Assassin’s Code

Larsen’s exciting fourth David Slaton adventure (after 2016’s Assassin’s Silence) finds the retired Mossad operative and legendary Israeli hit man, who has been sailing the world with his wife and toddler son in a custom-fit catamaran, in Palawan, an archipelago in the Philippines. There David comes into possession of a memory stick that contains recent images of terrorist Ali Samir, whom he thought he assassinated 15 years earlier. Unravelling this mystery leads David to Paris after a stop in Israel to touch base with his former employers. Larsen efficiently shifts perspective among the four principal characters—David; Uday, ISIS’s chief information officer; Zavier Baland, the next in line to become head of DGSI, France’s internal security service responsible for counterterrorism; and Malika, an ISIS-trained assassin—as the action builds to a truly thrilling climax. This novel has all the essentials: well-rounded characters, pithy dialogue, and intrigue galore, plus a few moments left over for some musing on how terrorism evolves. [em]Agent: Susan Gleason, Susan Gleason Literary. (Aug.) [/em]