From Publishers Weekly
An anti-terrorist Delta force, operating in such covert isolation that practically no one knows about them (and those who do will deny it) discovers a plot to detonate a nuclear device smuggled across the Canadian border into North Dakota in Logan's latest high-stakes thriller (after Absolute Zero). Tough-talking, good-looking Gulf War veteran Maj. Nina Pryce sets out to seduce the alleged bomb smuggler while her estranged husband, ex-cop Phil Broker, and their seven-year-old daughter get drawn into the suspenseful special forces sting. Narrator Conway's smooth growl of a voice, reminiscent of a chain-smoker's, successfully captures the raw reality that the team is up against, making him the ideal narrator for this tale. Surprisingly, his hardened tone even works for the story's female characters, though it doesn't hurt that they are all dyed-in-the-wool military types who are willing to rip the enemy's throat out with their teeth—and that they heartily pass around packs of smokes. Conway's intense yet quiet delivery is well-timed, confident and just as precise as Logan's prose. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
After the Rain FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Nina Pryce and her husband, Phil Broker, couldn't have more opposite views of the military. Broker's loyalty to the men he served with in Vietnam is matched only by his certainty that they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Nina, though, is a new breed, a decorated and ambitious vet of the first Gulf War. As Nina proceeds along her chosen career path, Broker - until his recent "retirement," Minnesota's most effective, unorthodox, and controversial undercover cop - finds himself struggling in the role of patient military spouse." "Incommunicado for months as part of a top-secret Delta anti-terrorist operation, Nina, with daughter Kit in tow, suddenly emerges in Langdon, North Dakota, a town in the heart of the Cold War Minuteman II missile belt. When Broker arrives to take Kit back home, he realizes that the legacy of those warheads still casts a sinister shadow across the desolate north border country, in the person of a damaged psychopath." Broker discovers he's been drawn into an elaborate con within a con, made an unwitting participant in a black-bag anti-terrorist detail. But his anger toward Nina for involving him and putting their daughter at risk quickly fades as a larger, more deadly reality becomes evident. With time running out, husband and wife unite with local North Dakota law enforcement to form a last line of defense against a brilliantly simple act of espionage with potentially catastrophic consequences.
FROM THE CRITICS
Patrick Anderson - The Washington Post
In telling all this, Logan does many things well. The beauty and desolation of North Dakota are palpable. The characters are sharply drawn and often surprising, the story is suspenseful, the dialogue is crisp. The nuclear plot is ingenious and its final countdown is a nail-biter. And Pryce is surely one of the more formidable women in current fiction.
Publishers Weekly
An anti-terrorist Delta force, operating in such covert isolation that practically no one knows about them (and those who do will deny it) discovers a plot to detonate a nuclear device smuggled across the Canadian border into North Dakota in Logan's latest high-stakes thriller (after Absolute Zero). Tough-talking, good-looking Gulf War veteran Maj. Nina Pryce sets out to seduce the alleged bomb smuggler while her estranged husband, ex-cop Phil Broker, and their seven-year-old daughter get drawn into the suspenseful special forces sting. Narrator Conway's smooth growl of a voice, reminiscent of a chain-smoker's, successfully captures the raw reality that the team is up against, making him the ideal narrator for this tale. Surprisingly, his hardened tone even works for the story's female characters, though it doesn't hurt that they are all dyed-in-the-wool military types who are willing to rip the enemy's throat out with their teeth-and that they heartily pass around packs of smokes. Conway's intense yet quiet delivery is well-timed, confident and just as precise as Logan's prose. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Forecasts, May 17). (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Of course Phil Broker is going after his estranged wife, Delta Force operator Nina, who is kidnapped by a sociopath while running an unorthodox undercover operation across the Canadian boarder. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Ex-soldier, ex-cop Phil Broker (Vapor Trail, 2003, etc.) is hauled out of semiretirement to chase his wife and a McGuffin, both explosive. Major Nina Price, lean, mean, and militant (she was, for instance, the first woman to lead a combat infantry unit under fire) is in a jam, and wouldn't you know it, she needs hubby's help to bail her out. The problem involves some suitcase-sized bombs with, gulp, inherent nuclear elements. There's reason to believe they've been smuggled across the border from Canada into backwater Langton, North Dakota. Nina has the support of trusted colleagues, tested stalwarts of the elite Delta Force, but Broker is, after all, the nonpareil, the man with the perfected eye for "the subtleties in human and geographic landscape." Considering the magnitude of the danger (think 9/11 exponentially), she feels she has no choice but to send out what amounts to an SOS. Why such reluctance? Because this warrior pair, though ever so hot for each other, is not what you'd call the yin and yang of domestic compatibility. Mutually, they irritate and antagonize; both would acknowledge that they had no business marrying. Having married, they shouldn't, in Broker's phrase, "have been allowed to breed." Enter Kit, their seven-year-old-daughter, whom Nina has quite indefensibly shoved onto the chessboard in a gambit calculated to befuddle the bad guys. They're certifiable, those bad guys, but they don't befuddle worth a damn. Body bags fill, Nina gets herself kidnapped, and nuclear disaster approaches on little catastrophic feet. Never fear, though. Nina and Broker, with the help of their friends, rise to the occasion, cope with a contemporary Trojan horse among other booby-traps, andearn the thanks of a grateful nation. Overplotted and underimagined. Logan's sixth but far from his best. Author tour. Agency: ICM
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