Publishers Weekly
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Anna Vaughn, star of this fun if flimsy thriller from Quirk (Inside Threat), is a B-list actor slumming it in TV action dramas. She knows how to handle fake guns and pull her punches, but when her friend Natalie doesn’t return from a night of bar-hopping in New York City, she vows to use her fists for real. Her doggedness attracts the attention of FBI agent Kevin Matthews, who’s also looking for Natalie and agrees to give Anna a crash course in personal protection if she’ll help the Bureau with its investigation. Soon, Anna is kicking and head-butting her way through an underworld of paid muscle, creepy hit men, and Arab oligarchs with bizarre sexual fixations like Crown Prince Aslan, who hails from a country called the Republic. Just as Anna is about to rescue Natalie, it dawns on her that Matthews may not be who he claims. The plot has holes—Aslan’s intentions are muddy at best, as is a subplot concerning Anna’s troubled sister—but it moves with the exuberance Quirk is known for, which is almost enough to paper over the implausibility of Anna’s overnight transformation from actress to guerrilla fighter. Though it’s far from the author’s best, this has its pleasures. Agent: Don Conaway, Writers House. (Jan.)

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Readers who head into this breathless thriller are likely to sense the ghosts. The MacGuffin, the item that the story centers around, gets the plot going. Here, it’s a briefcase containing delicious videos featuring the world’s most powerful people behaving poorly. Anna Vaughn, a New York television actress and the focus of the novel, joins the hunt after learning that a good friend who briefly held the briefcase has vanished and may be dead. Anna’s no fragile flower. She does TV fights without stand-ins, and she’s had extensive martial arts training—which she will need as we meet the second ghost. He’s a Bond-ish nut case, major royalty in a tiny Baltic country suddenly found to be floating in oil. He plans to use his monstrous new wealth to achieve world dominion. Anna closes in on him, and the novel becomes a series of fights, chases, and gun battles that risk leaving readers almost as battle-weary as Anna. But the author’s energy, and an unadorned writing style, keep the momentum going.

Library Journal
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Exactly how good an actress is Anna Vaughn? The answer to this question could mean the difference between life and death for her. Enjoying a relaxing evening of movie-watching and industry-bashing with her friend Natalie Harris, Anna overhears Natalie taking a cryptic phone call. Natalie then tries to convince Anna to join her for a night out on the town. After passing up on the offer, Anna heads home, but when she tries to track down Natalie the next day, she discovers that her friend has vanished. While trying to discover what happened to Natalie, Anna crosses paths with FBI agent Kevin Matthews, who convinces Anna to go undercover for him and follow Natalie's trail to help find her. Quirk knows a thing or two about suspense (his novel The Night Agent has recently been adapted as a Netflix series), and this new stand-alone delivers all the propulsive pacing, twisty plotting, and nonstop action suspense readers crave as well as a marvelously memorable heroine, who gives as good as she gets when it comes to throwing down with the bad guys. VERDICT Fans of superior thrillers in the style of Chris Pavone, Joseph Finder, and even early Robert Ludlum will find Quirk's latest equally enthralling.—John Charles