Monday, October 21, 2013

Rasputin’s Shadow-Raymond Khoury

Rasputin’s Shadow

Raymond Khoury

Dutton, Oct 8 2013, $27.95

ISBN 9780525953135



In 1916 in the Russian Empire’s Ural Mountains, miners suddenly go berserk and kill each other. Not long after the insanity began, an explosion leaves all the miners dead. Rasputin tells his horrified scientist companion, who trembles with what they wrought, that they saved their people.



In present day Queens, Russian embassy official Ilya Shislenko falls to his death from his high rise apartment. FBI special agent Sean Reilly investigates the death that he believes was a homicide. At the same time, Reilly also works the case of high school physics teacher Leo Sokolov who recently vanished. The Russian connection has Reilly seek a link between his two inquiries, but he remains ignorant that Sokolov possesses a gizmo his late ancestor made for Rasputin that radically changes a person’s normal behavior.



Although the premise seems over the top of the Ural Mountains, the latest Templar tale (see The Devil’s Elixir) is an action-packed save the world from a weapon of pandemic mass destruction thriller. Fast-paced, fans will enjoy Reilly’s in your face escapades even though the suspenseful storyline flows as expected.



Harriet Klausner

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