Where Dead Men Meet

Set in 1937, Mills’s novel sends Luke Hamilton, an air intelligence officer in Britain’s Paris embassy, on the run for his life. First, his beloved Sister Agnes, who took baby Luke into an English orphanage 25 years before, is brutally murdered. Then, shortly after a stranger warns him of danger, Luke is nearly assassinated. Chased by unknown forces, Luke races across Europe, surviving bullets, car crashes, duplicitous “helpers,” and even romance with a beautiful, intensely dedicated freedom fighter named Pippi Keller. The novel starts out riveting and loses some of its intensity along the way, but Australian-born reader Linski does his best to disguise this with a brisk narration that maintains its energy and compulsive pacing throughout. His Luke seems initially perplexed by his sudden propulsion into an unfamiliar and very dangerous world, but before long there’s strength and self-confidence in his voice that lets listeners glide through this story of international intrigue. A Blackstone hardcover. (May)