The First Order

In bestseller Abbott’s fast-paced, high-octane fifth thriller featuring ex-CIA operative Sam Capra (after 2014’s The Inside Man), an unnamed prospective client offers master hit man Philip Judge $20 million to pull off “the most dangerous assassination in history”—the murder of Russian president Dmitri Morozov on American soil. The job seems like an inevitable suicide mission, until Judge gets an idea from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that would enable him to kill Morozov and live to enjoy the payday. Meanwhile, Sam desperately searches for his younger brother, Danny, who was supposedly murdered in the Hindu Kush six years earlier by a group calling itself the Brothers of the Mountain. Sam, who finds evidence that Danny’s death was staged, turns for help to his former colleagues in the Round Table, “a secret alliance that... tried to be a force for good in the world.” Abbott offers plenty of twists, though genre readers will find little that’s new, and Sam isn’t the most memorable series lead. Author tour. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown. (Jan.)