Danger Lurks Behind Every Corner in Robert Dugoni’s ‘The Eighth Sister’ [REVIEW]

Can a former CIA operative catch the assassin known as the eighth sister? (Photo by Kostya Romantikov, Flickr)

Just when he thought he was out of the game, a former intelligence officer is pulled back in. This time, he’s tasked with finding a dangerous assassin, but he must head to the heart of Russia to do it. Will he make it out alive? Find out in Robert Dugoni’s The Eighth Sister. 

Thomas & Mercer

Charles Jenkins is getting too old for this. A family man in his early 60s, his life has changed a lot since he left the CIA behind. Now he’s got a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business to run… and never you mind that it is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Then his old boss pops up at Charles’ house, and it’s not just to rehash the good old days. No, he has a job for Charles to do, one that is rife with peril and will send him deep undercover in enemy territory, right in the heart of Moscow, where he’s expected to hunt down a Russian agent who has been reportedly killing off members of a secret American spy cell called the seven sisters.

How can he go with a family to worry about? How can he not when he’s in financial trouble and needs an infusion of cash quick? Soon Charles heads to Russia where he encounters the actual mastermind behind the assassinations—the so-called eighth sister—and she is not what he expected. But neither is anyone else involved in this dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.

With a tireless Russian officer hot on his tail, Charles has no choice but to make a daring escape across the Black Sea, only to find that the agency who sent him in the first place has left him high and dry. Suddenly, with everything he loves in the balance, Charles must prepare for the fight of his life against the very country he swore to protect.

If you’re a fan of Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite or David Sloan series, you already know that this is an author who knows how to write. He’s deft at pulling out all the stops to send tension soaring, to keep readers guessing, and to rob us of sleep as we struggle to stay awake until we find out how his nail-biting plots come out in the wash. The Eighth Sister is no different. It truly lives up to Dugoni’s dazzling reputation.

One of the things that make his books so vivid is how thoroughly researched they are. Not only are they led by bigger-than-life heroes like Charlie Jenkins, but these are people who are flawed and genuine, realistic in a way that speaks to us all and who we are helpless to resist. We want Charlie to succeed here, even when we get the nagging feeling that the entire deck is stacked against him. With such monumental challenges in his path, it takes a very special character to make us believe he can actually surmount them. But Charlie is just that kind of individual.

Dugoni is also a master at peppering his plots with loads of clues and more than a few red herrings. It creates a labyrinthine world Charlie must navigate, one where no one can be trusted and behind every corner lurks yet more danger. Thus this is a story where we desperately seek new revelations, and yet we never want it to end either, because it is simply that good.

If you’re a fan of spy masters like Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, or even John le Carré, you’re in for a treat. With The Eighth Sister, Robert Dugoni has raised the bar on his own work and has created a world and an agent who will not be quickly forgotten. Let’s just hope we get invited back into Charlie’s world one more time.

Robert Dugoni

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon best-selling author of the Tracy Crosswhite Series, which has sold more than 3.5 million books worldwide.

He is also the author of the bestselling David Sloan Series; the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, for which he won an AudioFile Earphones Award for the narration; and the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year.

He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for fiction and the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest.

He is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award.

His books are sold in more than 25 countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Visit his home on the Web at RobertDugoni.com, like him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.

THE EIGHTH SISTER
By Robert Dugoni
465 pp. Thomas & Mercer. $24.95

Purchase The Eighth Sister at one of these fine online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, and Powell’s.

The Eighth Sister is brought to you in association with TLC Book Tours.