“The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller”

It’s the present day, ten days before Yom Kippur, and in Folsom State Prison an Iranian inmate named Bijan “Renoir” Reza—known for his artful theft of valuable art—is being called into service via a coded message.

It seems a painting by a famous artist has been stolen from a Paris museum and now Reza’s work is to steal the painting from the thief and collect the $5 million reward to fund—well, therein lies the tale, called “The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller” ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press, with ebook and audiobook versions also available) by Grass Valley area novelist Avanti Centrae.

First he needs a couple of lackeys. One is his cellmate, Dakota Black. “Even after a few years inside, Black still looked like the boy next door rather than a hardened criminal. Of course, all the men in prison claimed they were innocent, but Reza was inclined to believe his cellmate’s assertion.”

The other is Cody Winters, who blames Dakota for killing his brother Austin, whose “blood-red Thunderbird” had earlier forced Black’s Ram pickup off the country road, killing his passenger, his beloved girlfriend Jenny, their marriage never to happen.

The two are kept from killing each other with promises of part of the reward money and a fresh start, though Reza knows both will be “fish food” once the heist of the heist is completed. When a mysterious plan disables the guards and releases dozens of prisoners in the midst of smoke from a wildfire, the trio escape through the pipes of an unused sewer system, landing right into the American River.

Hard on their tails is Elizabeth Everett of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. “Although her mother was Iranian, Everett felt only minor kinship with her compatriots and had zero tolerance for that government’s terrorist leanings.” She had put Reza in prison the first time, and now, with word that he is part of a grand scheme involving nuclear material and Yom Kippur, time is running out.

Told from alternating points of view, each suspenseful chapter offers surprises all the way from Sacramento to Niagara Falls. 

Readers will have a barrel of fun.

“The Mouth Mechanic: A Rick Rose Novel”

If someone steals the crown jewels, it’s time to call in Chico novelist (and retired dentist) Mike Paull because, well, the crown in question is a gold crown, missing from a tooth in a well-dressed murder victim in the Bay Area. 

The crown has something to do with Middle East shenanigans and when a second victim is found, also with a missing crown, the stakes could not be higher for newly hired forensic odontologist Dr. Rick Rose, working for the San Francisco Medical Examiner, Dr. Alexandra (Alex) Keller and also, as Rose adds, “the most beautiful pathologist in the country.”

As Rose notes in Paull’s propulsive new mystery-thriller, “odontologists were dentists who helped in criminal investigations, especially in cases where nobody could identify who the dead guy was.” The novel’s title uses a more descriptive name: “The Mouth Mechanic: A Rick Rose Novel” ($15.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, in print or ebook format at most bookstores and at Amazon.com).

Rose, 35, tells the story. His drinking led to suspension of his dental license and time in “a diversion program—kind of an AA for people who wear white coats and latex gloves.” By the time his license is returned his practice had folded, he and wife Josie divorced, and he was Googling for work. Though he was “ninety-first out of a class of a hundred” at dental school, he’s hired by Keller who is rebuilding the department with millennials.

Things heat up very quickly as Rose tries to figure out the importance of the missing crowns on two ID-less murder victims. Some shadowy figures think he has them. “Yesterday,” he muses at one point, “I had received my third death threat in as many days. Two from a couple of thugs who were certainly doing someone else’s bidding, and the other from a spy for the Israeli Mossad. It was pretty obvious I was close to something worth killing for….”

Readers will be turning the pages as fast as they can as Rose uses every ounce of his sarcastic energy to manipulate the manipulators and find the truth. 

A flawed man, he may yet rise to his crowning achievement.

"Missing In The Maldives"

Chico novelist Mike Paull brings readers the third in a series of international spy thrillers with "Missing In The Maldives" ($15.99 in paperback from Wings ePress, Inc., wingsepress.com; also for Amazon Kindle). 

The Republic of Maldives is a group of islands southwest of India and Sri Lanka, a touristy destination for the well-heeled and shadowy heels alike. One fine day in 2011 a body washes up on Thulusdhoo island, the victim's passport identifying him as Craig Cooper.

That's a bit of a conundrum since the real Craig Cooper ("Coop"), Deputy Director of the "Agency," is very much alive in Washington, DC. Five months earlier he and his Agency partner Zoe Fields had been shot; while Coop quickly returned to work, Zoe "remained in a deep coma for eight weeks…." 

But now she's well, and not a moment too soon. Coop convinces the Director to bring her back to the Agency (despite her disappearance for a time "with nine million dollars of Agency money," told in Book II, "She's Missing"). 

They are no strangers to dangerous international assignments (Coop is shot in the back in Book I, "Missing," as he searches for the rumored Iraqi gold hoard after the demise of Saddam Hussein). And now it seems Israel wants to find a rogue Mossad operative, Lev Cohen, who with his girlfriend Rachel Kagan murdered the Mossad director and absconded with the nine million. 

Earlier Zoe had pumped three bullets into Kagan's chest but Lev is nowhere to be found. And then word comes from the chief of the Maldives National Defense Force and Police Service, Shaquille Azeez, that the body is Craig Cooper is in the morgue.

Well, game on. When Coop is thrown into a Maldivian jail, he enlists a fellow prisoner to work on an escape plan. With Coop missing in the Maldives, Zoe sets out to find him. Along the way an intricate plot is revealed, spycraft is pushed to its limits, and, as Coop observes, "in this business, betrayal never comes from our enemies. It always comes from our friends."

Paull's crisp writing and endearing heroes make the pages fly by, but let the reader be warned: Trust no one.

"Cleopatra's Vendetta: A Stryker Thriller"

Grass Valley novelist Avanti Centrae (avanticentrae.com) is back with a world-spanning tale, full of ancient secrets, only now revealed, with deadly consequences. What is unfolded is nothing less than "Cleopatra's Vendetta" ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format).

Subtitled "A Stryker Thriller," it's a reference to one Timothy Stryker, an officer in "the field arm of one of the Army's cutting-edge think tanks, the US Futures Command." Looking for brains more than brawn—intel became vital after 9/11—"the military created a special unit of recruits that previously wouldn't have made it through psych testing."

Stryker, extraordinary linguist, expert in disguises, and "brutally honest," lost his sister and mother when he was seven as his father murdered them. Jerónimo Guerrero Reyes—Rey—"held dual degrees in mechanical engineering and information technology" but his "sensitivity to smells and noise" is worsened by his PTSD. 

The team also includes Stryker's sister-in-law Samantha Coin—Sam—a compulsive gambler but empathetic, single with "trouble committing—to men or women…." She is in Bari, Italy on holiday with her sister, Angie, Stryker's wife, while Stryker is in Saudi Arabia investigating a tip that a high Saudi official will be assassinated. 

Angie is CEO of a biofuels company, CIA operative, and heavy drinker, trying to drown her sorrows after losing a child. She's brought their four-year-old daughter, Harper, to Italy, after Tim and Angie argue over her boozing.

Then, to Sam's horror, both Angie and Harper are kidnaped, and the team must race to find them. At the same time world leaders are being killed, and the US President and President-elect are also targeted. Tied up in it all is a shadowy group calling itself the Sons of Adam, still active after thousands of years when, earlier, members of the Sons of Adam helped lead to Cleopatra's demise.

But the Queen will exact her revenge, even if it has to wait until the present day, hiding her own intel on the group's secret, millennia-long propaganda effort that has changed the course of history. 

Through cliff-hangers and twisty turns, readers will be propelled to an explosive ending—both literally and psychologically.

"She's Missing"

"Follow the money." For Chico novelist, retired dentist and licensed pilot Mike Paull, Deep Throat's advice needs a corollary: "Doing so could get you killed." Especially in a spy thriller.

Stakes are high in "She's Missing" ($14.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, Inc.; also for Amazon Kindle), a follow-up to "Missing." In that earlier book a team of Americans from "the Agency," including fifty-something Craig Cooper ("Coop") and forty-something Zoe Fields, track down rumors of a hoard of gold just after Saddam Hussein's death in late 2006.

Now it's late 2010 and desk-bound Coop fields an urgent call from Zoe's domestic partner, Lara Graf, calling from Cyprus. The two are "on holiday" and now Zoe has disappeared from their hotel. It's a gut-punch to Coop. "The last time he talked to his fellow agent and best friend was before she saved his life and disappeared to Zurich with the nine million dollars the two of them had recovered...."

Coop cares little about the money; but now that Zoe is in trouble he must break his promise to his wife, Fran, and their young teenage son, Josh, not to go back to the field.

Then a memo from the Director of National Intelligence reports Israeli Mossad agents are on the trail of a suspected Iranian spy--Zoe. She had supposedly wired the money to a source that would send it to the Mossad Director. Instead it ended up in Iran.

Soon Coop, tapping resources for a Gulfstream G550 and its crack pilot, is winging his way to Cyprus only to encounter Mossad agent Lev Cohen with whom he partners (at least for a while). Lev works for Rachel Kagan and both are answerable to the Mossad Director. Everyone wants to find Zoe. Let's play together!

Coop knows better. Soon Zoe makes contact, the Mossad Director is murdered (Zoe is blamed), and the two must exonerate Zoe by finding out where the money went--and who killed the Director.

Paull's twisty tale and propulsive action unwind a cagey deception as Coop and friends "follow the money." From spycraft to aircraft, and a nail-biting trip into Iran, the novel keeps readers in suspense until the last, bittersweet page.

"Missing"

Chicoan Mike Paull, a retired dentist and licensed pilot, is the author of a trio of mysteries featuring Bret Raven, who just happens to be a dentist and licensed pilot. In his new book he's crafted an international spy thriller that takes the reader into Iraq just after the death of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006. A small group of Americans from "the Agency" has a lead on the rumored gold hoarded by Saddam and now hidden--somewhere.

"Missing" ($15.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, Inc.; also for Amazon Kindle) tells the tale mostly through the eyes of forty-something flawed family man Craig Cooper, who lives with his wife, Fran, and their ten-year-old son Josh in Virginia. "Coop," as he is known, struggles to be a good dad and husband, forever promising to give up his dangerous missions yet being sucked back into them, even after the Iraq gold quest goes terribly wrong.

Coop and Randy Nichols ("the station chief for the American Intelligence unit in Baghdad"), along with an interpreter, meet a mysterious man named Mustafa in Sadr City ("the body bag capital of Iraq"), who may know something about the gold. But then a sniper kills Mustafa and Coop is shot in the back. "He reached around to tug at his shirt; it was wet and sticky. ... He dropped to his knees, looked at his blood-soaked hand and fell face down in the dirt."

Yet Coop survives. Ten months later, back at the Agency, Randy, now Deputy Director, is pressured to assign a reluctant Coop to revisit the failed mission. Josh is crestfallen; it's the last straw for Fran; and truth to tell Coop has a score to settle with whomever tried to kill him in Iraq.

Coop's small team includes Zoe Fields, in her early forties with "the angelic look of a college-girl, but underneath it she was as tough as nails."

She will need to be; both of their lives are threatened as they unravel the mystery and confront unexpected treachery. It's a nail-biter with the stakes ramping up from chapter to chapter as the two discover far more than they bargained for. 

Get the book and root for Coop.

"Solstice Shadows: A VanOps Thriller"

Grass Valley novelist Avanti Centrae is back with another world-spanning adventure featuring thirty-something twins Maddy Marshall and her brother Will Argones. It's a follow-up to Centrae's debut, "VanOps: The Lost Power," which should be read first (though readers of the new work are brought up to speed).

 

"Solstice Shadows: A VanOps Thriller" ($16.49 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press; also for Amazon Kindle) chronicles the work of Vanguard Operations, a shadowy unit of the CIA. Chartered "to keep an eye out for any sort of advanced ... technology that threatened the security of the United States," the organization learns that the Russians are developing a quantum computer capable of hacking even the most sophisticated protections. 

 

In order to run properly, the computer needs superconducting materials, precisely what Maddy wielded in the form of small obelisks, strange shards that helped her channel ball lightning and defeat the Russians--for a time--some sixteen months earlier. But now the race is on to find the origin of those shards, likely contained in a meteor buried somewhere 3300 years ago.

 

The only clue as to its whereabouts is a "star chart" ripped from an ancient codex.

 

Centrae's depiction of what could happen if that super-computer hacked its way into U.S. "critical infrastructure" sent shivers down my spine: "How would truck drivers deliver food to stores with no gasoline? If dams didn't work, how would the farmers and firefighters have water to use? ... With no food, water, power, cash, or gasoline, there would be chaos. Armed fighting for basic survival. It would make the COVID-19 pandemic look like child's play."

 

And if the military's own communications were scrambled, the country would be open to, well, invasion.

 

Making matters worse, the Spaniards (under the direction of the evil King Carlos, to whom Maddy and Will are related) want in on the action.

 

The VanOps team (Maddy's boyfriend Bear Thorenson, who tries to get Maddy to join VanOps officially; Will; and group leader "Jags," an "intriguing" woman to whom Will is attracted) has only days to find the secret of the superconducting meteor. 

 

From Mexico to Jordan, the action never stops until the nail-biter of a conclusion.

 

"The Empath"

Chico novelist Michael Agliolo's supernatural techno-thriller is a seat-of-your pants wild ride. "The Empath" ($11.43 in paperback, self-published from MA Productions; also for Amazon Kindle) tells the story of 40-something day trader Jason Marino. He has a secret.

Jason is an empath. Sometimes, seemingly at random, he feels a "pull" toward someone who has been hurt. Touching them, he takes on their pain. In doing so, the healing process speeds up, and Jason, exhausted, falls sound asleep. He never makes a show of it. No one must know. 

"It doesn’t take a genius," he says, "to know anyone who can heal people would be hounded, dissected, and turned into some government science project if the word got out." But his life as a nondescript divorced guy in Northern California is about to come to an end. 

Visiting a hospital he feels the old familiar "pull" toward a young boy named Joey being wheeled into one of the rooms. Donning a disguise as "Dr. Cavanaugh," Jason gains entrance into Joey's room and touches his arm to "take his pulse."

And then: "The pulling sensation jolted me. All my senses vanished except my pain receptors. The pulling sensation surged. My head began to throb. Not a sharp pain, just a deep dull ache. My left leg hurt. Everything intensified. I owned the pain now."

Things really get strange when he meets Sarah Backman. She has prophetic dreams, seeing in advance what is going to happen--or what may happen if things are not changed.

They are surrounded by news that U.S. President Cunningham is stepping down after a brain tumor is discovered. Jason can help--but how is he going to get to the President? Child's play, compared to what happens next. Jason is inserted into a desperate mission to stop North Korea from bringing America to its knees, while Sarah at home guides them by her dreams. 

Jason, aboard a super-secret U.S. nuclear sub that runs at unheard of speeds by bubble cavitation, has an audacious plan and a load of nuclear missiles. What could go wrong?

"The Empath" will have readers cheering for Jason and Sarah, even as they learn the real cost of truth-telling.

"VanOps: The Lost Power"

When the twins arrived at their father's Napa vineyard, thirty-something Maddy Marshall and Will Argones wondered what was going on. Their sister Bella had been invited as well. Why all the family togetherness among siblings who had been dispersed far and wide?

Suddenly, a gunshot. The twins' father, the target of a Russian sniper, lives only long enough to speak the words that will propel Maddy and Will into Dan Brownian motion to find a mysterious other-worldly weapon.

"VanOps: The Lost Power" ($16.49 in paperback from Black Opal Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by Grass Valley novelist Avanti Centrae (avanticentrae.com), is a page-turner that takes its protagonists from a medieval Spanish castle to a secret underground city in Israel--and beyond.

Centrae's debut novel is the first in a series featuring VanOps, short for "Vanguard Operations," a top-secret CIA group chartered "to keep an eye out for any sort of advanced or obscure technology that threatened the security of the United States." 

Winner of the Genre Grand Prize at the Chanticleer International Book Awards, and a Hollywood Book Festival Honorable Mention, the story is a quest within a quest. 

A thousand years ago Ramiro I, the first King of Spain, founded a dynasty that "contributed to, not only the current Spanish ruling class, but also to the royal families of nearly all the other current European monarchies." Ramiro wielded obelisks of amazing power, said to be passed down from Alexander the Great, and said also to be part of the legacy of his descendants, Ferdinand and Isabella.

Maddy and Will are part of that great lineage. She is a world-class athlete, skilled in aikido; he is an engineer. Together they must find those who guard the ancient weapons, and then solve a series of clues to find the weapons themselves, all the time tailed by Russians who seem to know their every move.

They are joined by Teddy "Bear" Thorenson, an old high school classmate with "an embarrassing one-way crush" on Maddy, whom they just happen to run into, and who turns out to be a covert VanOps agent.

Will it be enough to win? Readers will have a thrilling time finding out.

"Evolved"

Chicoan Jesse Lawson works in Information Systems at Butte College; a U.S. Marine, he's served as an intelligence analyst. He's a singer-songwriter; host of the "Coping with Creativity" podcast; and the author of "Evolved" (self-published for Amazon Kindle; visit lawsonry.com for details), a sci-fi thriller that begins quietly at Chico State University.

That's where Dr. Lexa Rogers, a lecturer in archaeology, is on the cusp of getting a full-time position when, out of the blue, government agents from the Department of Homeland Security whisk her away, supposedly for a weekend, on a super-secret mission.

At Chico Municipal Airport the agents drive right up into the belly of a cargo plane for the long flight to San Felice Circeo, home of one of the most important Neanderthal fossil finds. Lexa is a former Marine but the secrecy makes no sense. "The real question now," she tells the agents, "is why some hundred-thousand-year-old bones in Italy are a matter of national security."

It turns out that buried in one of the ancient skulls is a tooth; removed for study, the handlers had accidentally chipped it, as Lexa sees in a photograph. But there's a second picture of the tooth without a chip. Okay. Except that the second picture was taken afterthe first. The tooth has healed itself. The genetic value to humanity? Incalculable.

There's more. Lexa meets Donna Morrow, project director in the Carson Habitat, "three hundred feet below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea and fifteen miles south of the Italian coast," where the focus is on Olive, a giant octopus who has learned rudimentary sign language. 

More importantly, cephalopods like Olive can quickly adapt their skin color to their surroundings, rendering them almost invisible. If that ability could be duplicated in the laboratory, soldiers would hold tremendous advantage against enemy troops.

Who wouldn't want such a genetic technology? So there are plots and counterplots afoot--and a grisly attack by a mysterious creature that makes getting at the truth a matter of life or death, even as the horror mounts.

This is the first book in the Special Projects and Intelligence Division Emergency Response (SPIDER) series and readers will eagerly await Lexa's next page-turning adventure.

“UnFettering Orion”

The news came last week that a fossil jawbone (from a species related to humans, dubbed “Homo naledi”) may rewrite our understanding of what makes us human. What if researchers made another find, this time one so extraordinary it seemed to validate the ancient extra-biblical book of Enoch, with its vision of mysterious Watchers?

Such is the question addressed in a fast-paced thriller from Stirling City novelist Mary James. “UnFettering Orion” ($6.99 for Amazon Kindle, from Double Dragon eBooks) begins with a graveside service for Sean Archer, an anthropologist working in Lebanon, killed in a horrendous commercial air crash. Ellie Savelle, an expert in Sumerian language, had begun dating Sean when they met each other at the University of Minnesota. Now he was gone.

But then a man named Anthony Graves enters her life. He’s the director of the Archeological Museum of Beirut, Sean’s last employer, and now he offers Ellie a job as well. Sean had been tracing the black market in ancient artifacts when his life was cut short, and he had told Ellie that he thought Graves knew more about this than he admitted. Was he friend or foe?

Ellie takes the job and finds herself in Lebanon. In one of the digs she discovers a metal screw, buried in soil “deep and compacted with no other sign of having been dug.” The question asked by her fellow researcher is one that drives the tale: “How then? How did the screw get buried in a dig that should be from at least 3000 B.C.E.?”

Ellie and her partners in the dig, Helen and Verrill, speculate about a race of giants mentioned in Genesis 6:4 and in Sumerian and Babylonian texts. “One supreme god sent down what appeared to be lesser gods to the Earth, and they had relations with human women that resulted in the giants of those days. Ellie was surprised at how all the stories seemed so similar, but what was the truth?”

What follows is a topsy-turvy adventure, with Ellie at the center, in a place where no one is to be trusted. Surprises abound, and the satisfying outcome leaves the door open just a bit for a sequel.