BLURB
The deadliest kind of assassin is one who is already dying…
As the radiation poisoning that Nadia Laksheva was exposed to in Chernobyl takes hold of her body, she knows she has mere weeks to live. But Salamander, the terrorist who murdered her father and sister has a deadly new plan to ‘make the sky bleed’. Nadia is determined to stop him again, even if it is the last thing she ever does.
The only clue she has are the coordinates 88˚ North, a ridge in the Arctic right above one of the largest oil fields in the world, three thousand metres below the ice. If Salamander takes hold of the oil field, he could change the climate of the whole planet for generations to come…
But can Nadia stop him before her own time runs out?
MY REVIEW
Salamander. Her quarry, the world’s most wanted terrorist … was on the run after she’d thwarted his attempt to nuke London, but not before he’d taken out eight world leaders.
The third and final book in Kirwan’s trilogy doesn’t disappoint. At the hands of the sadistic killer, Salamander, Nadia is dying of radiation poisoning and Jake is harboring a deadly device implanted in his eye, and as pawns once again in Salamander’s game of “subterfuge and symmetry”, they are willing to sacrifice anything, including each other, to make sure Salamander is eliminated.
This time Kirwan takes us from an underground maze of tunnels and chambers in Hong Kong to three thousand metres below the Red Sea, to the sewers of Moscow, and finally to the Arctic, the eighty-eighth parallel. 88º North. In this book, we are introduced to a triad, a secret society in China, the Janjaweed, an Arabic militia group, and the workings of an underwater oil rig. In addition, we meet more multi-dimensional characters along the way such as The Chef, Nadia’s assassin mentor, Blue Fan, Salamander’s granddaughter, and Greaves, an MI6 agent who owes Nadia his life.
Kirwan’s writing is cunning and very precisely detailed so that the reader eagerly awaits the final culmination that has been long-awaited in this trilogy. The amount of research that Kirwan has done to make this series so fascinating and unique is incredible. In my opinion, it’s this research and the attention to detail that make this series so captivating and engrossing. I highly recommend this trilogy and hope to read more by Mr. Kirwan.
The Nadia Diving Thrillers Series:
BUY THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.F. Kirwan is an insomniac and coffee-addict who lives just outside Paris. He believes the best time to write thrillers is in the dead of night when everyone is sleeping. He studied psychology, including some chilling lectures from a criminology professor who used to interview serial killers, which in part inspired his forthcoming novel with Bloodhound.
His day job involves trying to prevent large-scale accidents (mainly airplanes and nuclear power plants). Studying them over the years has given him a sense of how catastrophic events start off slow, simmer awhile, then gather speed and accelerate towards the final event. He channels this experience into his writing, and calls it tourniquet plotting.
His second main passion is diving, and as a dive instructor, he’s been lucky enough to dive all over the world, and wrote a spy thriller trilogy with a strong diving element, the Nadia Laksheva series (66 Metres; 37 Hours; 88 North).
His current focus though is on serial killers: what makes them tick, and how close to sanity’s edge you need to be to catch them.
It’s my pleasure! Your books are incredibly detailed and very well researched, and they would be a fantastic movie trilogy.
Love this review – the first para is the best blurb for the book yet! M any thanks!