Ronie Kendig’s “Dead Reckoning”

If you like suspense novels filled with explosions, kidnappings, international espionage, chase scenes through crowded markets, murders, shootings, nuclear devices set to go off, bombings, and other forms of general mayhem with a strong theme of romance, then Ronie Kendig’s Dead Reckoning is waiting for you. In fact, I suspect all 12 of Kendig’s novels are waiting for you.

I’m still trying to catch my breath after reading Dead Reckoning.

Shiloh Blake is a graduate student in underwater archaeology at the University of California-San Diego. She’s with a team not far off the coast from Mumbai, India, investigating an underwater site that may be a lost city. Just as she finds an odd cylinder, there’s shooting above on the surface. All of her colleagues have been shot; only one survives – Khalid Khan, a Pakistani national who’s more than a little in love with Shiloh.

Neither Shiloh nor Khaled know why their team was attacked. The Indian Coast Guard responds to the distress call, and on the boat is an American, Reece Jaxon, whom, we eventually learn, is a CIA operative in India. (For the record, only Shiloh Blake and Reece Jaxon have Hollywood-style names; the other characters’ names are more prosaic.)

Khaled survives his surgery, but men claiming to be local police come looking for Shiloh. She escapes and eventually connects to Reece again. He’s been assigned to guard her, although she doesn’t know that and he doesn’t tell. What they do know is that someone is desperate to get hold of Shiloh, both for what she knows and what she has. She’s essentially chased all over Mumbai and survives several murder attempts, including a bombing at a train station. What’s at stake is a plan by a terrorist group to turn the Mideast upside down.

Ronie Kendig

And, not unexpectedly, Reece and Shiloh fall in love with each other, although it appears to be more like a love-hate-and-possibly-betrayal kind of relationship. Both of them turn out to have CIA baggage, Reece’s being a failed operation where an operative died and Shiloh’s being her father, who’s also a CIA operative (and the man who trained Reece).

If this sounds confusing, I’ll take the blame (or credit). The story doesn’t have to be read that closely to follow it and understand what’s happening. And while many of the events and plot developments may seem improbable, Kendi’s writing is such that you can suspend belief and get wrapped up in the story.

This is faith-based fiction (Reece Jaxon is a Christian believer) and while there are scenes of some passion, they don’t stray to the explicit.

Well-written, fast-paced and action-packed, Dead Reckoning may be exactly the kind of book to read by the pool this summer. As long as you don’t mind all the bodies left on the ground.

Photograph: "Taj Mahal Palace Hotel" by Joe Ravi. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. The hotel plays a role in the book, and yes, it was the site of the 2008 terrorist attacks.

William Brown's "Thursday at Noon"

Richard Thomsen is a CIA agent, sitting in a backstreet British bar in Cairo in 1962. He’s been sent away from Damascus after a failed operation, and no one in Cairo, especially the American ambassador, wants to have anything to do with him. An Egyptian comes into the bar and wants to give him an envelope of photographs. Thomsen refuses, and a short time later the Egyptian is found – beheaded.

Something is going on, and the more Thomsen tries to avoid it, the more ensnared he becomes. Captain Hassan Saleh of the Cairo Metropolitan Police suspects him of involvement in the beheading. Colonel Ali Rashid of Egyptian state security would like to see him dead. The American ambassador would like to see him out of the country. And a few former SS officers are hunting him.

Something is going on, all right, and it’s happening at an old British air base at Heliopolis, 15 miles south of Cairo. It may well change the Middle East forever. And it’s happening within a few short days – on Thursday, at noon. Elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and former Nazis have two targets in their sights – Tel Aviv and Haifa.

William Brown, author of Amongst My Enemies and several other books, has written one terrific, action-packed story in Thursday at Noon. While it’s set in 1962, it feels as contemporary as the protests in Tabriz Square and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. The passion, the politics, the explosive combination of personal ambition and religious fervor all sound straight out of today’s newspaper headlines.

The author uses historical figures like Gamel Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s president at the time, along with fictitious characters to create a riveting story if intrigue and duplicity. You’re never quite sure who’s going to betray whom next, or what new near-death experience Thomsen is going to have, and that fills the story with tension that won’t stop.

Brown deftly swirls all of this together into a tight, readable story. Thursday at Noon is one terrific read.

Related:

Review of Brown’s Amongst My Enemies