Genre: Thriller
Description:
“Former assassin Leine Basso was supposed to be in sunny LA, watching
the first class of operatives graduate from the new anti-trafficking academy.
Instead, she’s in North Dakota in the middle of a brutal winter, helping
ex-poacher Derek van der Haar track down and eliminate a deadly group of
criminals hell-bent on providing young girls to the highest bidder.
The closer Leine and Derek get to the organization, the more dangerous
the mission becomes. Soon, it’s evident that the traffickers are playing for
keeps—and don’t care who they kill.
In a story ripped from the headlines, Dakota Burn reveals the dark
underbelly of the Bakken oil fields, where human life is a commodity and
outlaws still rule.”
Author:
“DV Berkom is the USA Today bestselling author of two action-packed
thriller series featuring strong female leads: Kate Jones and Leine Basso. Her
love of creating resilient, kick-ass women characters stems from a lifelong
addiction of reading spy novels, mysteries, and thrillers, and longing to find
the female equivalent within those pages. After a lifetime of moving to places
people like to visit on vacation, she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with
her husband and several imaginary characters who like to tell her what to do.”
Appraisal:
If you’ve read a few books in the Leine Basso series and liked them,
odds are good you’ll like the others including this one. You’ll also have an
idea of what you might expect. Someone will be involved in sex trafficking. SHEN,
the association Leine works for will send her to investigate. There will
probably be a few people shot. Some of those could be by the bad guys, some could
be by the good guys and even though the legality of what happens is
questionable, you’re not at all upset to see it happen. Spoiler alert: Eventually
the operation will be shutdown with the major players facing justice, if they
survive. Yeah, that’s not really a spoiler because who really expects the
protagonist of a thriller to ever not survive?
The basic format is engaging and exciting, but what really sets each
book apart are the specifics. Sometimes that’s the specific bad guys and what
they’re doing. Sometimes it’s something about this case that is especially a
big deal to Leine and the reader. Sometimes it’s the setting. For me, the last
two things are what sets this volume apart. The something special is the involvement
of Jinn, a character from a prior installment of this series who is now working
with Leine. I also found the setting in North Dakota to be interesting and a
change of pace. Many books in the series have taken place on the west coast
which has been done to death in books, TV, and movies, almost to the point
where a southern California location is about as close to generic as you can
be. It’s easy to imagine that the oil boom in North Dakota could have had some
negative side-effects. The author did a good job of evoking the qualities a
rural middle-of-nowhere location like this has and integrating them into the
story. As always, Leine let me hang out for an intense and at times
gut-wrenching case and I’m glad I came along for the ride.
FYI:
Some adult content and language.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: *****
Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 75-80,000 words
2 comments:
Thank you, BigAl! Sooo glad you enjoyed the book :-) I think thriller writers should use ND more often--it lends itself to the genre well. Gritty, cold, and some pretty amazing people. North Dakota Noir?
North Dakota Noir, a whole new genre. I like it. :)
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