The Peacemaker #4: The Wyss Pursuit

The Peacemaker #4: The Wyss Pursuit, by Adam Hamilton

March, 1975  Berkley Medallion Books 

The Peacemaker limps to a close with a fourth volume that’s even more tepid than the previous three; titular “Peacemaker” Barry Hewes-Bradford doesn’t even kill anyone in this one. I mean at least he shot the occasional bad guy in the previous books. This time ol’ Barry spends the majority of the narrative doing exactly what Mel Crair depicts on the cover: making phone calls. 

Speaking of the cover, again we get confirmation that Crair’s depiction of Barry is his own invention. The moustached lothario of the Crair covers does not exist in the actual novels. Instead, Barry is specifically stated as being “tall and black-haired” – no mention of a moustache, blondish-brown hair, or a bow tie. Also speaking of Crair’s cover art, it’s misleading in another regard: the scene shown doesn’t actually happen in the novel. While Barry and his assistant Lobo do ski down a slope as someone fires at them, Barry does not return fire – in fact he and Lobo flee off to safety and hide, waiting for the sniper to go away. The Peacemaker!! 

Yeah, but this one’s really lame, and just further evidence that the series was DOA from the get-go. I mean like Zwolf said, it’s supposedly a men’s adventure series, yet they named it “The Peacemaker,” and they got a woman to write it!! Maybe some editor at Berkley just had a goofy sense of humor. Whatever, Marilyn “Adam Hamilton” Granbeck again writes what is really a mystery novel, one that isn’t even gussied up with the paltry thrills of the previous installments. 

The series concept itself is also ungainly, that mega-wealthy Barry operates on the side as a crimefighter. The problem is, as I’ve bitched about in each previous review, Barry himself doesn’t do much – he just gets one of his untold employees to do the work for him. Thus there is very little tension or excitement in the series. Barry isn’t even given a proper background of a men’s adventure protagonist; he's just rich and has legions of employees at his disposal, so it’s not like he’s some ‘Nam vet out for payback. In fact it’s Lobo who does most of the “action stuff” in the series, but this time even Lobo doesn’t do much. 

The plot this time has to do with a heroin smuggling scheme; some mysterious drug kingpin known as “Wyss” seems to be targeting Barry’s freight line, using the ships to transport heroin out of the fictional Southeast Asian country of Balarac. Just forget about any promises of action and think of The Wyss Pursuit as a mystery novel and you might enjoy it more than I did. As mentioned it’s even slower-going than previous volumes, but Granbeck’s prose is strong enough that I figure she’s probably a fine writer in an element she’s more comfortable with. 

Granbeck is good with effective scene-setting, like the opening in which a hapless sailor on one of Barry’s ships accidentally uncovers the heroin and is killed for it. However Granbeck again proves that Barry is not really an action hero in the standard mold when later in the book Barry and Lobo get ahold of the killer and grill him for info on the heroin scheme. This takes place inside Barry’s limo as it slowly moves along Broadway in Manhattan; Barry doesn’t threaten or harm the killer. Indeed, Barry pays the guy and drops him off! A guy who killed one of Barry’s own men! It’s all just so against the grain of what makes for an action hero that you can only shake your head at the poor editorial decision-making at Berkley. 

So to reiterate, in the course of The Wyss Pursuit Barry doesn’t get in any fights, doesn’t shoot anyone, doesn’t do much of anything except travel around the country and make some phone calls. That said, he does get laid this time, by two different gals (not at the same time, though!)…however if you just thought to yourself, “Yeah, but Granbeck probably keeps it off page,” then award yourself a no-prize. And neither female character is exploited in the wonderful way mandated by the men’s adventure genre. One’s an insurance investigator who seems to have her own agenda and travels around the world with Barry, the other’s one of Barry’s jetset acquaintances. Curiously Granbeck seems to imply early on that the insurance investigator is interested in Lobo, but that might’ve been a misreading on my part; I did doze off a few times while reading the book, after all. 

Reinforcing the “mystery novel” vibe is the titular Wyss, a notorious figure in the drug world. It turns out that Wyss is behind the heroin-smuggling on Barry’s ships, with the added kick in the crotch that Wyss wants the heroin to be discovered so as to cause Barry legal and other woes. Even here we get more of a lowkey payoff, with Wyss finally being tracked down in Switzerland…but posing under another name. Instead of taking direct action, Barry tries to entrap him and all that, and it’s lame. And yes, it’s in Switzerland that the cover incident occurs, with Barry and Lobo hitting the slopes as one of Wyss’s goons sharpshoots at them. 

I mean this one’s so lame, Barry doesn’t even take part in the climactic action scene. It’s all relayed via report as Wyss and his ship get in a fight with some Balarac forces, and Barry frets while it goes down. And smokes a bunch of cigarettes. In previous installments he’d at least blow something up. It’s like with this one Granbeck didn’t even bother to give us that. But one must appreciate her steadfast determination to not cater to the demands of the action genre. Anyway not that it matters, as with this volume The Peacemaker comes to a close. It shan’t be missed.

The Peacemaker #3: The Xander Pursuit

The Peacemaker #3: The Xander Pursuit, by Adam Hamilton

October, 1974  Berkley Medallion Books

The lackluster Peacemaker series continues with a third volume that once again is courtesy an author who does not understand the genre nor what is expected of it. If the previous two volumes were tepid non-events, The Xander Pursuit is even worse…192 small-print pages of tedium, only livened up by the incident depicted on the cover (once again courtesy Mel Crair); an incident that doesn’t even occur until the final few pages! 

It occurred to me as I read The Xander Pursuit that it provided an answer to that whole “name one thing a man can do that a woman can’t do” argument feminists love to dole out. Well I’ll tell you folks, here’s one thing women can’t do: write men’s adventure novels. The fact that there were so few female authors in the field should be clue enough; Marilyn Granbeck, who wrote The Peacemaker as “Adam Hamilton” and Blood as “Allan Morgan,” was one of those very few. And judging from her work on the two series, she was incapable of delivering on the lurid and violent demands of the genre. To be sure, her writing is fine, she’s just the wrong author for the genre, her style more suited to cozy mysteries…which is the genre she eventually worked in. 

The series premise itself doesn’t work. I mean for one it’s titled “The Peacemaker.” But even that wouldn’t be too much of a kiss of death. The major issue is that the hero, Barrington “Barry” Hewes-Bradford, is so wealthy that he employs legions of employees who do all the “action stuff” for him. As I’ve mentioned several times in the previous reviews, all he really does is just use the phone for the most part, putting in calls to various underlings or contacts to go out and do the work for him. This is so far removed from the action-centric nature of the men’s adventure genre as to be laughable. I mean there’s a part in the end where Barry’s latest girlfriend is taken captive, and even here all the guy does is make a call…and then goes to bed!! 

Over and over again Granbeck makes it clear that she has no understanding of what this genre needs. She piles on one-off characters, elaborately introduced, most of them doing all the heavy lifting, while her main character sits around in various opulent hotel rooms, smokes cigarettes, and goes “Hmmm.” This has the cumulative effect that The Xander Pursuit is a slog of a read. It’s much more of a mystery than a men’s adventure novel; for example, a minor character is killed in the opening pages, and a hundred pages later the reasons behind his murder are still being investigated! There’s absolutely no action, particularly for Barry; he gets in a car chase midway through, but other than the finale he sees no other action or danger. And he kills no one in the course of the novel. 

So here’s the plot: Barry is about to head off to Tarrago, an island kingdom in the Caribbean. He visited it as a boy, we’re told, and so loved the place that he’s been investing in it over the past few years, trying to help bring it into the modern era. In this regard President Aquino of Tarrago has erected several casinos, hoping to attract the luxury vacation market – something that much displeases Gabriel Lavorel, despotic ruler of San Sebastien, rival country which is on the same island as Tarrago. This brings to mind a trashy beach read of the era with the same sort of setup, Island Paradise, and initially Granbeck seems to be going in this direction, with description of Tarrago’s verdant countryside and mention of its various luxury hotels, but this is dropped. 

On the eve of leaving Barry receives a mysterious call with hot info about something happening in Tarrago. For once Barry handles this himself, going off to meet the caller at midnight. Even here though Barry is accompanied by a bodyguard: series regular Lobo, a former pro footballer who again comes off more like the hero of an action series than Barry himself does. Throughout the course of the book Lobo will be Barry’s yes-man, though, always with him and helping him suss out various mysteries. There’s also recurring character Trask, another of Barry’s crutches; Trask heads up security for Barry’s enterprise and once again serves him up with info, sending out various agents into the field to do the sort of thing an action series hero should be doing himself. 

Well the mysterious caller’s murdered before Barry and Lobo get to the meet, as are a few other people Barry was supposed to meet in Tarrago. The mystery behind their murders – indeed, whether they were even murdered, given that some of the kills were staged as natural occurrences – will play out through the seemingly-endless narrative. All Barry knows is something about “Xander” is involved, but he suspects Xander is a thing and not a person. He flies off to Tarrago and meets up with various people, making incessant calls to Trask and others to have agents sent out into the field to investigate for him. Our hero instead broods in his hotel (he’s got an entire floor to himself), smokes a lot, fields Lobo with endless questions, and doesn’t do much else. 

Granbeck does at least cater to one genre mainstay: a stunning female for our hero. But even here she doesn’t fully invest in it. This is how the female character is introduced: 

Barry was barely conscious of the continued introductions as he stared at the woman. For a moment his breath caught in his chest like a hot spark. The resemblance of the girl to Stephanie Haig was startling, at least at first. The soft, golden mist of hair around the small oval face, the green eyes that reflected light as though from some deep pool. 

And this comrades will be it for the description of the girl, whose name turns out to be Karel; even later, when the expected hanky-panky occurs, there is zero exploitation and zero mention of any anatomical details. The scant references to Karel all have to do with her similarity to Barry’s former love Stephanie, who “disappeared in the Amazon eight years ago.” Even someone completely new to the lurid world of men’s adventure would suspect there was something amiss about “Adam Hamilton.” 

Just for fun, let’s take a look at how a typically-horny male pulp writer might’ve handled the above:

Barry was barely conscious of the continued introductions as he stared at the blonde. For a moment his breath caught in his chest like a hot spark. Her breasts were so full and widely separated that their outer curves hid part of her upper arms. The nipples, plainly visible beneath the gauzy fabric of her revealing top, jutted forward proudly, almost defiantly, as if demanding attention. The girl smiled invitingly at Barry as she fixed him with her slut-green eyes. 

You won’t find anything like that in The Xander Pursuit. Even when Barry and Karel get down to it, many pages later, it’s basically rated G: 

[Barry] watched her undress as he removed his own clothes. She was incredibly beautiful, her tanned skin showing patches of white where a bikini had covered it when she sunbathed. 

Then they were on the bed, coming together in heat and need, searching each other and finding the hidden promises. The cool exterior Barry had glimpsed in the clinic was gone and a warm loving woman emerged. The passion that had begun with that first kiss on the beach came to a full flame, and their bodies met, gently at first then abandoning all hesitancy. They met and climbed the peaks together. In some deep part of his mind, Barry knew that Karel was finding the same kind of wonderful pleasure and relief as he. It was a long time before they were still. 

Hot stuff, huh!! Notice there’s still no exploitation. It’s about as chaste as a supposed “sex scene” can be. 

I’d quote some action scenes, but there aren’t any! Trask sends in two field agents, Radley and Underhill, who trek around Tarrago and do all the “action hero stuff” as they try to find out what’s going on with this whole “Xander” thing. Meanwhile Barry “swims a quick twenty laps” in the hotel pool and has some off-page sex with Karel. He also flies around on his private Lear jet, meeting with President Aquino and even Lavorel in San Sebastien; in all these scenes Granbeck piles on hordes of minor characters, ensuring that the reader will grow increasingly confused and bored. What’s worse is that so much of it is needless padding; Barry’s trip to San Sebastien is heavily built up, but over and done with in a few pages, Lavorel refusing to meet him. It’s like that again and again; any opportunity for action or excitement is quickly cast aside. 

Humorously the back cover ruins the mystery Granbeck spends the entire novel building; we’re told that “organized crime” threatens the economy of Tarrago. Well, this isn’t even revealed until near the very end. But Barry does meet an American here on business named Diego deLucca. Gee, I wonder if he’ll turn out to be Mafia? But it just goes on and on, with another “action highlight” a part where they’re having dinner on deLucca’s yacht and San Sebastien cannons open fire on the ship. But again Barry doesn’t see any action himself, everything handled by the crew. Ultimately he learns that “Xander” is a complicated plot to rob Tarrago’s gold coffers, a plot involving organized crime, and this takes us into the finale. 

As mentioned, Karel happens to get abducted here, though it’s so coincidental as to be ridiculous; some stooges heist a casino and grab her as collateral on the way out. She’s smuggled onto a boat and taken out to sea with the loot. When Barry learns of this he makes a few calls, figures he knows where the ship is headed, calls someone else to have a .50 caliber installed on his jet…and then goes to bed! Even Lobo is shocked at this, but Barry says “there’s nothing else” he can do at the moment. Yes, all this really happens. They wait till next morning, and Barry flies the plane over the ship (which is where he figured it would be) while some other guy handles the .50. Barry doesn’t even kill anyone, having the guy blast the ship to pieces after ensuring the occupants have escaped via lifeboat. 

And mercifully here The Xander Pursuit comes to a close. Granbeck tries to build this image that Barry might be more cruel than expected; when informed that Karel is onboard the ship he’s about to blast out of the water, Barry says he’s going to blast away regardless. At novel’s end he is questioned on this, and says he was only “bluffing.” But we’re to understand that his audience is unsure whether Barry is telling the truth. Honestly though at this point I couldn’t have cared less. This one was really dispirited and padded to the extreme, and speaking of mysteries, there’s no mystery why there was only one more volume of The Peacemaker.

The Peacemaker #2: The Yashar Pursuit

The Peacemaker #2: The Yashar Pursuit, by Adam Hamilton
August, 1974  Berkley Medallion Books

Ah, The Peacemaker. The “adventure” series that makes Dakota seem like a rip-roaring rollercoaster of thrills. I have to quote him again, but damned if Zwolf didn’t aptly sum up this series when he mocked the covers: “Look out, troublemakers, or Barry will make a few calls!” Because that’s all Barington “The Peacemaker” Hewes-Bradford does in the course of The Yashar Pursuit.

But first a note on that cover art, which is by far the best thing about this series. The back cover credits artist Mel Crair, and it would seem evident that the character depicted is his own interpretation. Indeed, Marilyn Granbeck (aka “Adam Hamilton”) briefly describes “Barry” as having “a hawk nose and black hair,” and later even has him joking about wearing a false moustache. Thus the moustached lothario of the cover is Crair’s invention – I mean hell the dude doesn’t even wear a bow tie in the books. But he sure as hell uses the phone a lot, so that part of the cover is at least faithful to what happens in the actual books.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume. The novel opens with what will turn out to be one of the few action scenes as a group of American terrorists break into an army base in the desert and steal a cylinder of nerve gas. Later we’ll learn that four other cylinders have been stolen from other bases across the country, but this information is being kept top secret from the public. We readers know it is a plot of Yashar, an Arabic terrorist from the fictional Middle Eastern country Kushka, in league with some hippie terrorists who call themselves the International Peace Movement.

Barry comes onto the scene because the husband of one of his most trusted employees is hurt in the opening cylinder heist. He makes here the first of the many, many phone calls that will comprise the brunt of what passes for “action” in The Yashar Pursuit, trying to get details on what exactly was stolen from that army base. He even flies to DC to get the scoop on what’s happened. For the most part he relies on two employees: Frank Trask, the pipe-smoking executive in charge of the security wing of Barry’s corporation, and Lobo, the former pro footballer who, same as last time, does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to researching leads, fighting bad guys, and doing all the other stuff that the main protagonist of an action series usually handles himself.

For that is the inherent problem with The Peacemaker. I mean it’s like reading an action series starring the President. Barry hardly ever rolls up his sleeves and gets in on the action – he just, you know, makes a few calls, and other people do the work for him. About the most he does for the first 160 pages is call people, smoke mountains of cigarettes, and occasionally take a flight on his private plane. But even then a savvy writer could come up with a way for Barry to actually go out and see some action, but part of the gist of the series is that Barry protects his “secret identity” at all costs – the world just thinks of him as a successful entreprenneur, not realizing he uses his vast wealth to “ensure peace.”

Well anyway Barry gradually comes across mentions of Yashar and deduces that he’s stolen the cannisters with the help of the hippie terrorists. Sad to say, the highlight of the book might be a part where Lobo is sent to check out an International Peace Movement sit-in in DC, where he hobknobs with a willowy redhead (who promptly disappears from the text, despite initially promising to be a more important character) and spies a package of grenades being unloaded alongside some food. But the cops raid the sit-in and steal the grenades, which turn out to be unarmed or something, and both Lobo and Barry suspect they were going to be filled with some of that stolen nerve gas.

There’s also a lot of nonsense about Freda Polk, the leader of the International Peace Movement. Granbeck wants her cake and to eat it, too, because Freda is both a grungy hippie terrorist and a sultry babe who is wooed by Barry’s manly charms. Whereas a real-life Freda would be a shrill harpie who hated men, Freda actually tries to communicate with Barry, resenting him for being “Establisment” but still offering to spend the night with him…an offer, folks, which Barry turns down. Like I said last time, it wouldn’t take a genius to deduce that “Adam Hamilton” is really a woman.

Nor does Barry conjugate with Elorith, attractive young sister of the current ruler of Kushka, a woman who knows the mysterious Yashar and might even be able to contact him. But Barry is constantly uncertain if he can trust Elorith, if she’s just setting him up for Yashar, and all that – again, Granbeck’s bibliography is heavy on mysteries and that’s pretty much all she writes here. But back to the sleaze, nothing happens with these or the few other women Barry meets in the course of the novel, though on the very last page it’s implied he and Elorith might get friendly on a trip to Kushka. 

It just churns on and on, with hardly anything happening. Most interest is derived in how much more ruthless Muslim terrorists have become. The terrorists send letters to the media that the cylinders will be released in a big city if demands aren’t met – freeing Kushkan prisoners and the like – and Barry and others have trouble believing that these terrorists could kill people on a mass scale. When one of the cylinders accidentally leaks, killing nineteen innocents, Freda Polk goes out of her way to proclaim Yashar’s “innoncence,” that he had no intention of killing those people. Of course I’m comparing fiction to reality, but still, the book is from an era in which the idea of radical Muslim terrorists flying airplanes into skyscrapers would be outside the realm of rational thought. But that’s progress for you, I guess.

Last time there were at least some gestures toward excitement, or potential excitement, like Barry doing scuba reconnaissance and such, but this time there isn’t even that. Barry just smokes and flies around on his private plane, including a trip to Denver when it appears one of the cylinders is about to be released. The climax, such as it is, involves a long drive into Pennsylvannia, where Barry finds Yashar’s headquarters, deep in a mine. The cover art comes into play here, with Barry knocking out a few of the terrorists with an appropriated rifle – shooting none of them.

In fact the book is so determined to be bloodless that when Barry captures Yashar, he goes out of his way to keep him alive; this despite Elorith, who begs Barry to let her kill Yashar, given how evil he is. I mean even the female character wants to kill the bad guy, but our hero refuses! At length Barry is indeed forced to pull the trigger, but only after Yashar has conveniently escaped with a gun of his own, and thus Barry has to defend himself. This is Barry’s first and only kill, on page 189 of a 192 page book. The whole thing is just so tedious and lethargic. And the helluva it is, Granbeck’s writing is fine, she’s just working in the wrong genre.

Honestly folks, no fooling – this series sucks. It seems to have been written for a target audience of grandmothers. But I bet even grandmothers would find it boring.

The Peacemaker #1: The Zaharan Pursuit

The Peacemaker #1: The Zaharan Pursuit, by Adam Hamilton
June, 1974  Berkley Medallion Books

Who thought putting a picture of our hero talking on the phone would be badass? Look out, troublemakers, or Barry will make a few calls! – Zwolf 

Marilyn Granbeck, who as “Allan Morgan” gave us the trainwreck that was Blood, returned the following year with another short-lived series (4 volumes), this one from Berkley and with cover art by the same guy who did the Jason Striker covers. With Blood, Granbeck took a protagonist who was a kick-ass mercenary and turned in a slooow-moving cozy mystery that was more along the lines of a TV movie of the time. With The Peacemaker, Granbeck takes a protagonist who is a wealthy crime-fighter devoted to achieving global peace in his time…and turns in a sloooow-moving cozy mystery that is more along the lines of a TV movie of the time. 

According to Hawk’s Authors Pseudonyms, Granbeck wrote this book with someone named Arthur Moore – Hawk only lists two Peacemaker books for the writing duo, but I’m going to assume they actually wrote all four. As I mentioned in my review of Blood #3, Granbeck appears to have mostly written mystery novels, and this is what she turns in for The Zaharan Pursuit. The action scene on the cover is incredibly misleading; Zwolf, as usual, was on-point in his pithy comment, for all Barrington “Barry” Hewes-Bradford really does in the novel is make a few calls.

Barry (and I had a hard time constantly seeing that name and not thinking of a certain past president) is 31 and massively wealthy due to an inheritance. He has armies of employees and properties all over the world, though this book mostly occurs in Hawaii, and in particular aboard Barry’s yacht, the Seabird. Despite my assumption, Barry is not a freelance spy along the lines of The Baroness; rather, he’s just a super-rich dude who secretly uses his wealth to ensure peace is maintained at all costs. While this is a goofy concept, Granbeck does little to exploit it. In reality much of the entirety of The Zaharan Pursuit is given over to Barry trying to find out who owns the boat that swideswept his yacht in the middle of the night on a stormy sea.

Not only that, but Barry, being a billionaire and whatnot, usually has his underlings handle the heavy lifting. This means that there are long portions of The Zaharan Pursuit where one-off characters take center stage, snooping here and there at Barry’s orders. Some of them aren’t one-offs, though, like Lobo, Barry’s right-hand man who was once a star linebacker. Lobo has his own vassals in the security wing of Barry’s company, and sends these dudes out to investigate the hit-and-run boat; two of them get involved in the first “action scene” in the book, engaging in a chase and shootout with some dudes. Later on one of these guys is killed in revenge…and meanwhile, our “hero” continues to sit on his yacht and ponder.

Unlike the Blood novel I read, this one at least has some sex, as Barry scores with two jetsetting hotties: Aura, a Eurasian who has inherited vast wealth from her old (now deceased) husband, and Jessica, an international sportslady or somesuch. But Granbeck doesn’t get down and dirty in the least; here’s the extent of Barry’s boff with Aura: “He made love to her on pale-yellow sheets.” That’s it, folks. The women aren’t as exploited as they’d be in the usual genre offering, perhaps unsurprisingly; and as for Barry himself, we just learn he has the expected rakish good looks. If I’m not mistaken, no mention is made of a beard, meaning that interpretation on the cover is solely the artists’s rendering.

During the interminable investigation Barry comes upon the name Zaharan, an infamous South American revolutionary who has never been seen but who has funded various left-leaning revolutions. (George Soros?!) Barry had his own run-in with Zaharan’s forces a while back, in a revolution the mysterious man started in a South American country Barry had invested in. Now it appears “Z” is running ammunition and was the secret owner of the ship that hit Barry’s yacht that night – at length, we’ll learn that Z is stirring revolution in fictional country San Martin, and that ship was carrying arms for the struggle. In this latest tangent of the investigation Barry heads to Mazatlan, where he eventually finds a Z-owned plane that crashed on land owned by a wealthy local resident. 

Here in Mazatlan Barry gets in one of his few action scenes, being chased by a would-be sniper – the same dude, by the way, who has tried twice to kill one of Barry’s secretaries, failing each time. As I say, there is very much a TV movie or series vibe in play, with corny “tense” scenes that are the print equivalent of the swelling music before a tense commercial break; here, Barry’s secretary is in a hospital after the previous near-miss and the sniper shoots at her, chapter end. Next chapter, we eventually learn he missed!! I mean it’s all just so lame and tedious. But at least Barry manages to lose the annoying failure of a sniper, using his fancy fast-driving skills.

A nice scene occurs later on, as Barry and Lobo suit up in scuba gear and snoop around an island that’s being used to store Z’s weapons. While there isn’t much action here, Granbeck captures a nice vibe of potential action. Barry’s first actual kill occurs on page 159, here in this sequence – he takes out a guard dog! The Peacemaker, baby!! From there it’s back to the clue-tracking, with Barry certain Zaharan is in reality someone wealthy and powerful, “Z” just a guise this person uses. George Soros?!!

Spoilers for this paragraph, so avoid if you give a damn – well, Barry figures out sort of late in the game that he’s been close to Zaharan all along. It’s none other than Eurasian sexpot Aura, who has been working with a sleazy entreprenneur named Sevill, funding various revolutions. The finale sees a stupefied Barry slowly digesting this shocking reveal, and then chasing after Aura, who attempts to escape on her private helicopter, which Barry shoots out of the sky. But “the Peacemaker” is such a lame duck of a protagonist that his employees have to save Jessica, who meanwhile has been abducted by Z’s forces.

With that at least the book ends. It’s slow-moving, tepid, and not very exciting. Granbeck’s writing is good, though, which leads to the unavoidable conclusion that she was working in the wrong genre. Here’s hoping the next volumes are a bit better.