Keep Calm

December 14, 2015
In the gripping opening of screenwriter Binder’s first novel, a tense political thriller, a bomb explodes during a high-powered conference at 10 Downing Street, seriously injuring Prime Minister Roland Lassiter. Adam Tatum, an American ex-cop now working for a powerful British-owned investment firm, becomes the prime suspect, because his presence during the conference was seemingly last-minute. With Lassiter out of commission, Georgia Turnbull, the first female chancellor of the exchequer, assumes his duties. Davina Steel, the head of an antiterrorism unit, leads the investigation into the bombing. Meanwhile, Adam goes on the run with his family. Davina proves her mettle, despite her youth, her insight having been honed by observing customers and the streets near her parents’ Bloomsbury cafe. Amid an exposition-laden plot with a surfeit of characters, only Georgia and Davina are worth caring about. Their relationship brings a much-needed humanity to this tale of betrayal at the highest levels of government and business. Agent: Adam Levine, Verve.

December 1, 2015
An American ex-cop is suckered into a plot to overthrow the British prime minister in this debut thriller by the director/writer. Adam Tatum has lost his job after taking part in a politically motivated--and illegal--union scheme. He rebounds by landing a corporate job with the help of his English father-in-law. Selected to travel to the U.K. as part of a high-level business deal, he discovers he's been used as patsy when the deal turns out to be a cover for a plot to take over the British government. Tatum comes under suspicion and goes on the run. The competently handled plotting moves on parallel tracks between Adam's travails and the investigation of Davina Steel, the savvy young British agent who begins to realize Adam is not the culprit he's assumed to be. But the book is unpleasant, using mayhem directed toward women as a plot device without according their suffering any weight. Adam is framed for beating up a call girl, and though his manipulators make the charges go away, there's not a word about the fate of the girl. Davina can't simply be threatened to stop investigating the power broker she suspects is guilty, she has to be tied to the bed in her parents' home and digitally raped. It's not just women who get a raw deal, either. This is the sort of book where as soon as someone exhibits bravery or selflessness, you know he's dead. The author even stoops to shooting a few dogs to toughen up a scene. It adds up to nearly 400 pages of bad things happening to people you haven't been made to care about. It's one thing for thrills to come cheap, but they needn't be so unimaginative or so lacking in finesse.

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December 1, 2015
Binder has produced an elegant thriller, with a plot that uncurls so effortlessly the reader is guyed along as easily as the hero. Adam Tatum could be drawn from stock: a cop sacked for a monumental blunder, trying to rebuild his life. His wifeyes, this rough-and-tumble guy is married, with two young children, and Binder is so good he can blend family drama with darker goings-on without weakening eitherhas had her Brit father help Adam land a job with the Michigan branch of a London financial firm. They're all summoned to London and ensnared in a high-level screwball scheme to help the country by hurting it. But it's not just the plot that grips. Binder involves us in the characters' emotional lives to a jarring degree. When a brutalized cop gets revenge on her tormentor, we worry about her. A good man we've come to like is killed, and we nearly drop the book. And when we learn which high-level government official is behind the plot, for a moment we don't believe it. A thriller with resonance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)