The Price You Pay

History catches up with Peter Ash in Petrie’s high-octane eighth adventure for the former Marine (following The Runaway). Awakened late one night by a noise from his kitchen, Peter finds his old friend, Lewis, in a state of distress. Teddy Wilson, one of Lewis’s former allies in a robbery crew known as the Heavy Lifters, has been attacked. Peter agrees to accompany Lewis back to Teddy’s cabin, where they find him alive but robbed of the notebooks that contained details about the Heavy Lifters’ jobs—all of which targeted criminal organizations. After knocking a few heads, Peter and Lewis track down the Albanian thugs who took Teddy’s journals, but not before the contents are emailed to a mysterious player who’s offering a hefty reward for information on Lewis’s old crew. From there, the race is on to see whether Peter and Lewis can identify and locate their foe before he gets to them first. Petrie nimbly combines small-unit action with cyber-sleuthing (courtesy of Peter’s partner, reporter June Cassidy) and rarely takes his foot off the gas during the narrative’s 400-plus pages. Adrenaline junkies will be in heaven. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary. (Feb.)