"Outstanding cat and mouse caper"

Teddy Fay worked for the CIA for forty years, eventually becoming a Tech Services coordinator and when he retired, he erased all his files in the Agency's computers. They have no pictures or fingerprints of the man who disappeared with astonishing ease. He started killing Right Wing politician including the Speaker of the House and when he was close to being caught, he blew up the plane he was flying and jumped out into the ocean.

While the FBI and CIA think he is dead, Teddy relocates to New York when he starts killing terrorists, the enemies of America as he calls them. A joint FBI-CIA task force is formed and one of the CIA members is Holly Barker, the former Chief of Police in Orchid Beach, Florida. They recruited her and she eagerly grabbed the chance to become an operative. She is the only agent to see Teddy and she is in the forefront of the investigation as Teddy tries to avoid the agents while continuing on his mission.

The antagonist is the focus and the star of IRON ORCHID as he calmly hacks into CIA and FBI computers with the help of an inside source. Readers will be simultaneously drawn to and repelled by this character who marches to his own drummer. The protagonist takes to her CIA training like a duck to water and is able to carry her share of the work load on her uses first case as an agent. Stuart Woods has written a compelling and entertaining cat and mouse caper.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted October 1, 2005

Summary

Holly Barker, the small-town cop turned CIA agent, tracks a master of disguise-and a consummate killer. Iron Orchid, Stuart Woods's latest in the Holly Barker series, pits the no-nonsense cop against a very elusive killer-Teddy Fay, a villain first introduced in Capital Crimes-and the sparks fly. Authorities thought they had seen the last of Teddy Fay- the ex-CIA tech wizard who kills his political targets for sport-when his plane exploded off the coast of Maine. But they underestimated him once, and they're in danger of doing so again. Now they've found irrefutable evidence that he is alive and on his way to hit a group who will never see him coming. Holly, having resigned her position as the Orchid Beach Chief of Police to work for the CIA, joins the elite task force tracking Fay in New York City. There, she begins to suspect that there are boulders being left unturned in the investigation. Fay seems privy to too many secrets-and employs tricks only an insider would know. He begins to pick off America's enemies one by one-and no one seems the wiser. Can Holly trail her quarry and beat him at his own game? Can she get close enough to find him, and still keep her cover? A chance meeting between Holly and Fay kick- starts a high-speed chase through the canyons of midtown Manhattan, the Metropolitan Opera house, Central Park, and the United Nations Plaza, all to prevent another assassination before Fay disappears again-maybe this time for good. With the signature mix of slick repartee and rapid-fire action that has won Stuart Woods many fans over the years, Iron Orchid confirms just why he is a master of the popular crime novel.