The Vanquished

December 12, 2016
In Putnam’s action-packed fourth Bruno Johnson novel (after 2016’s The Squandered), the ex-cop must once again leave his home in Costa Rica and return to Los Angeles, where the members of the Sons of Satan, an outlaw motorcycle gang with whom he tangled previously, are making trouble. Flashbacks to 1988 chart the story of Johnson’s partnership and affair with police trainee Sonja Kowalski and that affair’s tragic end. Back in the present, Bruno receives an unexpected phone call from Sonja. Bruno’s feisty, pregnant wife, Marie, accompanies Bruno to L.A., where Bruno reconnects with Karl Drago (who two decades earlier helped him take down the Sons of Satan), Sonja, and eventually FBI special agent Dan Chulack, who needs his assistance in a case involving the theft of a military drone and four Hellfire missiles. Putnam combines some surprising facets of Bruno’s past with some startling betrayals and plenty of violence. Agents: Mike and Susan Farris, Farris Literary Agency.