Bloody Sunday, Ben Coes

After some stunning revelations about past tragedies, Dewey Andreas is in full-on hang-it-up-and-get-out-of-the-game-mode when it comes to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. He's persuaded to take a mission meant to gain information from a North Korean general about a plot by that nation's crazed dictator to launch multiple nuclear missiles at his enemies. The lever: a 24-hour-poison to which only a CIA asset has the antidote, which Dewey will inject him with as a means to make him talk. The problem: Dewey accidentally exposed himself to the poison and now needs the antidote from the CIA asset. The real problem: That asset is inside North Korea and was supposed to meet up with the general to trade information for the antidote. Dewey must infiltrate the world's most secretive, paranoid nation, track down the operative, take the info drop and get the antidote all in one day...the Bloody Sunday code name of the dictator's mad plan may now be Dewey's last day alive.

After the strong debut of Power Down, the Dewey Andreas series has had its ups and downs. Sunday is a strong outing, with the artificial one-day-to-live deadline focusing the action much more tightly than some of the weaker series entries. Dewey basically has one job: Keep himself alive in one of the most hostile environments that a United States intelligence operative might encounter. If he can swing the other tasks his bosses want done that'll be fine, but they take second place to survival.

Even in his sub-par books Coes does well in chronicling the kind of mayhem Dewey can wreak in a fight or an action sequence and he does so here too, but Dewey's inability to blend with the North Korean environment means he also has to exercise the kind of stealth and skulkery that have not always been his forté. Nor has writing them always been Coes' forté, but he handles them ably.

Coes also uses part of Sunday's story to set up some of the situations of his new series featuring operative Rob Tacoma and his team, but it doesn't detract too much from the straightforward main narrative. Dewey's dealt with a couple of ticking clock scenarios before, but the personal stakes and the unfamiliar environment mean that very little of Bloody Sunday feels repetitive or paint-by-numbers.