Man Down: A Broken Wings Thriller

Publishers Weekly

The midair explosion of a plane reportedly carrying the First Lady gets Douglas's sequel to Broken Wings off to a galloping start. Government officials hastily shoo swashbuckling hero Jake Donovan, a former FBI profiler and acclaimed nonfiction author, away from the scene of the plane crash, and before Jake can raise a fuss, he and his crack Broken Wings team (an independently funded cadre of retired elite agents) get an assignment much closer to home. Millicent DeVries, their wealthy benefactress, asks them to investigate the North Carolina murder of prominent research scientist William Rush. DeVries's married niece Janice is missing and may have been sleeping with Rush. The DeVries case looks like as if it might lead them back to the plane explosion, but the work of the team keeps being disrupted. DeVries family infighting threatens the Wings' funding. Jake's lover, Katie McManus, a crime scene investigator and Broken Wings member, inconveniently decides to cool their affair. And while Jake has heretofore had a good relationship with ex-wife Toni and their two children, Toni goes ballistic over the high-profile nature of the case. Her fears turn out to be justified: before long, their son, Eric, is kidnapped. With this sophomore mystery, Douglas drifts away from the sober, methodical, intricate presentation of forensic facts that won his first novel and earlier nonfiction well-deserved acclaim. Here, the plot is cluttered and not terribly suspenseful, with a resolution as neat as it is predictable. Broken Wings fans may feel this sequel is rushed and disappointing. (Nov. 1) Forecast: Douglas's longtime co-writer Mark Olshaker is not credited for this novel, which may have something to do with the dip in quality. Douglas will have to convince fans he can go it alone to keep this series viable. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Second in the Broken Wings series (Broken Wings, 1999, with Mark Olshaker) and first solo fiction by Douglas, famed as Thomas Harris's legendary FBI Mindhunter. Douglas has the drill for thrillers down pat: lots of bad guys, piles of bodies, big grids of electric danger, though he cannot fashion a stylish all-nighter like Harris's Hannibal Clarice. The five members of the privately funded but legally empowered Broken Wings team, former active FBI agents who went out of bounds and got themselves buried by the Bureau, do all sorts of quasi-illegal acts that normally would call for a warrant-but they're effective. A Blackhawk helicopter explodes over Washington, crashes into the Mall, and kills all aboard. The First Lady, at first thought to be a passenger, is safe. Terrorist act? All think so. The Broken Wings, called in to the case, find themselves then suddenly dismissed from it by the Attorney General, no friend of profiler Hollywood John Donovan, the team's boss and famed (like Douglas) for his nonfiction books on serial killers and his tech help with moviemakers who want to get things right. Taken off the case, the team agrees to assist their financial benefactor, Mrs. Millicent De Vries, whose niece and husband are missing. Also missing: nuclear scientist William Rush, who was working on a hush-hush weapon. Donovan finds the niece, Janice Calahan, sprawled naked and dead atop the similar body of William Rush. Did her missing husband find them in the act and shoot them both? But Donovan suspects his arch-nemesis, the phantom J.P. Napoleon, who seems to own everything and wants to own more (if he even exists). Well, like that Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty, J.P. Napoleon is toorich a villain for Douglas to deliver up in a mere two novels. Meanwhile, Donovan's ex-wife Toni and his cooling paramour and teammate Katie both turn the screws on him. Page-turner full of sardonic asides.