The Wayward Assassin

In 2004, CIA analyst Maggie Jenkins is assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, where she learns that a school in Beslan, a town some thousand miles south of the capital, is under siege by Chechen rebels, in Ouellette’s entertaining sequel to 2021’s The Wayward Spy. While viewing images from inside the school intercepted from Russian sources, Maggie believes she recognizes her fiancé’s murderer, Zara Barayeva, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. After arriving in Beslan, the intrepid Maggie goes rogue and is soon on the trail of the woman everyone, except Maggie, thought was dead. The action races from Russia to London before returning to the Washington, D.C., area, where Maggie must stop Zara’s “most spectacular operation yet.” Ouellette, herself a former intelligence analyst for the CIA, imbues the exciting action with authenticity. Readers will want to see more of the wily Maggie, whose exploits have led her colleagues to brand her as either “a legend in the making” or “a loose cannon liable to ignore the rules when they got in her way.” Agent: Steven Hutson, WordWise Media. (Mar.)