Storming Heaven

This formulaic second novel starring maverick FBI agent Mark Beamon (after Rising Phoenix, 1997) suffers from contrived plotting, ponderous pacing and lapses of credibility. Now exiled to the rural environs of the Arizona bureau office, Beamon is called off the golf course to investigate what initially seems to be the murder of a couple by their disappeared teenaged daughter; although no federal crime is suggested until well into the investigation, G-man Beamon doesn't let details like jurisdiction bother him. And as it happens, young suspect Jennifer Davis has been kidnapped by the Kneissians, a sort of Mooney-like PTL Club, because she is in actuality the granddaughter of the sect's patriarch. The old man is dying, and he plans for her to take his place. However, his surrogate daughter, Sara, has other plans, and she uses the church's millions of members, billions of dollars and tentacular reaches into the highest levels of government and finance to ensure her own rise to power. All of which we know long before Beamon agonizingly figures it out. Suspended and thereby free to ""break the rules,"" Beamon pursues Jennifer's kidnappers through the snowy streets of Flagstaff, with far-fetched strokes of luck and acts of derring-do better suited to old cop shows than to a novel. Shot through with cliches, inane dialogue and unnecessary accounts of Beamon's propensity for strong drink and tobacco, the novel slips along to a highly predictable conclusion. Rights, William Morris Agency. (Aug.)