My Immaculate Assassin

In this sobering, thought-provoking thriller from Huddle (The Faulkes Chronicle), Maura Nelson, an aerospace engineer who’s working for the intelligence community in Washington, D.C., stumbles on a method by which a single click of a mouse can kill someone far away and make it appear a natural death. She soon does in Syrian despot Bashar al-Asaad while he’s taking a shower in his Damascus palace. Maura takes day-trader Jack Plymouth, the book’s narrator, into her confidence. She demonstrates what she can do by dispatching a victim of Jack’s choice, an elderly Supreme Court justice, as he descends the court steps one morning. Aware of the tenuous moral ground they occupy, they nonetheless agree to murder a talk show host they dub Dr. Hatemo. When Hatemo’s death has some unfortunate consequences for 16-year-old Kira Gregorevna, a trafficked Russian girl, Maura and Jack wind up attempting to free Kira from the clutches of a movie-star-handsome man she refers to as her Uncle Jimmy. Some readers may enjoy identifying the real-life counterparts of the couple’s victims. (Sept.)