The Devil's Hand, Jack Carr

Jack Carr's first James Reece novel, Terminal List, offered a lot of good elements wrapped together with atmospheric missteps that made its ostensible hero tough to root for. The second, True Believer, offered a dynamic turn-around, especially in its first third as Reece reflects on how far he was willing to go pursuing his Terminal List goals and whether or not he should have been. Carr took the time to let his hero think through these things and gave him legitimate narrative hooks to do so rather than just unreeling an exposition-heavy internal monologue that invites reader skippage. Book #3, Savage Son, sends Reece out after some people who have brought about the tragedies of his past, in addition to endangering his life now. Its high point -- Carr's homage to Louis L'Amour's Last of the Breed with Reece infiltrating Russia on foot in pursuit of his enemies -- makes it another strong and focused series entry.

Which makes the misstep of The Devil's Hand so confusing. In twin timelines, a new U.S. president tasks Reece with a supremely secret and supremely illegal mission because of his history of doing whatever it takes for his country. At the same time, a developing biological weapons plot from evil mullahs in Iran has a diabolical twist in its middle to turn our nation's own defenses against it.

Unfortunately, neither of these two lines brings new material to their respective familiar tables. The hyper-covert off-the-books Tough Guy Doing What Needs to Be Done No Matter What the Rules Say is standard issue in this kind of book, and Hand lacks the personal connection to the mission that Reece had in the earlier books. The Secret Sleeper Agent Who Fools Everyone Until Unleashing the Weapon We Trained Him to Use is not that much rarer. The overlap between them feels half-hearted at best, as if they were conceived as two distinct stories.

The initial section, "Origins," sets up the back story for the other essential characters to the overall plot, since we already have Reece's own backstory. It slips in small scenes of Reece and his developing relationship with Katie Buranek, as well as his move from military door-kicker to CIA door-kicker and spy. Carr continues to improve on this part of the storytelling, which he already does well. But it also bogs down in near-biographical detail about a confusing mess of people who don't play direct roles in the action or who remain confusing when they do.

It also offers us what Jack Carr believes is wrong with the world and U.S. foreign policy in several regions, going back about four Presidential administrations. Jack Carr is undoubtedly someone who through research, personal experience and study knows a lot more about what really goes on in those sections of the world than I do. His opinions about what's wrong with the world might even be right. But since I don't personally know him and I didn't pick up Hand to learn what was wrong with the world, I don't really care what those opinions are and having nearly a third of the book weighed down with them almost kills it.

By tying the pontificating to plot backstory instead of ongoing narrative, Hand loses more momentum that it can fully regain once it gets going. The second and third James Reece books are too strong to think that this misstep is going to cripple the series, but Hand drains the goodwill bank of more than its fair share and leaves a lot of lifting for book #5 to do whenever it arrives.