Twenty-Four Days

In the latest Rowe-Delamagente thriller, the two unlikely partners have less than a month to stop a North Korean missile strike after hijackers steal nuclear warhead-armed submarines. If they don't, the USS Bunker Hill, on a peaceful mission to observe a North Korean missile launch, will be in grave danger. Piece by piece, Rowe and Delamagente uncover a bizarre nexus between a man Rowe thought dead, a North Korean communications satellite America believes is weaponized, an ideologue that cares only about revenge, and the USS Bunker Hill (a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser) tasked with supervising the satellite launch. As the deadline looms, they call on the unusual skills of a quirky AI named Otto with the unique ability to track anything with a digital trail. From Kirkus Review: "America and Britain are on high alert when their nuclear subs, the USS Virginia and the HMS Triumph, are suddenlymissing. FBI special agent Bobby James gets in touch with former SEAL Zeke Rowe, who'd helped James thwart aformidable terrorist last year. The fed also wants assistance from Zeke's girlfriend, Kali Delamagente-morespecifically, her AI Otto. During the same case with Zeke, Otto, "capable of finding almost anything on earth," trackeddown a sub, an impressive task he can hopefully do again. Accelerating the operation is an apparent deadline: Jamesguesses that one of the subs is part of North Korea's promised satellite launch, which may actually be a space-basednuclear weapon. Meanwhile, Kali's son, Sean, security director of his San Diego apartment building, stumbles on a lead. Surveilling a fellow tenant and suspected murderer, Sean picks up chatter involving the [HMS] Triumph and numbers that could be coordinates for the launch site. Unfortunately, this may put him in danger once he gets too curious... A blistering pace is set from the beginning: dates open each new chapter/section, generating a countdown that intensifies the title's time limit. Murray skillfully bounces from scene to scene, handling numerous characters, from hijackers to MI6 special agent Haster. This does lead to the occasional skimping on pertinent details: as part of Mohammed's assignment to capture a naval vessel, he sparks a conversation with Lt. Paloma Chacone, who intel declares is his girlfriend the very next day. Villains, however, are outstanding, even unnamed/unseen individuals making threats to Kali and Sean (demanding they stop aiding the feds) and the implication that someone believed to be dead is the mastermind."Source: Kirkus Reviews (https: //www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/j-murray2/twenty-four-days/)