Blue Darker Than Black

Spanning the period from 1969 to 1972, Jenne’s suspenseful second thriller centered on Blue Gemini, a covert U.S. operation in space, dramatizes what might easily have been another front in the Cold War. At the end of 2015’s Blue Gemini, Air Force Maj. Drew Carson and Scott Ourecky, an Air Force engineer, learned of a new category of “Soviet satellites suspected of carrying nuclear weapons.” But they did so while operating without authorization and have been grounded. This sequel explores the implications of their discovery, interweaving Carson’s and Ourecky’s lives with those of a wide range of characters, including Eric Yost, an Air Force sergeant who believes that the U.S. government is using Blue Gemini to conceal the existence of aliens, and Soviet Maj. Anatoly Morozov, who hopes to recruit Yost as a spy and give the U.S.S.R. the upper hand. Despite the high stakes, Jenne manages to integrate some wry humor into the narrative, and despite the book’s length, he keeps things moving briskly. Agent: Peter Riva, International Transactions. (Jan.)