The Wild One

Starred review from November 25, 2019
Thriller Award–winner Petrie’s terrific fifth novel to feature PTSD-stricken Peter Ash (after 2019’s Tear It Down) sends the Iraq War vet to Reykjavík on a mission—an old member of his squad has asked him to help a wealthy woman locate her eight-year-old grandson, Óscar, who seems to have been abducted and taken to Iceland by the boy’s father, who’s charged with murdering Óscar’s mother. No sooner does Peter’s plane land than he’s nabbed by the local police and told by a suit from the U.S. embassy that he’s not welcome in Iceland and must return to the States within 48 hours. Peter has no intention of obeying that mandate, but before he can lay his plans, he’s mugged and beaten outside a nightclub. The intrepid Peter patches himself up, steals a car, eludes a squadron of police, and heads off into the wilds of Iceland searching for Óscar and his fugitive father. This is where the book begins to soar, as Peter pits his war-honed resourcefulness against the unforgiving weather and topography of Iceland, all the while being chased by a dogged police chief. This kinetic, breathless masterpiece illustrates why Petrie is here to stay. Author tour. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary.

March 1, 2020
After stumbling on a cache of videos revealing a shadowy group working to control the government, a security expert is murdered, her husband becomes the suspect, and damaged vet Peter Ash is called in to find the couple's missing son. Ash's client is the dead woman's mother. When she tells him she believes her son-in-law has taken her grandson and fled to his native Iceland, Ash heads there to make contact with the suspect's family, who he believes are hiding him. It doesn't take long for Ash to become convinced that the fugitive husband is not the killer and to figure out that some American government officials are determined to stop his investigation. Crime fiction is almost routinely too long these days, but even in that context this story feels, at 400 pages, much too long. Petrie (Tear It Down, 2019, etc.) is aiming at the combination of procedural and physical action that characterized Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. Ash, an Iraqi veteran who suffers from PTSD, is clearly modeled on Reacher, but a tormented Reacher, and torment doesn't have nearly the appeal that smartass wit does. The book is unrelievedly grim. The violence, when it comes, is sadistic and prolonged (and the scenes in which that violence is witnessed by a child are very unpleasant). Worse, the book mutes the satisfaction of seeing the bad guys get theirs in favor of a kind of hopeless cynicism. Brutality, cynicism, and the frozen landscapes of Iceland. Not the most winning combo.

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December 15, 2019
Sarah, owner of a cybersecurity company, rummages through client files and finds something unspeakable. After recognizing the man on top, the one with his pants down, she doesn't live much longer. Her husband, accused of her murder, flees with their young son. Both are later pronounced dead. But Sarah's mother, sure that at least her grandson is alive, hires Petrie's series hero, Peter Ash, to find him. Marine veteran Ash is sodden with guilt and obsessed with atonement?in Iraq, he mistakenly ordered the death of a family of four. He also loves offing bad guys, believing that it frees "something vast and glorious inside him." Readers of earlier Ash novels recognize the setup for a wild ride; this novel delivers it times four. The trail leads to Iceland, letting Petrie display his gift for vivid, visceral prose. Cliffs are "caked in wind-sculpted white." A big guy has "a voice like an idling bulldozer." There are some mighty fights, one with a touch of comedy when Ash defeats a quartet of killers with a hardback novel; he muses, "Can't do that with a paperback."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019

In this latest in an award-winning series, PTSD-afflicted veteran Peter Ash faces down his claustrophobia to board a plane for Iceland at the request of a woman whose grandson has been taken there by her son-in-law, the prime suspect in her daughter's murder. He promptly ignores a U.S. Embassy warning to return home, which puts him on a collision course with the embassy, the police, his escalating PTSD, and a coming blizzard.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.