The Fury

Chicago vice detective Superstition Davis, the heroine of this competently written but overstuffed thriller from Thriller Award–finalist Gericke (Torn Apart), is devastated by the death of her border patrol agent husband during a gun battle with drug traffickers in Nogales, Ariz. The powers that be dispatch Superstition to Arizona to go after her husband’s killer, Jimmy Garcia, a powerful drug lord who slaughters anyone who gets in his way. Meanwhile, Garcia obtains warheads full of nerve gas that washed up on a Mexican beach in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico five years earlier. Flashbacks to WWII—in particular, to Unit 731, an unspeakably evil human-experimentation camp run by the Japanese in occupied Manchuria—help highlight the horror of biological warfare but prolong a story that already takes too long to reach the less than satisfying payoff. Some awkward dialogue and lame humor don’t help. Agent: Bob Diforio, D4EO Literary Agency. (Sept.)