Review: The fans will like it
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 13, 2012
The third and final installment in this series is just as action-packed and well-written as the previous ones.It all begins in Oxford, England, when Derrick Storm and FBI agent April Showers escape barely alive after a car chase and a confrontation, with a man and a woman, who were supposed to be the faithful friends and allies of oligarch Ivan Petrov, but who were actually under the payroll of Russian president Barkovsky.Storm checks Showers, who's injured into a hospital, before heading straight back to Washington to meet his ex -and now temporary- boss, Jedidiah Jones, director of the National Clandestine Service. There he finds out that he's not to remain in the city for long, since he needs to find the 60 billions' worth of gold, that all the fuss was all about, before it falls into the hands of Barkovsky. For this reason he needs to oversee a team consisting of another "dead" agent called Casper, a Russian geologist that goes by the name of Oscar, and Dilya, an Uzbekistani woman and CIA asset.In the meantime Showers, though wounded, has not yet left all her trouble behind, since as she's driven towards a military base from which she's supposed to fly to the U.S. she's abducted by the Russians.From the very beginning until the very end of this story, all the protagonists seem to be playing a game of cat and mouse with each other. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else, nothing is for granted, and there's definitely a traitor on the loose, whose identity we'll only come to find out just before the end.But the surprises don't stop there. Castle likes to keep the reader guessing and he does that very well. The pace is fast, the twists and turns plentiful and there's some romance lurking in the shadows as well.I would say that, in the end, these three volumes make a very good, though kind of short novel, which will undoubtedly leave his fans satisfied.