Blood Pact

Hagberg's fast-paced 17th Kirk McGarvey thriller (after 2012's Castro's Daughter) finds McGarvey, a former CIA director and longtime field operative, trying to find normalcy in his new, quieter life as a philosophy professor at the University of Florida, especially in the wake of his wife and daughter's deaths in a failed attempt on McGarvey's own life. However, as many of his former colleagues note, trouble always finds him. A subsequent visit from a representative of the mysterious Voltaire Society sets off a chain of violent events that leaves McGarvey on the run, pursued by members of the society, the Vatican, the Spanish government, and a Cuban intelligence operation. Everyone is after the long-lost diary of a Catholic priest, supposedly containing directions to the location of four hidden caches of gold in the New Mexico desert. Plenty of action and an intriguing cast of spies and hit men will keep readers turning the pages. (Mar.)