Collateral Damage

What an intense story! This one's a thriller with no-holds-barred action! The story starts in Afghanistan, but when the characters come back to the US, the mystery only grows bigger. When Brooke comes back to the states after her assignment, she isn't expecting the war to follow her home.

I sympathized with Brooke easily, especially as she sees friends hurt and killed by the relentless folks after her. While I did manage to work out what was going on fairly early, I didn't feel that the plot was easily figured out—I've simply been reading a lot of Eason lately and even reread several parts on the instinct that there was some clue on that page.

The crime is gross and tragic. In the light of recent events news reports of Chinese political prisoners, especially Christians, being sold for body parts the premise of the crime was sadly not far-fetched in the least. Black-market organs is something that both scares me and grosses me out, and it wasn't a shock to find out the bodies in the mass grave were from that.

The action is very intense and at times they don't even have an inch to spare in their escape. And at the end, when there isn't an inch, I was ready to audibly yell at the characters to avoid the obvious (to me) trap. Sarah and Brooke both walk into one of those at some point and I was on the edge of my seat and a nervous wreck during those scenes!

An excellent thriller.

Thanks to the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.