The star of this story is Steve Vail, now a bricklayer after three years as an FBI agent. The Director learns about Vail from the newly promoted Deputy Assistant Director, Kate Bannon. She was invited with several others to the Director’s office to try to figure out how to deal with a series of high profile murders coupled with ransom demands from the killers.

Naturally, Kate was directed to recruit Vail and she finds him on the roof of a house relaying bricks on a chimney. The chemistry sparks at once.

The story sparkles with humor and is steeped in the FBI jargon. This is the real BU.

This is one of the most entertaining police procedurals I have read. The author, Noah Boyd–his real name is Paul Lindsay–spent twenty years with the FBI before retiring. He started writing while he was an agent and published six novels as Paul Lindsay. For whatever reason, he took up the name of Boyd for the three book series of Steve Vail.

While I plan to read the other two, I was saddened to read that he died in 2011, the year the last two books were published.

Mike Lawrence