Rules of Betrayal

Reich's outstanding third thriller featuring Dr. Jonathan Ransom (after Rules of Vengeance) finds the courageous surgeon, who no longer works for Doctors Without Borders, in the hinterlands of Afghanistan, where he gets caught in a Taliban raid that ends with him being choppered out of a vicious firefight. As in the two previous novels, Jonathan becomes enmeshed in a mission that's run by Division, a secret U.S. government agency. The series' ongoing and fascinating twist is that Jonathan's wife, the extremely capable and extremely deadly Emma, may or may not be a Division agent, a Russian spy, or something else entirely. Jonathan willingly enters the dark world of espionage to rescue Emma after she falls afoul of Taliban warrior Sultan Haq and an evil arms dealer known as Lord Balfour. Emma's liberation of a nuclear bomb lost by the U.S. in the mountains of Pakistan in 1980 leads to an untied thread that will have readers eagerly awaiting the next installment. (July)