cover image Strong Enough to Die

Strong Enough to Die

Jon Land, . . Forge, $24.95 (351pp) ISBN 978-0-7653-1258-7

Land (The Seven Sins ) introduces a tough original heroine, Caitlin Strong, a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, in the first of what hopefully will be a long crime series. Hyperpatriot Harmon Delladonne runs MacArthur-Rain, a corporation with tentacles in all areas of the U.S. government’s security apparatus. Delladonne’s project Fire Arrow threatens both the privacy of all Americans and their very lives. Strong, the only gun-totin’ female in the legendary Texas Rangers, stumbles onto this plot when she finds her supposedly dead husband, Peter Goodwin, in an institution devoted to treating torture victims. She teams with a dangerous former foe, Cort Wesley Masters, to fight not only Delladonne but Emiliato Valdez Garza, the phantomlike head of the Mexican mafia, and the giant Guillermo Paz, a Delladonne henchman who ponders Kierkegaard while slaying his many enemies. The revelations are constant, the characters compelling and the action fast and furious. (May)