Ambush

August 22, 2016
British author Oldham’s violent, action-packed sequel to Onslaught finds Steve Flynn leading an idyllic life on the Mediterranean resort island of Ibiza. When he’s not running pleasure cruises for the rich, he’s spending time with his lover, Maria Santiago. The brutality and horror of his previous job as a Lancashire detective fighting the region’s biggest drug traffickers is quickly becoming a distant memory. But when some of his former colleagues begin dying—all shot in gangland fashion—Flynn quickly realizes that all the victims are tied to an old case involving the arrest and conviction of a psychopathic crime boss who apparently died in prison months earlier. With only Flynn and one other cop left from the police team that participated in an antidrug operation, he must stay alive long enough to figure out who’s doing the killing—and why. Oldham’s fluid, deeply atmospheric prose helps compensate for the two-dimensional characters and an abrupt ending that will not satisfy some readers.

September 1, 2016
Former cop Steve Flynn, who left the police force under a cloud, has settled into a contented life on the island of Gran Canaria, running a charter fishing-boat business. Even his love life has turned around, with cop Maria Santiago making him think about long-term commitment and even marriage. But when Flynn hears the terrible news that three of the cops who worked with him on a major drug bustcode-named Aquarius years earlier have been brutally murdered, he fears he may be next on the list. The drug kingpin Flynn and his team arrested at the time died in prison, and it's difficult for Flynn to understand who else would have a plausible motive for killing the cops involved in Aquarius. He decides not to wait around for the killer to track him down; instead, he'll head back to England and take the offensive. His quest for truth quickly becomes a living nightmare. This tense thriller is a roller-coaster ride of gut-churning violence and pulse-pounding action. It's not for the fainthearted, but it's a mesmerizing read for anyone who likes the hard-boiled style.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)