Ice Islands

Hawksley’s implausible fourth thriller featuring Alaska native Rake Ozenna (after 2021’s Man on Fire) finds Rake, who works for a private security company specializing in investigating “transnational crime networks,” and his boss, Harry Lucas, closing in on Michio Kato, who has inherited the helm of a yakuza group. Rake may have found a way to get inside the organization through Michio’s sister, Sara, an advocate for Indigenous people, who sends Rake a frantic SOS. Flashback to a peace conference attended by Sara on Finland’s Åland Islands. That conclave is disrupted when someone slits the throat of a participant, who turns out to be the illegitimate son of Sergey Grizlov, the Russian president. To avert WWIII, Harry reaches out to his ex-wife, Grizlov’s former lover, to persuade Grizlov that the U.S. wasn’t behind the murder, even as Rake works to save Sara’s life. Awkward prose (“To escape a fabricated rape wrap, an orphan kid from Little Diomede was flying in to carve the mammoth tusk stored in his apartment for the Smithsonian Museum”) doesn’t help the contrived plot. Fans of intelligent action yarns should look elsewhere. Agent: David Grossman, David Grossman Literary. (Aug.)