Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This mixed-bag series launch from Landau, a pseudonym for Jon Land (the Murder, She Wrote series) and Jeff Ayers (Voyages of Imagination), gets off to a gripping start, but struggles to sustain its momentum. After an explosion topples the Statue of Liberty, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more, special agent Michael Walker of the National Parks Service and FBI explosives expert Gina Delgado are among the first on the scene. The well-organized attack seemed to leave no leads for the investigators to pursue--until Walker locates a young survivor who captured video of the likely perpetrators aboard what appears to be a Park Police boat in the New York Harbor. Interspersed with Walker and Delgado's investigation are chapters from the perspective of Lantry, a Lakota Sioux man who's also tracking the terrorists. As the parallel investigations unfold, it becomes clear that the Statue of Liberty attack was only the beginning of a plan to take down American democracy. The novel's first act builds up plenty of goodwill, but Land and Ayers mostly squander it by weighing down the narrative with excessive exposition and revealing their villains' identities too early. Here's hoping the follow-up irons out the kinks. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Writing as A.J. Landau, Jeff Ayers (who reviews for LJ) and Jon Land (Murder at the CDC), start a new series that leaps off the page. Young Danny Logan is visiting the Statue of Liberty with his family when he notices something amiss about an approaching boat. Then a powerful explosion engulfs Liberty Island. National Park Service agent Michael Walker is sent to NYC to take charge of the emergency. On the scene, he gets a hostile reaction from the FBI's Gina Delgado, who's heading the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Amid the mayhem, Walker finds a shaken and wounded Danny, who tells him about the strange boat he saw. Despite their awkward first meeting, Walker and Delgado must work together to thwart a domestic terrorism plot that is audacious, and disastrous, in scope. The action doesn't abate after the novel's impressive opening pages, as new terror targets appear and the perpetrators further their plans to throw the United States into chaos. VERDICT High-octane action fuels the story, which is nicely bookended with factoids about the parks and landmarks it features. This must-read thriller is addictive and engaging and will please National Parks enthusiasts and fans of action stories.--Philip Zozzaro
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The bombing of Liberty Island is only the beginning. As the Logan family heads into the Statue of Liberty, teenage son Danny breaks away from the entrance line to shoot some phone video of an obsolete boat, an M1-44 sitting incongruously in the harbor. Suddenly there's an explosion behind him, and Danny sees "a landscape of bodies." Michael Walker, of the National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch, is called up from his post at Shenandoah National Park and teamed with New York--based FBI Special Agent Gina Delgado to investigate. As an observant eyewitness with a camera, Danny becomes a target, but Michael shepherds him to safety after winning a shootout with a would-be assassin. At the center of the nefarious plot is supervillain Abel Rathman, presumed dead in a helicopter crash two years ago but captured very much alive on Danny's video recording. While Mike and Gina are assembling the puzzle pieces surrounding the explosion, terrorist threats spring up like weeds all across the country, from Independence Hall to Mount Rainier to more than half a dozen states in between. Frequent jumps of location in super-short chapters amp up the excitement in Landau's hyperkinetic, if sometimes hyperbolic, thriller. Each of the 98 chapters in this first entry in the National Parks Thriller series opens with an interesting tidbit relevant to the given chapter, often about the parks. Did you know that Utah's Zion National Park spreads over three counties? A lively, if generic, terrorism thriller with a trivia bonus. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
