Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart

Published by Random House on January 13, 2026

The first thing to know about Detour is that it ends with a cliffhanger. The novel is the first in a series. I have no idea how many more books it will take to conclude the story.

The good news is that the first installment does not have the kind of padding that writers sometimes use to boost the word count of books that do not tell self-contained stories. The action moves quickly and, while cliffhangers are frustrating, Detour left me looking forward to the next installment. I appreciated the fact that I never knew where the story was going. Now, unfortunately, I need to wait to find out.

Detour begins as a story of space flight, with the intriguing element of a voyager being asked to take a mysterious envelope on the journey. The flight itself, while eventful, occupies a small part of the story. The last third of the novel sees the space travelers return to an Earth that has changed in ways both subtle and dramatic during their absence. Or is it the travelers who have changed?

A key character in Detour is the richest man in the world. He owns a company that engages in space travel. Sound like real-world person who has been in the news? I don’t know if Jeff Rake and Rob Hart intended to model the character on a real-world figure, but his rich man — John Ward — is not a good person. He’s also running for president as an independent.

Ward wants to colonize Saturn’s moon Titan. He has constructed a spaceship in orbit around the Earth. Its first voyage will transport six people to Titan, where they will deploy a satellite to gather data about Titan. The ship’s ion drive will let them make the trip and return in about two years.

Ward chooses three civilians to crew the ship, along with three astronauts from NASA (Mike Seaver, Alonso Cardona, and Della Jameson). The civilians have no experience with space flight. Padma Singh is a doctoral candidate who wrote a paper about Titan that persuaded Ward to colonize it. Ryan Crane is a cop who saved Ward from an assassination. Courtney “Stitch” Smith, a graffiti artist, won a lottery to join the crew. Ward is paying them each at least $20 million to take the trip.  Ryan is paid a bit extra to carry (but not open) an envelope for Ward.

It might seem odd to send three civilians into space with three career astronauts, particularly when the civilians are expected to learn enough in a short period to function as astronauts in an emergency. The early story is about team building, although it’s really about character development.

The characters are carefully defined. Some gain depth through their various family issues. Stitch will leave behind his domineering mother; Mike says a tearful goodbye to his children (and to a  wife who is on the verge of divorcing him because of his drinking problem); Della is leaving her two kids with her mom because she only trusts her cheating ex with supervised visits twice a month; Alonso is leaving behind his wife and the gay man he secretly loves; Ryan is leaving behind his disabled son but wants to believe Ward’s promise to find a neurologist who will help his son walk. Padma’s personality is shaped by her PTSD; Stitch’s by his disdain for the conventional; Ryan’s by his drinking.

The trip to Titan begins to go wrong when the ship departs from its programmed course. The travelers think they have corrected the problem when more issues arise, including explosions. What exploded? The answer is unclear.

When the crewmembers are back on Earth, they find that their problems have only begun. Ward does his best to keep them separated after they return. What is it he doesn’t want them to discover?

The story’s central mystery concerns the events that happened in space — an explosion has apparently been erased from the ship’s logs — and the reasons for the changes that the characters observe after their return. Before the mission, each principle character made choices, good or bad, that defined their lives. When they return, choices they made are different. Those choices alter who they are. Perhaps that is the novel’s deeper point.

The big reveal needs to explain the changes that the characters experience, the hidden report that Ward wants to keep buried, and the contents of the envelope that Ryan carried into space. Unfortunately, the reveal will await a future installment. The first was sufficiently entertaining that I’m looking forward to reading the next.

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Happy New Year!

The Cyclist by Tim Sullivan

First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Grove Atlantic on January 13, 2026

It isn’t easy being George Cross. It’s easy enough for him to perform his investigative duties as a Detective Sergeant — in fact, he excels at them — but interacting with other people requires supreme mental effort. Cross is on the spectrum. He doesn’t make small talk and is distracted from his thoughts when others do. He is often perceived as rude because he doesn’t recognize and respond to social cues. He doesn’t want “to have to deal with social interactions and be on his best behaviour” because it takes too much energy.

Yet the same condition that impairs his ability to socialize contributes to his intense focus, his ability to organize and compartmentalize, and his obsession with detail. The same skill he brings to jigsaw puzzles — recognizing patterns — helps him identify clues to murders. When people depart from their patterns, they must have a reason. If their departures coincide with a crime, Cross looks for a connection.

Tim Sullivan is far from the only author who has used autistic behaviors to create intriguing characters, but George Cross is one of the best in crime fiction. It would be easy to exploit Cross's social ineptness for laughs. While Sullivan gives his readers the opportunity to laugh, he does so with sensitivity. He looks at Cross through the eyes of his colleagues, helping the reader understand Cross’ autism from different perspectives.

Cross is exasperating to others (he would be a handful to work with) but he’s tolerated because of his success as a detective. His current partner, DS Josie Ottey, is sticking around because she’s starting to understand Cross. By being patient, she’s also helping him recognize social cues and respond appropriately — a task that Cross sometimes and only grudgingly appreciates.

For the sake of maintaining a cordial work environment, most people go out of their way to avoid offending co-workers. They tell white lies. They might say, “Oh, she just stepped out for coffee” instead of “She’s avoiding you because you criticized her.” Cross will have none of that. He doesn’t care if he offends others and his feathers aren’t ruffled when other workers share unpleasant observations. In his words: “If only more people just told the truth instead of hiding behind badly concocted, feeble excuses. Everything would be so much more straightforward.”

Cross’ gruff personality is the hook that sets this series apart from others. Cross has no tact because he doesn’t understand the need for it. In his view, tact is a barrier to honesty. Others might see him as rude and blunt; he sees himself as getting to the point with maximum efficiency. While he isn’t endearing to others, the window that Sullivan opens to Cross’ life makes it possible to sympathize with his struggle to interact socially. And even if Cross is socially awkward, it is easy to understand some of his peeves, including his disdain for social media (“I don’t know how people find the time, and why on earth do they think their lives are of such interest to other people?”).

As the title suggests, this installment's murder victim is a cyclist. George rides a bicycle to work and follows the sport of competitive cycling. He instantly recognizes the corpse on an autopsy table as a cyclist, given his low body fat, muscular thighs, and distinct tan lines just above the knee. The murder victim — found in a garage that is scheduled to be demolished — turns out to be Alexander Paphides. Alex worked in his family’s Greek restaurant, but he was an avid cyclist who, when last seen by his family, was planning to depart for a competition with the other members of his amateur cycling club.

George’s investigation follows clues related to performance-enhancing drugs, as well as a pharmacist and fellow cyclist who denies knowledge of Alex’s doping. But could the murder have been related to Alex’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend? Alex was 32 but his relationship with Debbie was more than platonic. Alex was at odds with his brother and father about the future of the family business, while Debbie seems fearful of Alex’s mother.

Ongoing issues in Cross’ life all focus on relationships, particularly with his father, his co-workers, and a local priest. Cross dutifully has dinner once a week with his father but is disturbed to the point of panic when his father wants to change the dinners from Wednesday to Thursday. Cross has no religious beliefs (his analytic mind demands evidence to support any belief) but he enjoys playing the organ. A local church allows him to practice on its organ if he keeps it tuned, but Cross resists the priest’s effort to coax him into performing a recital for the parish. This all contributes to an unusual but welcome degree of characterization for the series protagonist.

When all the clues point to a particular suspect, most police detectives are happy to declare victory, arrest the suspect, and move on to the next case. Even if all the clues don’t point in the same direction, most detectives will pick a suspect and ignore the clues that are inconsistent with the detective’s theory of guilt. Not Cross. He infuriates his boss by insisting that the investigation continue until every detail fits into the puzzle perfectly. With Cross, if one fact doesn’t fit, either the fact is untrue or the puzzle hasn’t been solved. And so, just when it seems that one suspect is guilty, Cross discovers that the crime is not quite as simple as the detectives imagined.

The mystery of Alex’s murder is multi-faceted. While a reader might solve part of the puzzle, it may take a reader who is as focused as Cross to spot all the clues that lead to a full resolution. I am grateful to Grove Atlantic for bringing this entertaining British series to American readers.

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Merry Christmas!

Vengeance by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on December 16, 2025

Rick Campbell’s Trident Deception novels are in equal measures spy stories, action stories, and submarine warfare stories. This is a pleasant blend of genres I enjoy, but Campbell excels at underwater action. Submarines are the reason I look forward to these novels.

Vengeance begins with an assassin shooting the Secretary of Defense moments after he threatened sanctions against Russia. Video analysis reveals that former Navy SEAL Lonnie Mixell was the shooter. Mixell recently murdered the wife of his former best friend and fellow SEAL, series protagonist Jake Harrison. The protagonist checks all the boxes that action novel authors seem to require, in that he’s named Jake (Jack being an acceptable alternative) and is a former SEAL (any other special forces background being an acceptable alternative).

Jake blames his former girlfriend, CIA Director Christine O’Connor, for his wife’s death and has made himself scarce. O’Connor would normally task Jake and specialized skills officer Khalila Dufour with finding Mixell, but Jake is in the wind and Khalila is in hot water for killing the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations. Christine decides the Agency needs to track down Jake and get him on the case.

In an earlier novel, Brenda Verbeck was forced to resign as Secretary of the Navy after she tried to cover up her brother’s plot to sell centrifuges to Iran. Although she arranged for witnesses against her brother to die and is lucky not to be in prison, she has a bug up her bum about the president’s refusal to stand behind her. Now Verbeck wants Mixell to assassinate the president. Her hairbrained scheme drives much of the story.

The last significant plot element involves the new Russian president and his plan to invade Ukraine. In this fictional version of reality (one in which the US has fought recent naval battles against Russia), the US assesses Russia’s limited objective as capturing a corridor that links Crimea to Russia rather than a wholesale invasion of Ukraine. The US persuades NATO countries to back sanctions against Russia, which Russia intends to counter by sinking oil transports that travel through the Gulf of Hormuz, forcing western nations to buy Russian oil and gas. This gives Campbell a chance to bring back series regular Murray Wilson, captain of the submarine USS Michigan.

Jake’s first mission is to lead a team charged with destroying centrifuges that Iran received from Russia and installed inside a mountain complex. The fictional president is concerned that bunker-buster bombs won’t penetrate with sufficient depth to do the job, creating the need for Jake’s heroics. They must escape the mountain before the timer-activated explosives detonate, promoting typical thriller tension as the heroes encounter obstacles to the successful completion of their mission.

It's a bit disappointing (or at least it was to me) that a submarine doesn’t enter the plot until chapter 30 (of 89). When a Russian sub starts sinking tankers, the US Navy makes an ineffective response. Submarines make no significant return until chapter 47 while the Michigan plays no significant role until chapter 54. The action is furious after that point. I always enjoy scenes involving two submarine captains devising strategies as they try to blow each other out of the water. Submarine warfare dominates the novel’s second half.

Jake has another chance to play hero when Mixell seeks vengeance for the events in an earlier novel that caused the death of Mixell’s lover, events that Mixell blames upon Jake and Christine. As is common in modern thrillers, the plot depends on a number of improbabilities, including Christine’s convenient presence when Mixell tries to orchestrate his assassination plot. I suppose her capture by Mixell as part of his vengeance scheme is an inevitable conclusion to a story arc involving Jake, Christine, and Mixell. Jake’s response is the predictable fare of action thrillers.

Also improbable is Russia’s attack on civilian shipping and its effort to sink an American aircraft carrier. Why doesn’t this act of war spark a direct American (and likely NATO) assault on Russia? I suppose Campbell didn’t want to go there because — although the series is already an alternate history — a departure from the real world of that magnitude would turn it into science fiction. Still, the president’s response is both less vigorous than the circumstances warrant and pleasantly at odds with the current president’s indifference to Ukraine.

The series has made a point of telling the reader that Jake always loved Christine and only married his wife because Christine twice turned down his marriage proposals before he gave up and married someone else. That dynamic is also resolved in this book, although I won’t spoil the outcome for those who can’t guess it. The interplay of Jake and Christine (with a brief glimpse of Jake in bed with Khalila) has grown a bit tedious, so I was glad to see it end. Jake’s decision to shag Khalila is interesting, given that Khalila was thinking about killing him in an earlier book. She’s toned down her psychopathic tendencies, which actually makes her a less interesting character, although she manages to indulge her darker instincts before the story ends.

The political machinations and the soap operatic drama involving Jake and Christine have always been secondary to my enjoyment of the submarine warfare in this series. The former plot elements are about average for a modern thriller and would in themselves warrant a mild recommendation to thriller fans. To fans of submarine stories, however, I give a much stronger recommendation for this novel and the series as a whole.

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