Fox Hunter

June 19, 2017
Sharp’s uneven 12th Charlie Fox thriller (after 2016’s Absence of Light) takes the close protection specialist to Iraq. Charlie once had a career with the British army, until she was gang-raped by a group of fellow soldiers. The men were acquitted, and Charlie left the army. Years later, she has learned to live with this traumatic experience, but only recently has she spoken of it to her on-again, off-again lover, Sean Meyer, a close protection colleague. Sean, who suffered a near-fatal head injury a few months earlier, has now gone off the grid and appears to be seeking revenge on Charlie’s behalf, tracking down the men responsible in Iraq, where many are private military contractors. Charlie’s boss believes that Sean tortured Michael Clay, one of her rapists, to death. Charlie doubts Sean would have been so brutal, and though her job is to find and stop Sean, she must also figure out what’s really going on. Sharp spares no gruesome, or technical, details, but the heart of previous books is missing in this entry, to its detriment.

June 15, 2017
Charlotte "Charlie" Fox (Absence of Light, 2016, etc.), a tough-as-beef-jerky former British soldier who works private security, travels to Iraq to find her former lover in Sharp's latest meticulously detailed adventure.Charlie left the military in disgrace following her rape at the hands of four of her former squad-mates, but she wasn't the only one affected by the incident. Another Special Forces solider, Sean Meyer, also lost his career due to the blowback and eventually became Charlie's lover. Sean formed Armstrong-Meyer, a successful security partnership with Parker Armstrong, and Charlie also went to work there. Following a shooting, Sean and Charlie split, and as this book opens, Parker has dispatched her to Iraq, where Sean's gone missing, to try to track him down and determine whether or not he killed Michael Clay, one of the men who raped Charlie. While looking into Clay's death, Charlie meets another former soldier named Luisa Dawson, who sets off with Charlie to piece together what happened to Clay and why. Dawson, another woman in a heavily male profession, and Charlie are soon abducted and warned off the investigation by a group of brutal and heavily armed Russians who won't tell the women why they're interested in Clay's death or why they want them gone. Soon, Charlie and Dawson are on a convoluted trail involving a ghost from Charlie's past and some missing artifacts. Charlie is no girly-girl; she's tough, driven, and very, very deadly. Sharp's series featuring the troubled and violent Charlie stands out for its knowledgeable and convincing situations and well-crafted action sequences. When Charlie talks tactics, weapons, or reconnaissance, it rings true. Sharp writes her as emotionally disillusioned and vulnerable but never helpless. Charlie's more likely to do the rescuing than be bailed out herself. Nonstop action and an intricate plot weave together to create another thrill ride for fans of Sharp's heroine--though the book is heavily dependent on back story that readers of her previous adventures will find easier to follow.

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Starred review from July 1, 2017
Charlie Fox is on a mission that brings back a painful episode in her past. Years earlier she was raped by four of her fellow Special Forces traineesDonaldson, Hackett, Morton, and Claywith charges against them dropped by the colonel in command. Now Clay is found mutilated and murdered in Iraq shortly after Sean MeyerCharlie's former sergeant and lover and current bosswas seen nearby. With Sean a suspect for seeking revenge on her behalf, Charlie is tasked with finding and stopping him, knowing that he has changed since being shot in the head and lying comatose for months. Charlie soon ascertains Sean's innocence but determines that she must prove it by finding the real killer. Despite her injuries from a previous assignment, Charlie ignores IEDs, ambushes, and a warning to go home. Instead, she teams up with three other strong women in thwarting the smuggling of Iraqi antiquities, bringing Clay's murderer to justice, nabbing men raping Iraqi women, and revealing the misogyny at the heart of her own assaults. Charlie is a highly skilled killer, well aware of her capability for violence, with a moral underpinning that adds to her complexity, particularly here. Gritty, hard-hitting, all-around outstanding crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)