In the Blood

Bestseller Carr’s fast-paced fifth Terminal List thriller (after 2021’s The Devil’s Hand) finds CIA operative James Reece, a former Navy SEAL, at his ranch in Flathead Valley, Mont., when he learns that a commercial airliner was shot down shortly after takeoff from Ouagadougou, Burkino Faso, killing everyone aboard. Reece recognizes one of the victims from a photo displayed on a TV news program: Aliya Galin, a Mossad assassin whose life Reece saved on a shared mission in Baghdad in 2008. Reece flies to Washington, D.C., where his boss, the director of the CIA’s Special Activities Center, tells him terrorist Nizar Kattan was responsible for bringing down the plane. Reece decides to seek revenge on Kattan for Aliya as well as for Freddy Strain, an old SEAL pal who recruited him to the CIA and was killed by Kattan years before. Meanwhile, Kattan is hunting Reece, hoping to fulfill a contract for Reece’s death assigned by the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. The action builds to a gripping final sniper vs. sniper shoot-out between Reece and Kattan. Military action fans will get their money’s worth. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. (May)