New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor (Operator Down, 2018, etc.) presents another chilling, all-too-plausible plot in his latest nail-biting thriller.
In Monaco to stop the sale of stolen data between North Korea and Syria, Pike Logan and the rest of his Taskforce team have been ordered to make sure that the top-secret information, which supposedly contains vital intelligence on a number of important members of the United States government, never changes hands. Instead, Pike and company discover that they’ve got the mission all wrong.
The good news is that North Korea isn’t hawking info stolen from the Chinese, after all. The bad news, though, is that they’re moving something much worse: a deadly chemical called Red Mercury.
Extremely poisonous and nearly untraceable, Red Mercury poses a very real and present danger to America and the rest of the world. The story takes another turn, however, when Amena, a young Syrian refugee who relies on her skills as a petty thief to feed herself and her brother, accidentally lifts a new iPhone that contains the details of the attack from the pocket of a Syrian intelligence officer. Suddenly, everyone from the North Koreans to the Syrians and even the Russians are in pursuit of Amena, who has no clue that she’s in possession of the one thing that could cause the murderous plot to fail.
With the clock ticking down and bad guys closing in on her from every direction, it’s once again up to Pike Logan to find Amena and save the day before it’s too late . . . and this time, he’s got his work cut out for him.
By now readers know about Taylor’s (a retired lieutenant colonel) military background, including eight years in 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, commonly known as Delta Force. Few authors can put that on their resumes, and while there’s no question that Taylor knows his way around an action scene better than most — constantly interjecting a gritty authenticity to his stories — it’s hard to believe that writing wasn’t his first career. Armed with a strong prose and natural storytelling ability, Brad Taylor continues to dominate the military thriller genre, and it’s not close.
While Pike Logan is the star of the series (and part-time narrator), Taylor has done an exceptional job developing a deep cast of characters over the years to compliment him. More specifically, he has always written smart, kickass women into his thrillers, a trend that continues here with the introduction of Amena. Readers have already taken to Shoshana and Jennifer Cahill (Koko gets plenty of screen time in this one), and, without giving anything away, there’s a solid chance that Amena, who steals every scene she’s in, becomes the next fan-favorite in a long line of strong secondary characters occupying Pike’s universe. That’s not to say that Logan doesn’t shine here, he does, but with other authors suddenly scrambling to write strong female characters in their respective series, it’s worth noting that Taylor has done it better and longer than nearly everyone else.
Nobody delivers quite like Brad Taylor. Ripped from the headlines and packed with plenty of suspense and nonstop action every step of the way, Daughter of War is the first must-read action thriller of 2019.
Book Details
Author: Brad Taylor
Series: Pike Logan #13
Pages: 400 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 1101984848
Publisher: Dutton
Release Date: January 8, 2019
Book Spy Rating: 9.0/10
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.