Broken Wings

Houston Chronicle

This thriller owes its interest to Douglas' insights into how law enforcement works. Olshaker's writing skills keep the action whipping along.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After five nonfiction outings (including the best-selling Mindhunter), Douglas and Olshaker jump into the deep end of the thriller pool with a creditable series opener that establishes the swift-response flying squad of agents that former FBI agent Douglas never got a chance to implement in real life. The team is led by fictional ex-FBI profiler Jake Donovan, who not only shares the initials of one of his creators but his nickname as well (he's called "the Mindhunter"). After getting himself fired for insubordination, Donovan is called back to investigate the apparent suicide of FBI director Thomas Jefferson Boyd, who's found dead in his San Francisco home along with a compromising picture that suggests he was being blackmailed. Donovan, who had earlier refused a blank-check offer from wealthy widow Millicent De Vries to create his flying squad, reconsiders and gathers a crack team of experts to assist him in his investigations. The team's adversary is a criminal mastermind who will undoubtedly be showing up in future episodes of the series, and Donovan is provided with a worthy love interest, fellow agent Kathleen McManus, herself suspended for posing for a pantyhose catalogue. As the team crisscrosses the country in its private plane, enough red herrings are introduced to keep the plot lively. Though the novel is not as assured as Douglas and Olshaker's authoritative nonfiction, and Jake Donovan tends to read as a watered-down version of Douglas, this is, overall, a solid, promising debut. Still, fans of the clinically detailed Mindhunter and Journey into Darkness may well be disappointed when they discover that in this case fiction is not as gripping as fact. Agent, Jay Acton. 7-city author tour. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

From The Critics

A many is found in his San Francisco Bayarea home, lying in his bed, dead from a gunshot in the mouth. It looks like suicide, but this is no ordinary corpse. Thomas Boyd was director of the FBI. That's why Jake Donovan from the FBI's Behavioral Science Profiling Unit receives an urgent summons to take on what will prove to be the most dangerous, volatile, and politically sensitive case of his professional career. To do what the Bureau can't (or won't), Jake enlists an elite team of "broken wings", agents like himself who had been frozen out of the FBI. There is a trail of evidence that must be followed no matter where it leads and no matter whom it implicates. Broken Wings is a riveting mystery from first page to last. This G.K. Hall edition is large print, making it highly recommended for community libraries servicing the visual impaired and older patron.

USAToday

Readers of Tom Clancy may enjoy the technological touches, from the 1962 Aston Martin that Donovan drives, to the Lockheed C-130H Hercules his elite team flies around to the country in, to the wide array of big-time weapons they pack.

But it doesn't take a profiler to realize early on that Broken Wings has sequel written all over it.