Berkeley Heights Public Library

Dark Angel

by John Sandford

Publishers Weekly In bestseller Sandford’s strong sequel to 2022’s The Investigator, Sen. Christopher Colles needs the skills of investigator Letty Davenport, who once worked for the powerful senator, who helped her get her current job with the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. Colles wants her to go undercover to infiltrate Ordinary People, a group of American hackers who infiltrated the Russian rail system. The group maintained total control over Russian trains for months until $50 million in ransom was paid, but now the U.S. government fears that Ordinary People may be setting its sights on their own country. Evidence that the hackers are poking around natural gas networks has led Colles to worry that they may turn off natural gas for a northern city or cities in the middle of winter. Given that restarting that heating source could take weeks, such a cyberattack could cause massive fatalities. Letty agrees to the hazardous assignment, only to learn her mentor has another objective. Sandford keeps his foot on the gas throughout, without stretching plausibility too far. Lee Child fans will be hooked. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (Apr.)

Kirkus Letty Davenport seeks to infiltrate a group of freelance hackers in order to thwart their next project—or maybe to help it along. Ordinary People, an anti-MAGA cabal of lefties, has already pulled off a string of small-scale disruptions, and the word from the CIA is that they plan to take down the power in the Twin Cities, where Letty grew up. Sen. Christopher Colles, the unofficial boss who’s been impressed by Letty’s unflappable skills with weaponry, wants her to pose as the girlfriend of National Security Agency computer specialist Rod Baxter as he seeks to hook up with Ordinary People across the country in California. After their first attempt goes spectacularly wrong, their forces are beefed up by CIA operative Barbara Cartwright and Department of Homeland Security investigator John Kaiser, who worked with Letty in The Investigator (2022), and they succeed in getting close to Craig Sovern, a prominent Ordinary Person who’s already been wreaking havoc on a number of railroad trains and plans to go bigger and bolder. And these aren’t just any trains. Realizing that Ordinary People’s attacks on the hate-fueled social media platform SlapBack may be a sign that their larger operations are providing an important service to the cause of world peace, Letty and her peeps switch from trying to bring down the organization to trying to protect it from the likes of Russian agent Arseny Stepashin and his trusted contractor Tom Boyadjian—all while keeping everything hush-hush. Yeah, right. Sandford alternates brisk action sequences with a steady stream of revelations that make equivocal players and their ambiguous relations even more complicated. A female-forward thriller that makes a strong case that smart, unflinching women should run the world. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal After investigator Letty Davenport partners with agent Barb Cartwright, she's invited to a private club, the Washington Ladies Peace-Maker Society. It's a shooting club with a difference; the women are all killers. Her friendships come in handy when she needs backup on her next assignment. The National Security Agency asks Letty to partner with a man who specializes in computers. The two will head to California, trying to meet up with a group called Ordinary People, hackers who might be planning to shut down the natural gas supply in a northern city. But Letty doesn't trust the NSA connection. When she discovers that the hackers have messed with Russian train schedules, she realizes she's been picked to protect the hackers on a secret assignment—hack into the Russian train schedules as Russia plans to invade Ukraine. However, Letty will need to bring in more protection when the Russians attempt to stop the hackers. VERDICT While the Russia/Ukraine hacking scheme already seems historical, the second Letty Davenport thriller (after The Investigator) will satisfy Sandford's numerous readers, with its high-octane action and gallows humor.—Lesa Holstine

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