Undeniable: A Nolan Kilkenny Thriller

In Grace’s fast-paced sixth thriller featuring former Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny (after 2007’s The Secret Cardinal), Nolan is about to donate a piece of his liver to Zeke Oakley, a two-year-old adopted boy whose parentage is unknown, when a doctor informs him that genetic testing shows that Nolan’s father, Sean Kilkenny, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, is also Zeke’s father. After Sean denies this, Nolan sets out to discover how Sean might have fathered Zeke in some way outside the usual. Nolan and his sidekick, CIA officer Roxanne Tao, get caught up in a high-level patrimony scam that’s eventually tied to a series of child abductions. Meanwhile, Chinese leaders are out to disgrace the newly elected pope, Yin Daoming, whom Nolan helped break out of a Chinese prison and escape to the west. Unfortunately, once all the plot threads are knit together and the DNA mystery solved, a lot of readers will be disappointed by the payoff. (Oct.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mischaracterized the nature of the scam that features in the plot.