Danger Close

Boykin, a retired lieutenant general and founding member of the Delta Force, an elite special operations unit, teams up with adventure-travel author Morrissey (In High Places) for a hair-raising international military suspense thriller. Blake Kershaw goes undercover inside an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan to foil a plot to set off a nuclear device in the United States. The novel offers a fascinating, even sympathetic look into the brotherhood behind radical terrorism while showing how an operative narrowly stays alive to thwart disaster. Blake says to his "brothers" in the terrorist cell, "My government is corrupt. We say we believe in freedom of religion, but we do not." The plot is underdeveloped compared to the amount of attention paid to the hardware of military operations, which will satisfy readers who connect guns and religion. With descriptions of the hero killing in at least three scenes, the story contains more violence than most Christian fiction, but it's a vivid portrayal of spy work and the inner workings of a terror cell. (July)