Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction
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Overview
Brandon Vale is a career thief---the best there is. Or at least he was before he was thrown in prison for a jewel heist gone bad. And even more embarrassing, he had nothing to do with it. His time inside is going fairly quietly until the night he’s broken out against his will by Richard Scanlon, the now-retired FBI agent who framed him in the first place.
Scanlon, who still has ties to the United States intelligence community, has discovered that a Ukrainian crime organization is auctioning twelve nuclear warheads to the highest bidder, but he can't convince the government that the sale isn't a hoax. The only way he can get his hands on the $200 million necessary to take the warheads off the market is to do something that goes against everything he stands for: steal it.
The choice Brandon is given is simple: help Scanlon and hope to live through it, or turn himself in and face the repercussions of his "escape."
Suddenly, Brandon finds himself with only weeks to plan a Las Vegas heist that that he’s been dreaming about for years, but has always thought was probably impossible. And to make matters worse, Scanlon insists on choosing his team personally. Led by the relentlessly intelligent and undeniably beautiful Catherine Juarez, not a single one of the former government operatives he picks has so much as shoplifted a pack of gum in their lives.
As the day of the heist approaches, Brandon’s carefully constructed plans begin to break down and he suspects that the elaborate double-cross he’s devised to save himself could cost millions of lives. He finally has to ask himself just how far he’s willing to be dragged into a game that he can only lose.
The Second Horseman is a thrilling entry in the Fade series. With this heart-stopping, all-too-real novel, Kyle Mills proves once again that he is one of the freshest and most original thriller writers working today.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
In Kyle Mills's The Second Horseman, the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it looms large when a Ukrainian organized crime group decides to auction off 12 nuclear warheads to the highest bidder. With most of the U.S. intelligence community believing the rumor is a hoax, the lives of millions of innocent people lie in the hands of an unlikely savior: a career thief named Brandon Vale, who is currently serving time for a jewel heist gone bad.When Vale is inexplicably broken out of prison by the very man who put him in -- former FBI agent Richard Scanlon -- the 33-year-old thief believes he is about to be killed. But Scanlon, now the head of a defense contracting company specializing in intelligence, makes Vale an offer he can't refuse: Either help Scanlon somehow get his hands on almost a quarter million dollars in cash to buy the dozen nukes and avert a global disaster or go back to jail with years added on for attempting to escape. Meanwhile, there are other factions that would do anything to possess the warheads: those who want to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all…
The term "ripped from today's headlines!" may be overused when it comes to promoting new suspense thrillers, but in the case of The Second Horseman, it's a more than fitting description. Terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction, fanatical religious-fueled violence, the escalating conflict in the Middle East: This page-turning thriller will do so much more than entertain its readers, it will chill them to the very marrow. Is The Second Horseman a cautionary tale or a doomsday prophecy? Only time will tell… Paul Goat Allen
Publishers Weekly
At the start of this strong thriller from bestseller Mills (Fade), career criminal Brandon Vale is in prison for a failed diamond theft when Richard Scanlon, an ex-FBI agent and security consultant, gets him released and offers him a job. The Ukrainian mob claims it has 12 nuclear warheads for sale, and Scanlon decides he'll save them from becoming ammunition in a terrorist plot by, with Brandon's help, coming up with the $200 million asking price by robbing a Vegas casino. With the aid of one of Scanlon's employees, Catherine Juarez, Brandon executes a brilliant plan, but finds himself mired in the terrorist plot. The likable Brandon wants nothing more than to be allowed to continue his life of cons and crime without the distractions of morality and patriotism, but this is not to be ("It was hard to believe that the planet's future-or lack thereof-was going to rest on the narrow shoulders of a thirty-three-year-old thief"). Fortunately for readers and the world, Brandon proves to be interesting, intelligent and more than equal to the task. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
The usually reliable Mills misfires with this unusual entry, his follow-up to Fade. Career thief Brandon Vale is serving a prison term for a theft he didn't actually commit. When the man who framed him breaks him out of confinement and asks for a huge favor, Brandon reluctantly agrees to help as a means to avoid returning to jail for a longer sentence. After carrying out the favor, Brandon, constantly watching his back and trusting no one, takes on the ultimate job for financial stability. But the stakes are higher than he'd thought and in order to live out his retirement, he must save the world. An interesting idea fails to ignite because the characters never seem real, and primary plot points appear random. Also, the major conspiracy seems like an afterthought. Had this been written differently, it could have been a masterpiece. Buy only where Mills is popular.-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
An ex-con and a partner race to head off a nuclear Armageddon in this thriller from Mills (Fade, 2005, etc.). Wily Brandon Vale is a crack poker player, able to bluff, stare down and out-deal anyone at his table. That makes him the man to carry out a critical international mission that has a circle of protagonists reading each other's eyes and moves like, well, men at a poker table. The problem is that Vale is a jailbird, falsely sent up for a jewelry heist. No problem, though, because one rainy night, a firm run by Edwin Hamdi, top security advisor to the president, easily springs Vale from prison. Hamdi wants Vale and associate Catherine Juarez to head to the Ukraine and steal 12 nuclear warheads from an organized-crime group. Hamdi tempts Vale with Juarez, who can shoot, karate kick and serve a steak dinner laced with sex appeal. Hamdi's plea that Vale can save America by keeping the nukes from the hands of terrorists doesn't hurt either, and soon Vale and Juarez agree to go. But first, they have to come up with money to finance the operation, by hijacking a tractor-trailer headed from Las Vegas to San Francisco that's loaded with millions of dollars. The extended road-chase action scene out of the way, the team skips off to the Ukraine, in great peril, it's revealed, because Hamdi's actual plan is a final solution that will use the nukes to wipe out the Arabs and the Israelis. Vale and Juarez eventually end up in Jordan driving a truck loaded with one of the nukes, which threatens to obliterate promises of new faces and new lives for them in South America. Vale's mordant wit is refreshing, but the double-crosses and final outcome are predictable, and the plot more far-fetched thanfrightening.Book Details
Published
April 1, 2007
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Pages
304
ISBN
9781429907194