Fourth Day

December 20, 2010
In Sharp's adrenaline-packed follow-up to Third Strike, Brit Charlie Fox, a close-protection specialist (or bodyguard) now working for a Manhattan company, seeks to extricate schoolteacher Thomas Witney from Fourth Day, a cult in the desert near Los Angeles. Thomas infiltrated the cult five years earlier because he believed that Fourth Day's charismatic leader, Randall Bane, was responsible for the death of Thomas's college-age son, Liam, who perished during an ecoterrorism protest. While Charlie and her lover, Sean Meyer, manage to get Thomas out, they're unprepared for either his complete about-face on Bane or the intense interest that Homeland Security suddenly has in the cult and Thomas's insider knowledge. The relationship between Charlie and Sean has always been fraught with tension, but a startling personal revelation and Charlie's decision whether to keep this information to herself as she prepares to go undercover into Fourth Day considerably raises the emotional stakes.

November 1, 2010

Charlie Fox, her SIG loaded and aimed, infiltrates a California cult that's been stockpiling ammo.

Private-security honcho Parker Armstrong is playing this job close to his bulletproof vest. He won't tell agents (and lovers) Charlie Fox and Sean Meyer (Third Strike, 2008, etc.) who hired him, but he wants them to breach the Fourth Day compound and come out with Thomas Witney. They get their man, then lose him in a rundown motel, where he's tortured and murdered, drawing the ire of federal superspook Epps. Charlie, who had promised Witney protection, is saddled with guilt. Her insistence on going undercover at Fourth Day pits her against its leader, Randall Bane, whose psychiatric insights lead Charlie, like many of his followers, to emotional epiphanies. But cult expert Chris Sagar, disagreeing with her take on Bane, eggs Parker and his minions on. Who to trust? Everyone seems to have a secret agenda. Even Charlie's motives are suspect, coiling around a past miscarriage she never got around to mentioning to Sean. Guns blaze, fists pummel and the plot gears up for a Ruby Ridge/Waco finale before matters settle down, not entirely to Charlie's liking.

Charlie, whose most distinctive quality is her killer instinct, gets quite a physical and emotional working over. Will it soften her up next time around?

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Starred review from December 15, 2010
Charlie Fox (n'e Charlotte Foxcroft) has worked hard to overcome horrific odds and train herself mentally and physically to be a valued member of the elite Armstrong-Meyers private security firm. But when the job calls for extracting a man from the alleged cult, Fourth Day, and the operation goes south, Charlie infiltrates the organization, whose charismatic leader, Randall Bane, views her discontent as aggravated by loss of control during a recent pregnancy and miscarriage, which she still hasnt revealed to her lover, Sean Meyers. While Charlie sees Bane as a healer, former cult leader Chris Sagar accuses Fourth Day of fostering terrorism. At odds with her employer and at a critical juncture with Meyers, Charlie gets help from LAPD Detective Ritz Gardner, and the two women try to avert a Waco-like tragedy. In the eighth installment in the series (not all have yet been published in the U.S.), Charlie invites comparison with Lee Childs Jack Reacher in both skills and moral sense, and her psychological complexity adds depth to her character and the series. The shocker of an ending will make readers especially anxious for Sharps next adventure. Must reading for fans of action-packed, hard-edged thrillers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)