“So,” Vail said, “William Shakespeare, white bread legend of national and international stature, wasn’t a white church-going Catholic but a black Jewish woman.” Okay, I can see that not sitting well with some. “But that was over four hundred years ago, and my job is to assess the threat as it stands now.”

“Fine. Fast-forward to the present. There’s considerable unrest among a rising minority base in this country. British society is under pressure from an Arab Islamic population that’s growing rapidly. And there’s a substantial population of disadvantaged minorities that are aligned against the white establishment, an establishment that supports the Shakespeare fiction through high-browed elitist organizations like the government backed British Shakespeare Academy.

“Given everything the government’s dealing with, keeping the peace, if proof emerged that Shakespeare was actually a minority woman, it’d almost be too much for the country to bear.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (FEB 6, 2014)

Karen Vail finds herself in a different role and a different country in No Way Out, the fifth book in the series by Alan Jacobson. Karen, an FBI profiler, is sent to England to assist Scotland Yard in a theft of a key document that she finds out may show that Amelia Bassano Lanier, a woman who also happens to have been Jewish and black, actually was the author of all of the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare. Karen, though soon realizes that something is just not correct with Gavin Paxton, the curator of the gallery that owns the Shakespeare document. She suspects that he may have been involved in the bombing attempt to destroy the document. She also doesn’t fully understand why Hector DeSantos is there (as Hector Cruz) and pushes him to tell the truth. He is slow to bring her into his covert operations which only annoys and fuels Karen more. He eventually tells her that she may be right about Paxton as they suspect he is Hussein Rudenko, a terrorist who sells deadly weapons to the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and other terrorist organizations. She is soon pulled into a very much different adventure that finds her traveling all over England and at times being on the wrong side of Scotland Yard that she is there to help. Overall, Jacobson has written an interesting well researched adventure.

There is humor in this generally fast paced book, especially with Karen and her misunderstanding of the “improper” English of the British.

As they reached the second landing, Reid said, “Oh—what was that about the guv’nor being a bad Frisbee player?”
Vail shrugged, “He said he’s been known to throw a wobbly.”
Reid snorted. “It means to throw a tantrum, have a fit.”
Vail stepped outside, into the rain. “Why can’t you Brits just speak English?”

I read some “action thriller” books, but over the years, I’ve been reading less and less primarily since they tend to be a bit too unbelievable and are not as much character based as I prefer. To me, the best thrillers keep me interested from start to finish and are so well paced that I can ignore how fast things occur and how ridiculous some of the circumstances and the character decisions are. No Way Out has a lot of these situations with Karen and Hector doing things that no person, no matter how well trained is likely to do. Jacobson obviously has experience and research on his side to present what appear to be accurate historical and present day accounts of England (only a few guns but a lot of video cameras everywhere!). This is somewhat of a balancing act however in presenting interesting and believable background that could, in the wrong hands, slow down the pace too much. For the most part, Jacobson keeps the story moving although it is a bit uneven at times. This story may not work for everyone but overall I can recommend this book, especially to those that really enjoy action thrillers.

As a first-time reader of this series,  I was missing some back story about Karen Vail, especially since she was really not using her profiler skills that much. I wondered whether any of the US characters were in other books and if I should know about past relationships. Nonetheless, a new reader can follow along and enjoy the story. I certainly enjoyed the book enough to order (at a discount) the first two books in the series so I’ll eventually know if I was missing any key back story about Karen and the other characters.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 56 readers
PUBLISHER:	Premier Digital Publishing (September 17, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alan Jacobson
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	In the company of conspiratorial thrillers: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Bibliography:

• False Accusations (1999)
• The Hunted (2001)
• Hard Target (2012)

Karen Vail Series:

• The 7th Victim (2008)
• The Crush (2009)
• Velocity (2010)
• Inmate 1577 (2011)
• No Way Out (September 2013)

“The hitter was now reaching in to unlatch my door. I squinted in pain, grateful for the man’s delay. It meant that Alissa could gain more distance. My people would know our exact position through GPS and could have police here in fifteen or twenty minutes. Please, I thought, turning toward the path she’d be escaping down, the shallow creekbed.

Except that she wasn’t running anywhere.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (NOV 27, 2010)

Action-suspense master Deaver’s latest nail-biter pits the narrator, Corte, a government protection expert, known as a “shepherd,” against a ruthless “lifter,” Henry Loving, whose job is to grab the target – a DC cop – and extract information from him by any means possible, meaning torture, as we’ve already seen in a grisly prologue.

What this information is and who wants it are two of the questions Corte is trying to answer as he shepherds the cop, Ryan Kessler, and his wife and sister-in-law from one not-quite-safe house to another, setting traps and dodging bullets as they go.

Deaver fans get the non-stop pace we expect as the characters unfold in increments, raising more questions with every quirk and revelation. Corte, whose passion is board games and game theory, prides himself on humorless ingenuity and – if it weren’t for the lives at stake – would thoroughly enjoy pitting himself against a well-matched opponent like Loving.

The twists, reversals and double reversals keep the pace breakneck, while complicating the mix with various intelligence agencies and cops and, of course, the heavy hand of bureaucracy. Corte slowly reveals himself as not quite the automaton he tries to appear, and readers will hope to see more of him.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 116 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster (November 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jeffrey Deaver
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Burning Wire The Broken Window The Vanished Man The Stone Monkey

Bibliography:

Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs series:

• The Bone Collector (1997)
• The Coffin Dancer (1998)
• The Empty Chair (2000)
• The Stone Monkey (2002)
• The Vanished Man (2003)
• The Twelfth Card (2005)
• The Cold Moon (2006) *
• The Broken Window (2008)
• The Burning Wire (2010) *
• The Kill Room (June 2013)

Kathryn Dance* series:

• The Sleeping Doll (2007)
• Roadside Crosses (2009)
• XO (2012)

Rune series:

• Manhattan is my Beat (1980)
• Death of a Blue Movie Star (1990)
• Hard News (1991)

Stand-alone Mysteries and Thrillers:

• Voodoo (1988)
• Always a Thief (1989)
• Mistress of Justice (1993)
• The Lesson of her Death (1993)
• Praying for Sleep (1995)
• A Maiden’s Grave (1996)
• Devil’s Teardrop (1999)
• Speaking in Tongues (2000)
• The Blue Nowhere (2001)
• Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936
• The Bodies Left Behind (2008)
• Edge (2010)
• The October List (October 2013)

Stories:

• Twisted: The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver (2003)
• More Twisted: Collected Stores, Vol II (2006)
• Trouble in My Mind: The Collected Stories, Vol 3 (March 2014)

007:

• Carte Blanche (2011)

Writing as William Jefferies (Location Scout John Pelham Mystery series):

• Shallow Graves (1992)
• Bloody River Blues (1993)
• Hell’s Kitchen (2001)

Movies from Books:

• Dead Silence (1997) (based on A Maiden’s Grave)
• The Bone Collector (1999)

“The one thing I’ve learned on this job is never to underestimate a man’s capacity for evil. Even a good man’s.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (SEP 10, 2010)

Steve Vail, the title character in Noah Boyd’s The Bricklayer, throws bank robbers through plate glass windows in his spare time. Although he was an FBI special agent for three years earlier in the decade, he didn’t work well with authority and the association was terminated.

Now, his day job slapping cement between oblong red things in Chicago is interrupted by a woman who introduces herself as Kate Bannon, FBI Deputy Assistant Director, and she persuades Vail to go to Washington to hear out Director Lasker and Assistant Director Kaulcrick. They want to give Vail his badge and gun back. They need him to find a rogue agent who appears to have absconded with two millions dollars of federal money instead of delivering it to a fiendishly clever and murderous person or persons called “Rubaco Pentad.” There is some suspicion that the missing agent might actually belong to Rubaco Pentad, but a previous agent who earlier was sent into a perilous situation with one million dollars in payoff met a different fate, so Vail is cautious about jumping to any conclusions.

Why is the FBI sending out its agents with millions? Because Rubaco Pentad has already killed some prominent people and has threatened to take out more unless there is strict compliance with each of its demands. After Vail starts his investigation — for the challenge rather than renewed, formal employment — the Pentad demands that he make the next drop. This time, with three million in cash….

The Bricklayer is highly cinematic. It’s also rich in plot twists and some MacGyver-like ingenuity. For example: the obstacle courses (or rat runs) the Pentad forces those delivering its extortion money to engage are giant “Mousetraps” that require some agile mental and physical gymnastics. The final solution to this Pentad crime spree may not quite match the potential of the earlier set-up in terms of drama and imagination, but Boyd deserves kudos for keeping his basic story in the realm of the credible instead of sailing into something, uh, Scarpetta-ish or Dirk Pitt-ish. That noted, Vail himself is perhaps a little too much of a near superman. However, he joins a long list of such characters who headline successful fiction series. And, more importantly, most of the time his intelligent analysis of the criminal mind and his prowess on the field of violence are just the ticket in The Bricklayer. Unfortunately but not fatally, the least convincing of the usual elements in this thriller-with-a-movie-in-mind is the build-up of the attraction between Steve and Kate. Boyd seems at home concocting intricate crimes and their solutions, but his “Moonlighting”-style repartee is sometimes rather lame…although both characters and their teamwork are appealing and comfortable, even though familiar/formulaic.

Overall,  The Bricklayer is an adrenaline high. It’s a quick and entertaining roller coaster ride. It’s a fine start to a series that I look forward to continuing, perhaps both in print and on the screen….

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 82 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; Reprint edition (August 31, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Noah Boyd
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Interview with Noah Boyd
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another good spy read: The Book of Spies by Gayle Lynds

Bibliography:

• The Bricklayer (February 2010)
• Agent X (February 2011)