The Honest Assassin

At the start of Carver's weak third Capt. Jay McCaulay thriller (after Back with Vengeance), MI5 agent Max Blake, who pursued Jay romantically in the previous book, appears at the house of Jay's current boyfriend, Bristol cop Tom Sutton. Bleeding from an arm wound, Max persuades Jay to meet a good friend of his, Sol Neill, in Paris the next day. Jay meets Sol as planned, then witnesses his murder in an alley, a killing later blamed on Max, who has unwittingly involved Jay with a mysterious organization known as the Garrison. The Garrison's tentacles appear to be everywhere, leaving Jay, Max, Tom, and a few close friends exposed to threats and retaliation. With Max's reappearance in her life, Jay finds herself once again torn between Max and Tom. Relying on rather heavy-handed melodrama, Carver fails to engage the reader as she has in earlier novels like Blood Junction (written as Caroline Carver) that explored issues as well as bogeymen. (Aug.)