"fine suspense"

Agency computer specialist Tess Bailey helps field agent Jimmy Nash expedite his partner Lawrence Decker from a potentially deadly scene. That night Jimmy and Tess make love, but he leaves for Mexico without looking back. Not long afterward, Jimmy and Deck quit the Agency and when Tess learns she will not get a field job, she leaves too.

Tom Paolitti of Troubleshooters, Inc (see Out Of Control and Gone Too Far) hires Deck and Jimmy. He assigns Deck as the lead with Jimmy and three other people to go into Kazbekistan to retrieve the laptop of a reportedly dead terrorist Sayid. K-Stan has been closed to the West and is the most dangerous pit around, but an earthquake has devastated the capital and western relief workers are in country giving the team needed cover. However, a computer specialist is needed badly and Tess is the only available one. Because of circumstances, Tess and Jimmy are to pose as newlyweds. Since the attraction is great that should look realistic though Jimmy fears his feelings. As the danger mounts, the love between Tess and Jimmy blossoms, but he believes he is not good enough for her.

FLASHPOINT builds up the suspense slowly but grips the reader from start to finish. The key to the tale is that the "good guys" contain distinct characteristics so that the audience can delineate them. The earthquake scenario is realistic (Iran proves that). Though the hero insists too often that he is a bad guy in spite of his actions of doing nice things for innocent people, fans will enjoy this taut tale and hopefully Ms. Brockmann will follow with a romance for Deck.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted March 1, 2004

Read an Excerpt

From unrelenting action to intense emotion, from high- stakes drama to breakneck pacing, New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann is a novelist who does it all. Now after her blockbuster hardcover debut, Gone Too Far, Brockmann delivers an exciting new thriller about men and women operating where agents of the U.S. government cannot, where America's most ruthless enemies thrive—and where every step you take just might be your last....

Summary

Jimmy Nash has already lived two lives—and he can't talk about either of them. Formerly an operative of a top secret government agency, he has found a new job with a shadowy company called Troubleshooters, Incorporated. Created by a former Navy SEAL, Troubleshooters, Inc. helps anyone in desperate need—which provides a perfect cover for its other, more perilous objective: covert special operations.

Now Nash and a quickly assembled team of expert operators have come to the earthquake-ravaged country of Kazbekistan in the guise of relief workers. There, amid the dust and death, in a land of blood red sunsets and ancient blood feuds, they must track down a missing laptop computer that may hold secrets vital to national security.

To get it down, Nash does what he does best: break every rule in the book and manipulate those who can help him get what he needs. But this time, Nash may have met his match in Tess Bailey, a Troubleshooters operative with all the right instincts—and zero field experience. The deep attraction between them is immediate... and potentially volatile, with risk at every turn.

Now these two professionals must play out their dangerous games in the world's most dangerous place— isolated from their own government, cutting deals with people they can't trust, and guarding forbidden passions that threaten to compromise their crucial mission.