No Survivors

January 5, 2009
Set in 1998, Cain’s solid sequel to his debut, The Accident Man
(2008), finds assassin Samuel Carver recovering in a private Swiss hospital from being brutally tortured. Unable to remember who he is or what he’s done in the past, he’s being cared for by his girlfriend, Alix Petrova, a former Russian spy. Meanwhile, oilman Waylon McCabe, who’s dying of cancer, decides he must bring on nuclear Armageddon so he can ascend to heaven in the Rapture. Lt. Gen. Kurt Vermulen has been trying to alert the U.S. government to the dangers of a small terrorist group known as al Qaeda, but no one will listen except the evil McCabe, who soon has the gullible Vermulen attempting to snag one of about a hundred suitcase nukes the Russians have secreted around the world. Eventually, Carver comes to his senses and sets out to find Alix, who’s left his bedside on her old bosses’ orders to seduce Vermulen. Most thriller fans will enjoy this roller-coaster action adventure ride.

January 1, 2009
A stone-cold killer returns from the dead to stop a plot to launch a holy war.

Pseudonymous British author Cain (The Accident Man, 2008) resurrects hit man Samuel Carver for another gritty adventure. As the novel opens, Carver is still recovering in a Swiss hospital, his mind splintered by torture. Struggling to pay for his care, his lover Alix Petrova reluctantly accepts a new assignment from Olga Zhukovskaya, her former handler in Russia 's intelligence service. Petrova 's mission: to cozy up to a renegade American soldier, Lt. General Kurt Vermulen, determined to defend his country from Islamic jihadists —at any price. She discovers Vermulen is key to a scheme financed by dying Texas oil baron and psychotic religious convert Waylon McCabe, who barely survived a plane crash orchestrated by Carver five years ago. The cabal 's goal is to incite a global war between Christianity and Islam by dropping a nuclear weapon on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The sequel 's commencement is a little sluggish, mostly because it takes Petrova 's absence to shock Carver into motion and nearly a quarter of the book to concoct Cain 's multifaceted conspiracy. The theatrical villains are a trifle over the top too, but Cain remains particularly adept at writing post-Bourne action sequences, and Carver is a first-rate action hero. Once the icy killer is jolted back to life, the story takes off rapidly with an aborted assassination attempt in Carver 's hospital room, a grueling training sequence in Norway and a healthy dose of spycraft as Carver and Petrova maneuver their way toward the conspiracy 's inner circle. Throw in a nail-biting stealth mission to secure the codes to the stolen suitcase bombs and an 11th-hour airborne endeavor to prevent Armageddon and the book makes for one hell of a weekend 's worth of entertainment.

Not the slam-dunk it might have been, but a worthwhile sophomore entry in a promising action franchise.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2009
Still recovering from the torture he endured in "The Accident Man", a traumatized and near catatonic Samuel Carver spends his time in a Swiss hospital awaiting visits from Alix Petrova, his former lover and the only person aware of his background as an assassin. With the money to pay for Carver's care running out and her old life as a Russian operative sucking her back in, Alix decides to accept an assignment. Her disappearance from Carver's bedside finally brings him out of his own head and onto Alix's trail. His dogged pursuit leads him to Waylan McCabe, a messianic Texas billionaire determined to launch a global holy war before he dies. To that end, McCabe seeks some nuclear suitcases that vanished during the Soviet Union's collapse, using an American military official to do his dirty work. Seducing this officer and discovering why he's consorting with double agents is Alix's task. And that's where Carver comes in. In this sequel, Carver, the hit man who takes jobs for the greater good, has developed into an even more interesting character. The torture he underwent, his painful recovery, and the very plausible plotting add depth to Cain's second thriller. Recommended for all public libraries.Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2009
The pseudonymous Cain doesnt shrink from tackling big topics. In the initial novel in this series, The Accident Man (2008), he hypothesized an explanation for the death of Princess Diana. Here, he gins up a demented, born-again Texas oil billionaire determined to incite Armageddon via a Russian suitcase nuke: Christians vs. Muslims. Samuel Carver, the Accident Man, who once before failed to kill the rapacious Texan, is a shattered husk in a Swiss sanatorium, but he must rouse himself to save the worldand rescue his lover, former KGB agent Alexandra Petrova. No Survivors is uneven. Action sequences are vividly written. Carvers use of common household products to single-handedly overwhelm a houseful of Georgian gangsters or bring down a corporate jet sounds plausible, and these scenes make hugely entertaining set pieces. In addition, the descriptions of locales as diverse as Kosovo, Geneva, and the Cte dAzur seem knowing. But character development is less skillful, and the apocalyptic plot, while essentially plausible, seems, well, too Bondian. Even so, there is plenty to like here for action-oriented thriller fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)