Father Night

July 23, 2012
More is less in bestseller Lustbader’s fourth globe-trotting thriller to feature former national security adviser Jack McClure (after 2011’s Blood Trust). In Moscow, an assassin interrupts Jack’s lovemaking session with his Russian sweetheart, Annika Batchuk. Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Secret Service trainee Alli Carson, whom Jack once rescued from a kidnapper during her father Edward’s term as U.S. president, receives a death threat in the form of a Web site featuring her face Photoshopped onto the bodies of bound nude women. In other story lines, Metro PD Capt. Alan Fraine joins a covert operation for the Department of Homeland Security, while a mysterious figure known only as “the General” hatches an ominous conspiracy. The far-flung plot incorporates Nazi medical experiments and hinges on multiple characters with twin siblings. Cutesy touches, such as one character advising another not to “go all Jason Bourne on me,” are as likely to annoy as entertain. Agent: Henry Morrison, Henry Morrison Inc. Literary.