Call of duty

Rovin's assured ninth contribution to the series created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik (after 2021's The Black Order) opens with the explosion of a prototype hypersonic missile on the launchpad of China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. Chief engineer Yang Dàyóu will pay an undeserved price for the accident, either with his freedom or his life. Yang's son, a university student dabbling in revolutionary subversion, is imprisoned and tortured in a bid to force Yang to confess to incompetence. Meanwhile, Adm. Chase Williams, the Op-Center director, assigns Lt. Grace Lee, martial arts expert of the Black Wasp crisis team, to a solo mission to China to gather intel on the mishap. Unwilling to leave Grace without backup, Chase covertly sends sharpshooter Lance Corporal Jaz Rivette and JAG attorney Maj. Hamilton Breen to Mongolia for mission support. Chase remains stateside to run interference from national security assistant January Dow, who vows to see him replaced at Op-Center. Rovin poignantly shows the dangers facing ordinary citizens in a totalitarian regime. Those weary of the usual edge-of-Armageddon thriller plot machinations will appreciate this entry's nuanced, human-cost scenario. Agent, Mel Berger, WME. (May)

A failed missile test launches the 21st Op-Center adventure created by Clancy and continued by Rovin. The Chinese test a new Qi-19 hypersonic missile that blows up on the launchpad, and someone must be blamed and pay a heavy price. Gen. Zhou Chang unfairly blames chief aeronautical engineer Dr. Yang Dàyóu and orders him to confess to either carelessness or treason. So Yang is imprisoned and could be executed for an error that the general made. American intelligence gets wind of the failure, and the new president, John Wright, understandably wants to know what happened. He calls in Chase Williams, director of the National Crisis Management Center, aka the Op-Center. Wright wants Williams to assign the Black Wasp team's Lt. Grace Lee on a solo mission to find out what went wrong with the launch, what the missile's payload was, and what happened to Yang. Lee is an all-American patriot with Chinese immigrant parents. She can blend right into the Chinese countryside, has a "flair for independent action," and can kill with anything she can get her hands on. There's a long buildup to more action as readers learn more about the left-of-center administration and its lack of gravitas. Wright is a "left-of-center superstar [replacing] a right-of-center warhorse," the more Clancy-ish and therefore sensible President Midkiff. The well-meaning but inexperienced Wright doesn't ask good questions, the chief of staff is out to get Williams fired, and a couple of staff come across as lightweight flunkies from Hollywood. But Lee is the star of this show as she navigates problems with considerable skill and no gratuitous violence. The plot and characters are what fans will expect, though the Mongolian woman pilot might come as a surprise. The ending suggests unfinished business, so the storyline may continue into another book. The best line: "The Ilyushin Il-76 did not so much land as stop flying." This is standard Clancy fare: If you liked the last one, you'll like this one. And the next one. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.