Storm Warning: A Dez Limerick Thriller

Byrne (Chain Reaction) pulls out all the stops in his pulse-pounding fourth adventure for Dez Limerick, an Irish ex-mercenary who juggles guitar-playing gigs and high-profile hacking jobs. This time around, Dez is in Paris working as a bodyguard for a client whom he saves from two assassins, killing one and letting the other—a woman known as Ash—live. Months later, Dez is tapped by the FBI for a case involving the Fuchs Underground Neutrino Collector, a scientific facility in Newfoundland doing complex particle physics research. Fuchs has gone into lockdown and stopped communicating with the outside world after a visit from donor Petra Alexandris, the CEO of Triton Expediters, the bank “for much of the world’s military and government infrastructure.” The Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team recruits Dez to help them infiltrate Fuchs, make sure Alexandris is alive and well, and determine where the orders to seal off the facility came from. The seemingly straightforward mission gets complicated when Ash resurfaces. Byrne brilliantly braids plot threads from previous installments into the action, creating a high-octane page-turner that respects its audience’s intelligence. Readers will be tempted to devour this in a single sitting. (May)