The Breaker, Nick Petrie

Following his time in Iceland, Peter Ash is personally in a better place than he has been since leaving active duty as a Marine. As The Breaker opens, he's been managing his PTSD-induced claustrophobia, his relationship with June is in a good place and he has solid and useful work renovating buildings with his friend Lewis. Of course, he's a wanted criminal in two nations and the slightest misstep could get him thrown behind bars for a long, long time, but, you know, things, amirite?

Unfortunately the last condition is going to prove a problem when Peter and Lewis thwart what they think is a potential mass shooting that turns into a mysterious robbery also witnessed by June. The pair may have shown up on security footage -- Lewis has his own reasons to desire anonymity -- and the victim is someone June thinks she recognizes. Initial investigations seem to leave Peter and Lewis off the hook and don't offer much for June to go on, but the theft of material left behind after the robbery, including a pair of internet-wired camera glasses that have Peter's face clearly on them, makes the mystery more than academic. The more they probe, the more the trio find out that very little of what they thought they saw matched first impressions and the deadlier the matter becomes. An appearance from an old acquaintance offers some insight and gives Peter a chance to get out from under the murder charges keeping him off the radar -- but indicates that the game is clearly one they might not want to play anyway.

In 2020's The Wild One, Nick Petrie offered a letdown in his stories about Peter, with a confusing and unconvincing series of violent set pieces in back-country Iceland. Breaker is mostly a bounce-back from that low point, although it crosses into sci-fi techno-thriller territory that jars when paired with the ordinarily more grounded world in which Peter, June and Lewis ordinarily live and work. As Petrie notes in his afterword, none of the tech that he writes about in the book is necessarily beyond current-day possibilities with one or two exceptions. But the combinations in which it is found -- along with the shadowy figure who puts Peter and Lewis on the trail and the organization he represents -- belong to science fiction and 007-esque spy thrillers more than the tough-guy suspense genre in which Peter's been working. The combination isn't as successful as intended.

Some other cracks, such as a little too much time spent on the eventually irrelevant character of June's editor and the tiring yet another journey through the mind of a psychopathic assassin, also hamper Breaker. But the genuine interior reflection, from Peter and June especially about the way that their current life limits what they might want to be as a couple, plus the resolving storyline, helps bring the story over the finish line in a rewarding way. The Wild One may have made Petrie readers wonder if they wanted to continue traveling with Peter, June and Lewis but The Breaker is a welcome reassurance that they're still on a road worth taking.