Night of the Cobra: A Sniper Novel

At the start of Coughlin and Davis’s middling eighth Sniper novel (after 2014’s On Scope), Marine Corps Sgt. Kyle Swanson faces off against a Somali warlord, Gen. Mohammed Farrah Hassan Aidid, and Aidid’s giant assassin, Omar Jama (aka the Cobra), in Mogadishu in 1992. Flash forward to 2014, and Kyle is out of the Marine Corps but still battling the forces of evil, now as a CIA officer. He’s again head-to-head against the Cobra, who he thought was seriously damaged and imprisoned back in Somalia. The Cobra implements an attack on the Mall USA, “the largest shopping mall in North America,” and Kyle must use all his many skills to stay alive to thwart it. Series fans will find, as usual, that the fight scenes are razor sharp and that the romantic interludes and Kyle’s mental quirks are simply something to put up with until the writers get to the good stuff. Agent: Jim Hornfischer, Hornfischer Literary Management. (Aug.)