Double Tap

April 1, 2024
After an apparent assassination attempt, a retired CIA operative dives back into the espionage trenches to save her son. Helen Warwick beams with pride as her son, Mitch, announces his candidacy to serve as district attorney of Washington, D.C., a position he's temporarily filled since his boss was gunned down three months earlier. The crowded press conference is disrupted when the hyperalert Helen notices a tiny flash of green light on her son's chest and springs into action, slamming him out of harm's way. The skepticism she's greeted with ignites her anger. Her urgency to neutralize the would-be assassin is a big enough carrot to lure her out of retirement and back to the CIA. Boss James Wagner pinpoints the threat as the insidious group Scorpius, the same cabal that targeted Helen in her debut appearance in Second Shot (2023). The gravity of the situation is driven home when her briefing by Andrew Mizuki, Wagner's second in command, is punctuated by his suspicious death before her very eyes. Dees fills Helen's path to a final showdown with an array of shady characters. An unusual and apparently unconnected subplot simmers beneath the main action before its relevance is disclosed. The chief attraction is not the slow-moving plot but the heroine, a juicy combination of motherliness, brainpower, and cold brutality. Helen even orders opposition research on her beloved Mitch, hoping to find the motive for his targeting. You have to love a spy who can promise only a single weekend free of killings: "No murders before Monday." Assassins and agents, like fine wines, improve with age.

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May 6, 2024
Retired CIA assassin Helen Warwick tracks down an old foe in Dees’s entertaining if far-fetched sequel to Second Shot. When a sniper nearly takes out her politician son at a campaign event, Helen recognizes the assassination attempt as the work of Scorpius, a Russian mole embedded in the CIA whom Helen thought she’d killed decades earlier. Her former bosses entice her to take over the agency’s “Scorpius-hunting team,” but warn her that Scorpius may have infiltrated the squad. Meanwhile, a string of young women across D.C. are being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, and Helen tries to determine whether the crimes have anything to do with Scorpius. As in the previous installment, Dees keeps things brisk, with the middle-aged Helen ably stabbing, shooting, and outsmarting her foes at every turn. Certain plot developments strain credibility, but most readers will be having too much fun to care. This will hold special appeal for thriller fans of a certain age. Agent: Nicole Resciniti, Seymour Agency.