. At the mine entrance, mystic Grigory Rasputin assures his companion, an unnamed man of science, that “we’ve just ensured the salvation of our people” by blowing up the mine. Flash forward to present-day New York City. FBI special agent Sean Reilly looks into the case of a Russian embassy official who’s been thrown to his death from his high-rise apartment building in Queens. Reilly also investigates the disappearance of high school physics teacher Leo Sokolov, a descendant of a member of Rasputin’s inner circle of advisers, who has developed a device that uses microwaves to alter human behavior. Reilly sometimes lets his enthusiasm get in the way of his better judgment in this predictable tale of a weapon with world-devastating potential. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME.

Richard Ferrone's narration adds just the right hint of the sinister to this story of mind manipulation. In 1916, in a mine tunnel in the Urals, a group of miners goes berserk and begins killing one another. Above ground, Grigory Rasputin and "a man of science" push a button and the mine explodes. Fast-forward to the present day and, in Raymond Khoury's latest Sean Reilly adventure, Reilly's still trying to find the CIA agent who brainwashed his son. When a Russian diplomat jumps, or was pushed, to his death from his Queens apartment, Reilly's personal mission is put on hold as he investigates. Ferrone's layered performance creates an atmosphere in which darkness hovers, and when shocking secrets are revealed, his intensity is catching. Exciting listening. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine