The Breaker

November 15, 2020
Thwarting what seems like a run-of-the-mill holdup thrusts an ex-Marine into an international cybercrime plot. What seems simple and predictable turns complex and surprising in this thriller, the sixth in the Peter Ash series. The swiftly paced, action-dominated plot rushes headlong from its outset. Freelance journalist June Cassidy alerts series protagonist Ash to a bearded and "weird-looking dude" as she, Ash, and his sidekick, Lewis, meet for an outdoor coffee near the Milwaukee Public Market on a sunny October afternoon. The bearded man of interest holds up another man with an assault rifle and Ash tries to intervene. Ash momentarily throws the gunman off with two well-tossed honeycrisps, but not before the gunman takes a phone from his quarry and then escapes on an electric bike, leaving behind a pair of shades. "You don't steal a phone with an AK-74," Ash says, his curiosity about the incident compelling him to find out what the attacker was up to. Ash works with handicaps. An ex-Marine veteran of the Iraq War, he suffers from PTSD. Worse, the FBI wants him for the murder of a government employee Ash didn't commit, so the shaggy-haired Ash must work out of police sight. Ash doesn't work alone. Cassidy joins him, bringing keen investigative reportorial skills to the pursuit that do as much to solve the case as Ash and Lewis do with their athletics--this turns out not to be the macho-male dominated thriller it first seems to be. When the house Ash and Cassidy share is burgled, the sunglasses from the crime scene go missing. Then Cassidy is menaced by a thug in a van. To find out what they've stumbled on, they traverse the city, which Petrie describes sharply. The pair grab at straws--sharply sketched characters with seemingly tangential connections to the case--until a source offers a major clue: The holdup near the market may be connected to a Russian hacking attempt. Brisk, terse, and diverting.

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November 30, 2020
At the start of Thriller Award winner Petrie’s disappointing fifth Peter Ash novel (after 2020’s The Wild One), the PTSD-afflicted Iraq War vet is having coffee at Milwaukee’s Public Market with his buddy Lewis, a fellow vet, when a bearded man walks past with an assault rifle peeking out from under his jacket. Concerned the gunman might launch an attack, Peter and Lewis follow him, but he only tries to steal a man’s phone; Peter and Lewis thwart the robbery, but he escapes. The gunman turns out to be a young woman in disguise—Spark, a high-tech genius out to get revenge on techno-lord Vincent Holloway, an amoral megalomaniac who stole a valuable invention of hers. Peter ends up trying to save Spark from Holloway, who dispatches a creepy henchman to capture her. Petrie expertly handles the rotating points of view, but the big finale—an extended shoot-out between Peter’s gang and an army of Holloway’s lethal, highly intelligent robots—isn’t entirely persuasive. The action, supercharged with 007-style threats, builds to a rather abrupt conclusion. Series fans will hope that Peter returns to his old-school heroism next time around. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary.

January 8, 2021

Best-selling author Petrie (The Drifter) gives his Peter Ash character the possibility of redemption and freedom in his sixth novel. Ash, his friend Lewis, a fellow military veteran, and his girlfriend, June are enjoying a night out when Ash notices a man with a concealed gun in a public location. He and Lewis try to stop the shooting and only one man gets shot. Before the police arrive, though, the gunman and the victim both disappear. Ash, who is wanted by the FBI and Interpol for events in previous novels, receives an offer from a mysterious man to clear up his name entirely if he and Lewis can solve this mystery. The two men track the gunman while June searches for the injured victim, whom she believes she knows from her past. The novel moves quickly from action to action; the dialogue is quick and believable from each character. Petrie's Ash will find a large audience as the damaged man trying to get by and doing the right thing in dangerous situations. VERDICT Fans of Petrie's previous "Ash" novels and Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series will fly through this exciting story and wait eagerly for the next installment.--Jason L. Steagall, Arapahoe Libs., Centennial, CO

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2021
Early in this grand-scale actioner, a spook laments that his job, ""evaluating radical emerging technology,"" has been threatened by a data breach. This sparks a narrative that reintroduces author Petrie's ex-marine hero Peter Ash, who likes to rumble when violence can be ""cloaked in the disguise of being helpful."" It also propels a revenge drama played out on a field of computer gadgetry that is just what the spook feared. The drama begins when Ash forestalls a mass shooting in an outdoor market. The moment turns even stranger, and Ash's quest to know more brings fiery action scenes and a cast of offbeat characters: a 97-year-old, scotch-swilling bank-robber's widow and one of the genre's strangest hired killers: a jolly fat man who swings an axe. Ash and the reader learn that years ago a techno-gazillionaire cheated a talented novice out of several fortunes; the novice's revenge quest has uncovered something really frightening. The last fourth of the novel has Ash and his pals battling creatures out of a nightmare of ""radical emerging technology"" that has likely already emerged.

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