Shadow Target by David Ricciardi

Published by Berkley on June 15, 2021

Shadow Target is the fourth book in the Jake Keller series. I was indifferent to the first novel and didn’t read the next two. The fourth installment isn’t a bad action novel.

Jake works for the CIA in its “elite Special Activities Center,” meaning he kills people who, in the divine wisdom of the CIA, ought to be dead. He used to be named Zachary but he changed his face and name in response to adverse publicity. Not that paramilitary CIA officers are ever likely to attract favorable publicity.

The novel begins with a plane crash in the Alps. Jake is the only survivor, a tribute to the good luck enjoyed by thriller heroes. Jake crawls into the woods and conceals himself as a helicopter lands. The killers on the helicopter who want to seal his fate are chased away by a rescue helicopter before they can find Jake. When Jake wakes up, he has a dim memory of seeing something that explains the crash but he can’t remember what he saw. He is pretty sure, however, that someone tried to kill him.

As Jake frets about his lost memory and the foiled attempt on his life, he becomes convinced that too many other paramilitary operatives have been dying. His superiors don’t seem to have noticed, or they’ve chalked it up to a dangerous job. Jake decides that someone is deliberately killing CIA agents and that a betrayer in the CIA must be facilitating that project by providing information about agents’ identities and missions. Jake makes it his mission to save his own life and the lives of other CIA agents by learning the identities of the betrayer and the person who is orchestrating the betrayal.

Shadow Target is a standard action novel. In the words of Shadow, the CIA officer who is helping the bad guy, Jake is “the best paramilitary officer I’ve ever seen.” Of course he is. Unlike truly bad action fiction, Jake isn’t infallible or invulnerable, although he’s certainly hard to kill. Like nearly all action spies, he “threads the needle” between “doing what he thinks is right” and doing what he’s told to do. There’s nothing new or particularly interesting in Jake’s characterization. He does, however, have a thing going with a French spy — or at least he did before he changed his name and face and was presumed dead. She’s a bit cheesed off when he resurfaces after a period of being dead, without having sent so much as a postcard. The relationship and Jake’s total inability to understand women humanizes him.

While he’s going about his business, Jake discovers that a fellow named Nikolai Kozlov has a plan to kill a Very Important Person during a London visit. The plan involves an unlikely weapon and opening a window to use it, something that security police are likely to notice, but what the heck. Kozlov has some operatives of his own who are tasked with killing Jake because he’s the only person in the world who is likely to stop the assassination. Naturally, they aren’t up to Jake’s standards. Again, this is standard fare, but Jake’s ability to survive the various attempts to kill him keep the story moving at a good pace.

The plot delivers few surprises, but it does produce some fun action scenes. David Ricciardi’s explanation for the initial targeting of Jake is a bit convoluted but that’s life in the world of modern thrillers. In fact, the reason for Kozlov’s targeting of paramilitary CIA operatives in general is convoluted, in part because Ricciardi uses misdirection to keep the reader (or Jake) guessing. In the end, I was willing to buy into the story for the sake of enjoying the action, even if the plot skates on a thin sheet of credibility.

RECOMMENDED

Warning Light by David Ricciardi

Published by Berkley on April 17, 2018

Iran has a “secret” nuclear facility near the site of a recent earthquake, but not so secret that the CIA is unaware of its existence. A British Airways flight with apparent engine and hydraulic problems approaches the airspace over the facility and makes an emergency landing at Sirjan, much to the consternation of the Iranian military, given the flight’s intrusion into prohibited airspace. However, shooting down a crippled civilian craft with a large number of passengers would be bad for Iran’s image, so Zac Miller, an American passenger, finds himself on the ground at an airport that was shut down due to the earthquake. Not long after that, he’s taken prisoner as a suspected spy because he took some pictures of a mountain sunset.

Of course, the Iranians are right. Miller is a spy, but not a field agent. He’s an analyst who is slotted into the mission at the last moment, after the real spy had to drop out. The CIA’s brilliant scheme is to have him take pictures of the “secret” nuclear facility as he strolls across the airport tarmac. And for this they put the lives of everyone on the British Airways flight at risk. The idea is just dumb enough to be real.

Miller is taken prisoner because he’s the only passenger taking pictures of the “secret” facility. With improbable speed, the Iranians set up Miller as a suspect in murders committed in Singapore and Paris. Also improbable is Miller’s escape from custody, but it sets up the cross-country trek that takes up a good part of the story, as Miller tries to evade Iran’s military and make his way to a friendlier environment.

The story takes Miller to Iranian goat herders and later puts him in the hands of Dubai police officers, one of whom lost his wife when the U.S.S. Vincennes, an American naval vessel unlawfully operating in Iranian waters, shot down a civilian aircraft that was leaving Iran. The police officer believes the military action was deliberate; Miller believes it was a mistake. The truth is less clear, but the novel acknowledges that the incident shaped the way many Iranians view the American government.

In any event, Miller feels abandoned by the CIA, which decides that he has gone rogue and turned into a serial killer. The CIA wants to kill Miller because that’s how the CIA solves problems. That creates a classic "good guy must prove his innocence before other good guys kill him unless the bad guys kill him first" plot that is standard in thrillers.

An elderly high society British woman also plays a key role in the story, having taken a shine to Miller while sitting next to him on the British Airways flight. I wasn’t persuaded that she would be so obsessed about a man she knew for such a short time, particularly after she learns that he’s accused of multiple murders.

The plot struck me as a bit farfetched, from the scheme to put civilian passengers on British Airways at risk to the Iranians’ immediate and successful effort to make Miller look like a murderer (maybe Iran has a contingency plan to frame CIA agents). More troubling is that Miller’s adventure is just too easy. He readily evades capture, crosses borders at will, and never faces a threat of death sufficiently serious to cause the reader to worry about his survival. The story lacks tension and suspense. Not all thrillers need to be thrilling, but this one was clearly meant to be, and it falls short of the mark.

The promotional materials for Warning Light emphasize that David Ricciardi incorporated his personal experiences into the novel, including backpacking through the mountains of the western United States. Backpacking in mountains in the US is fun and not particularly dangerous. That’s kind of how Miller’s trip through the mountains in Iran comes across, but for the occasional battle to the death.

Having said that, Ricciardi delivers one good scene involving a sailboat trying to cross the English Channel in a storm that conveys a true sense of excitement and danger. If the novel had done that more often, I would have no reservations about recommending it. Ricciardi’s prose and pace are fine and, as first novels go, Warning Light isn’t a bad effort, although the ending (which sets up the next novel) is weak. I would chalk this up as decent first draft that wasn’t quite ready to be published.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS