A Price to Pay

Simms comes up with some interesting plot hooks in this otherwise unremarkable thriller—his second featuring Det. Constable Iona Khan (after 2013’s Scratch Deeper). She is a typically atypical police heroine: half-Scottish, half-Pakistani, with a math degree, assigned to the U.K. Counter Terrorism Unit based near Manchester. Iona lands an unusual case involving several missing teenage girls who all bought used laptops from Eamon Heslin, a computer store owner whose incinerated corpse was just found. What’s more, she discovers a link between the case and a suicide bombing on the Israeli-Lebanese border. It was apparently carried out by a girl from Manchester, 17-year-old Jade Cummings, but the reader already knows that Jade was not aware that explosives were strapped to her body at the time. Iona must race to foil a potentially devastating terrorist attack on British soil. As in the previous volume, surprise and memorable scenes or characters are at a minimum. (Jan.)