January 1, 2022

In Bentley's Tom Clancy Zero Hour, Jack Ryan Jr. is interviewing a Campus prospect in Seoul when North Korea's leader is devastatingly injured, prompting a power struggle among sleeper agents in South Korea. In Berry's The Omega Factor, UNESCO investigator Nicholas Lee is following a lead to the long-missing 12th panel of the relentlessly plundered Ghent Altarpiece when he stumbles upon a centuries-old conflict between some no-nonsense nuns called the Maidens of Saint-Michael and the Vatican, desperate to grab a secret the maidens guard (200,000-copy first printing). Having appeared in six best-selling DeMille novels, retired NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey is hanging out at his uncle's waterfront estate on Long Island when he heeds a call to help find a serial killer who is dispatching prostitutes and burying them along the beach in The Maze (originally scheduled for June 2021; 500,000-copy first printing). Pulled from the icy Pacific and presumed dead, a revived Elle can remember little except her name in Dodd's stand-alone, Point Last Seen, but it surely looks to rescuer Adam like someone tried to kill her (75,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). What could be Red on the River in the next exemplar of Romantic suspense from Feehan, which is set in the Sierra Nevada mountains? When tomb raiders kill archaeologist Riley Smith's father after he discovers the burial site of Helen of Troy, Riley seeks revenge while asking forensic sculptor Eve Duncan to reconstruct A Face To Die For (100,000-copy first printing). Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have their hands full in Knott's Robert B. Parker's Opium Rose when the daughter of Virgil's half-brother arrives in Appaloosa, having fled San Francisco following the death of her lawyer husband; apparently, he was involved in a big opium operation. In Escape, a follow-up to Patterson's Black Book, a rich-as-Croesus crime lord breaks out of jail and leaves a taunting note for crack Chicago detective Billy Harney, who he knew would be called to the scene (300,000-copy first printing). In Quirk's Red Warning, CIA officer Sam Hudson is nearly blown up in Geneva as he obsessively tracks Russian mole Konstanin, then dodges bombs back in Washington, DC, when Konstanin follows him home (125,000-copy first printing).

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April 18, 2022
The prologue of the rousing ninth Jack Ryan Jr. novel, bestseller Bentley’s second contribution to the Clancy franchise (after 2021’s Target Acquired), reveals that North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Choi Ha-guk, has been badly injured while observing the test of a Russian prototype nuclear missile at a North Korean test facility, where a North Korean Politburo member sees the Supreme Leader’s incapacity as “the opportunity of a lifetime.” Meanwhile, in Seoul, Campus operations officer Jack and his fellow Campus member and potential girlfriend, Lisanne Robertson, plan to interview a PhD student for a job, but Jack gets caught in a violent protest. Also in Seoul are two Green Beret snipers who are swept up in a random gunfight with who they think are members of the Korean National Police. Bentley expertly knits all these threads into an intricate plot in which all the good guys come together to try to thwart a dastardly North Korean scheme. Readers will find all the operational and technical details they’ve come to expect from a Tom Clancy book. There’s more than enough deadly action to satisfy any military adventure fan. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Agency.