Blitz A novel

It's been six years since Stiletto, the follow-up to O'Malley's mind-bending The Rook (2012). Now, finally, we have book three in the Checquy Files series (the Checquy is a supernatural organization that defends Great Britain from otherworldly forces). In the present day, a woman is bewildered when she seems spontaneously to acquire supernatural powers--and shocked when she learns that her unique powers apparently have been used in multiple homicides. The surprises continue when it turns out that the solution to the mystery lies decades in the past. O'Malley rewards fans who have been patiently waiting for a new book with an exciting adventure that adds some new elements to the series and expands on others. The Rook was adapted as a limited-run television series, which received mixed reviews; this story is perhaps more cinematic than its predecessors, as it features O'Malley's remarkable ability to create vivid visual pictures in the reader's mind. Let's hope we don't have to wait quite so long for volume four.

In the third installment of the Rook Files series, new recruits to secret supernatural protection agency the Checquy, all of them women, contend with Nazi killers. Alternating between 1940 and the present, the book opens during the London Blitz. Three young Checquy agents with special powers are "standing" in the sky 10,000 feet above the beleaguered city--one of them has the ability to alter gravity--when a Nazi bomber comes into view. Violating strict rules against interfering with normal military operations (as opposed to warding off supernatural enemies), the headstrong Pamela breaks away from her cohorts and causes the plane to implode by sending a ferocious pulse through it. The women assume everyone aboard perished, but a crew member survives and subsequently goes on a killing spree down in London. Pamela and Usha, both apprentices, and Bridget, a fully-fledged Pawn, must track him down before he kills again--and Pamela's illicit actions are revealed. Decades later, a librarian named Lyn has her life as a wife and mother upended after a freak fire in her kitchen proves to be a manifestation of her long-dormant electrical powers. Recruited by the Checquy and trained in a hidden island academy, she is sent into the field, where she herself becomes wanted for murder based on brandinglike effects on the victims. With a relaxed style and array of fun characters, including an agent who makes people who look at him see their mother and a baby goat that turns into a little boy, O'Malley's latest will appeal to his many followers. Other readers may grow impatient with the time he spends in setup and background modes. After the nifty opening scene, nothing much happens for a good half of the book's nearly 700 pages. An entertaining but overstuffed fantasy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.