Vendetta: A Novel

by Iris Johansen

Overview

Blockbuster bestselling author Iris Johansen brings back fan favorite Catherine Ling--and introduces readers to a whole new world of danger, intrigue, and red-hot passion with Vendetta.

With his dying breath, Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism and Jude Brandon's final link to terrorist ringleader Max Huber, gives Brandon a mandate: keep his daughter Rachel safe--at all costs. But Rachel Venable has a shocking, twisted past of her own, one that comes rushing back after her medical clinic abroad is attacked by Huber--the same man who murdered her father and kept her imprisoned for months.

"Explosive."--Pop Sugar

Now, along with agent Catherine Ling, Rachel's longtime ally and fierce protector, Brandon is determined to keep Rachel out of danger. As he and Rachel race against the clock to bring Huber down before he can orchestrate a disaster that will lay waste to half the country, they also fight a growing attraction to each other--one that could prove just as dangerous as Huber himself. . .

"Highly complex characters and a stunning conclusion make Vendetta a winner."--Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250341501
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.24(d)

About the Author

Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Night, Blood Game, Eve, and Eight Days to Live, among others. She began writing after her children left home for college, and first achieved success in the early 1980s writing category romances. In 1991, she began writing suspense historical romance novels, and in 1996 she turned to crime fiction, with which she has had great success. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Iris Johansen:

Highly complex characters and a stunning conclusion make this a winner. --Publishers Weekly on Vendetta

"This first-rate novel of romantic suspense will please Johansen's many fans and newcomers alike." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on Hide Away

"Sure to appeal to all fans of romantic suspense." --Publishers Weekly on Night and Day

"Eve Duncan novels by Johansen are so good that, supernatural or not, readers and fans remain completely engaged." --Suspense Magazine on Shadow Play

"Delivering gut-wrenching emotion and spine-tingling suspense is what Johansen does best, and when you add in a touch of the supernatural...you get the perfect storm of a thriller! Johansen never disappoints!" --RT Book Reviews on Your Next Breath

From the Publisher

08/20/2018
In bestseller Johansen’s pulse-pounding 23rd Eve Duncan novel (after Shattered Mirror), former Army Ranger Jude Brandon honors the dying wish of CIA operative Carl Venable, who’s been mortally wounded while on a mission in Montana, to protect his daughter, Rachel Venable, from Max Huber, the leader of the Red Star terrorist organization. Huber believes that Rachel, who runs a medical clinic in the jungles of Guyana, is responsible for the death of his father, the powerhouse behind Red Star, and wants revenge. Jude and his team manage to extract Rachel, whom Huber has plagued in the past, from her jungle clinic before Huber can capture her. Jude delivers Rachel to a safe house in San Francisco, where she soon starts working with an informant who claims to have information about a plan Huber has to destroy the city. The mutual attraction between Jude and Rachel generates plenty of romantic heat. Highly complex characters and a stunning conclusion make this a winner. Series fans won’t mind that Eve receives only passing mention. Agent: Andrea Cirillo, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2018-07-31

A dying CIA counterterrorist leaves his daughter a challenging legacy: carry on his work by exacting vengeance on his killer—which incidentally prevents him from wreaking further havoc on a global scale.

Like Homer, Johansen (Shattered Mirror, 2018, etc.) begins in medias res with the death of Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism, who's been shot by one of Max Huber's snipers during a rare, but vital, sally into the field. As he's dying, Carl tells his sidekick, Jude Brandon, to get in touch with his daughter, Dr. Rachel Venable, and pass the torch to her. One complication: Rachel's currently working with One World Medical in the Guyana wilderness. Another: She's had nothing to do with her father since he negotiated all too slowly for her release from the Taliban fighters who killed her mother and brother when she was 15. Since Huber also has daddy issues—Conrad Huber was a much more fearsome terrorist, as his adviser Adolf Kraus is constantly tempted to remind the mini-me he now advises—and since Rachel was responsible for Conrad's fatal poisoning, the stage is set for any number of epic-scale set pieces involving terrorist threats and counterthreats whose motivation is ultimately personal. Drawing inspiration from her mentor, Hu Chang, and a wide range of emotions from her rocky relationship with Brandon, whose father was another of Max Huber's casualties, Rachel shows that she's just as tough and savvy and ruthless as her father ever was but also fully in touch with a female side that's sensitive to a fault.

Superheroes battle supervillains in a thriller heavy on action and even heavier on dialogue in which the principals explain to each other exactly what's happening and exactly how they feel about it. Fans who haven't already been exhausted by Johansen's fondness for superlatives will eat it up.

Kirkus Reviews