A week away from his pending marriage to Simone, Jake abruptly disappears. Without a trace. Has he changed his mind? Highly unlikely. Has he been kidnapped? Simone senses Jake is about to die, a horrible, excruciating death. She needs to find him, fast, before it's too late. Senior FBI agent, Clement Oddsworth, manages a specialist team investigating terrorist acts. When two consecutive clinics are blown up, a religious sect becomes his prime suspect. They appear like a peaceful community, but people are dying whenever they protest. What's the connection? Does the leader know more than he lets on?
A former drug cartel leader, Huetzin Sanchez, flees Mexico, along with a number of loyal soldiers. They go into hiding, a safe haven somewhere in the US. But where? Despite their extensive resources, the FBI have no idea where he is. Nor does the new cartel leader, who wants him dead. Until a $4 million scam against a well-known charity group ins-tantly narrows down his whereabouts. Somewhere inside Was-hington DC. Three seemingly-unrelated events come together in a spectacular ending to Turning Point, the first one of Jake Shaw detective series. A story not to be missed.
Turning Point, Wayne Andrewartha
The opening salvo in a new detective series based around Jake Shaw, TURNING POINT is set in the US, written by a Kiwi author and published by a New Caledonian based company. Which unlikely series of events has come together to create a multi-threaded thriller styled novel with some very topical plot threads.
Starting out with the story of Tommy Sessions, who leaves jail after serving 3 years for his part in an armed robbery, morphing on the way out into William Brass, the leader of an reclusive religious sect who, on the face of it seem peaceful enough, but the coincidence of them protesting outside family planning clinics that are then bombed, is too much to ignore. Which is initially where Jake Shaw and the leader of a specialist FBI unit, Clement Oddsworth, who investigate terrorist acts come in.
Meanwhile in the other major thread to the story a former drug cartel leader, Huetzin Sanchez and some loyal soldiers flee Mexico, going into hiding at a safe haven within the US. The new cartel leader would like to find Sanchez, almost as much as the FBI but he has seemingly vanished, until a scam provides some much needed hints.
When starting out reading TURNING POINT you might be wondering if and how on earth these two main thread points are going to collide. There is quite a lot of build up here, which does, just occasionally, slow down what is otherwise one hell of a roller coaster of a ride through the topical subject of violent protest and attacks, and money and influence. Ultimately doesn't everything always seem to come down to money, influence, power... and control. The thing at the heart of this was the way that people manipulate others - that ideals and belief systems are so easily twisted and coerced into becoming something else....
But back to the novel TURNING POINT. A debut novel, the subject matter and plot lines are well executed, and the twists and turns keep the reader's attention and focus. The switching backwards and forwards between the two thread lines works well, with the chapters nicely sized to keep readers from getting lost or overly bombarded with detail. To be honest the only thing that really threw me out of the story was in the epilogue and that particular President ceding the floor to anyone graciously...
Part of what looks to be a planned series, it's an interesting undertaking from a Kiwi based author.