Dev Stryker

PLOT OR PREMISE:
A body is found with the letter "P" carved into its forehead. P stands for pawn, and it is dumped in upper Manhattan, using the streets as a chessboard. The Knight and Bishop follow. And the chess-game begins. Inspector Regal has been chosen by the killer to play the game, which he does through moves placed in the New York Times. As long as the game is interesting, no more bodies. But Regal is not a very good chess player, the game becomes dull for the killer, and another body appears. But Regal has an ace in the hole: a retired master player named Billy Abbott who left the chess world behind and disappeared before it took over his life. Abbott tells Regal the moves to make the game interesting, and for awhile, he does -- even turning the game around and winning. But having Regal win the game is not the object of the killer who targets Regal personally. A series of sub-plots involve a cop working for Regal who had been killed during the line of duty while hunting down Panamanian drug runners, and a female cop who loved him and wants justice; a political side with Regal butting heads with his departmental rival who is in charge of both investigations; and a personal side, with Regal suspecting his wife of having an affair with a power mogul. This is the second "Dev Strkyer" novel, a nom-de-plume for Warren Murphy and Molly Cochrane.
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WHAT I LIKED:
I love Murphy and Cochrane's work, and this one is no exception. Well-written, the chess strategies are well-mixed, and the story moves along fast enough with a lot of sub-plots mixed in to keep life interesting when the bodies are on hold. Even the political manouevering is interesting. The ending, although pat, is not a typical "everybody lives happily ever after" finish.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
The climax is *too* pat, and too action-oriented rather than detection-based. I knew who the killer was long before they were revealed, and I'm not even sure why the authors chose to reveal the killer when they did, other than the realization perhaps that the reader already knows by then so the mystery is really gone. The only question was when and where they were going to be caught, if at all. As well, Stryker doesn't really play fair with the reader at the start in terms of the depiction of the killer, but I still figured it out before the end despite the intentional misdirection.
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BOTTOM-LINE:
You'll never look at chess as boring again
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author, but I did follow him on social media.… (mehr)

PLOT OR PREMISE:
Amelia Pearce has a normal enough life, but with a soon-to-be ex-lover, she heads home to her parent's house to heal her ego and ease the transition. However, she finds her life shattered by the truth about her father -- he is not a simple journalist, but an operative for "The Network", a ultra-secret organization of operatives on loan from the major intelligence agencies of the various countries with one goal: combat terrorism. It's like James Bond and his counterparts working for Interpol, with only one person knowing all the agents. The father is killed by an assassin, as is Amelia's mother, but Amelia manages to escape and starts using all the skills her father taught to her as a child (through a long-running series of "survival" games).
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WHAT I LIKED:
The book was written by Warren Murphy and Molly Cochrane, two of my favorite authors whether they use their own names or the "Dev Stryker" nom-de-plume. So, the style, the dialogue, the plot tools...all are superb, but I'm a little biased. This book is also unique in the field -- the main character (Amelia) doesn't even make an appearance until several chapters into the book. And seemingly-major characters keep getting killed off! There are not a whole lot of people left by the end of the book, so it becomes somewhat easier to follow. And killing off major characters does keep the reader guessing all the way through.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
The bad guys are mostly one-dimensional except for the assassin, with the plot revolving around plans for Libyan terrorists to poison the water supply of America. And Amelia has the added problem that she can't seem to trust anyone, even the head of the Network. Yet as much as I liked the writing, and as much as I liked the plot twists with the death of major characters, it made it very hard to care about some of the characters -- why bother if they are killed off half-way through the book? As I said above, Amelia is the main character but doesn't appear until several chapters into the book. Her father seemed to be the main character for the first few chapters, and then he dies. Four other key characters bite the dust before the end of the book too, nicely spread out through the book so you lose a character every couple of chapters. Too bad if you care about one...but after the first two check out, its hard to keep your interest. After the death of the father, you find out that Amelia isn't quite the helpless person she is initially portrayed as, because her father taught her survival skills -- and yet she never wondered about her father? She always wrote him off as a small CIA bureaucrat, yet in the next breath talks about him in almost super-human qualities? The collaboration between Murphy and Cochrane is usually excellent -- in this book it reads more like they disagreed about the characters and maybe wrote chapters on their own. Kind of like the classic writing game that one person writes one chapter with twists and turns, and then asks the next person to pull the next chapter together, mesh the various elements, and give their own spin to it.
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BOTTOM-LINE:
Too many plot twists, too many deaths
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the authors, but I do follow them occasionally on social media.… (mehr)