A Fire in the Night

June 15, 2021
Life abruptly gets more interesting and more dangerous for a retired professor of medieval history. There are excellent reasons on both sides that Nick Anthony hasn't spoken to his brother, Jay Bashir, for 20 years. So when Jay phones him out of the blue asking for help, Nick doesn't just hang up; he rips out the phone in his North Carolina mountaintop retreat. Next thing he knows, he has two unexpected visitors. The first, Jackson County Deputy Joshua Sams, tells him that Jay and his wife, Carol, have been found dead inside their burned-out house in Tampa--Jay dead of smoke inhalation, Carol with her throat slit--and asks him if he's seen their 16-year-old daughter, Annalise, who's gone missing along with her boyfriend, Eric Morgan. The second is Annalise herself, who's followed her father's urgent plea to deliver a mysterious map and thumb drive to the uncle she's never met. Now that she's made her way to Nick's despite a raging fever, she'd just as soon that he didn't say anything about her to the police. As it turns out, Nick, whose academic work was supplemented by his wildly improbable secret life as a CIA agent, has a few other people he can call on for help. And he's going to need every one of them along with his rusty combat skills, because Cole, the freelance mercenary whose crew killed Jay and Carol and Eric in the search for the highly equivocal gifts Annalise brought her uncle, have set their sights on her, and her trail of course leads straight to Nick. Highly proficient one-dimensional thrills for readers who'd rather do without all those complications.

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July 19, 2021
The life of 16-year-old Annalise Bashir, the heroine of this lackluster thriller from Swann (Never Turn Back), is upended when a group of men kill her parents and burn down their Tampa, Fla., home. Annalise’s father, Jay, had recently asked Annalise to meet him and her mother at the remote North Carolina cabin of his brother, retired professor Nick Anthony
. Nick learns of Jay’s death, and that Annalise is a fugitive person of interest, just before he catches his niece trying to break into his cabin. Her very existence is news to him, as he and Jay hadn’t spoken in 20 years. Cole, the leader of the group that killed the older Bashirs, identifies Annalise’s destination and sets off with his team to catch her. Cole believes Jay passed information to her of great value to a billion-dollar energy company involved with Saudi Arabia. Predictably, Nick has certain skills beyond those of the typical academic useful in fighting the bad guys. Thin characters, a trite story line, and a groan-worthy climax make this instantly forgettable. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Fletcher and Co.