The Tenth Circle: A Blaine McCracken Novel

Readers will have no trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys in Land’s gung-ho 13th Blaine McCracken novel (after 2012’s Pandora’s Temple). McCracken, the operative who gets the call “when the SEALs or Delta have already passed on the mission,” single-handedly penetrates and destroys a massive underground nuclear facility in Iran, but that’s just the warm-up. A far greater threat involves the Rev. Jeremiah Rule, a twisted preacher who’s fomenting hatred of Islam and the U.S. government. At play is a weapon of mass destruction with links to the lost colony on Virginia’s Roanoke Island and the ghost ship the Mary Celeste, and McCracken and his comrades-in-arms, Sal Belamo and Johnny Wareagle, are the only ones who can prevent a horrific terrorist attack designed to bring America to its knees. A series of escalating clashes between the principals leads to a suitably climactic showdown. Agent: Bob Diforio. (Dec.)