Like roller-coaster rides, thrillers should be super fast with twists and turns that start your heart racing and leave you no time to question the sensation. Using that definition Jeff Abbott’s The Last Minute is the Super Cyclone of reads. He is a skilled storyteller able to take the tried and true thriller formula and infuse it with his own vision—a vision peopled with believable characters in a not-so-believable milieu.
Here he provides the requisite international organization of bad guys, Novem Soles (Nine Suns), an equal and opposite organization of good guys, The Round Table, and the sometime nefarious CIA busy playing each against the other. Battling them all is series lead, former CIA agent Sam Capra. Nine Suns has kidnapped Sam’s newborn son, one he has never seen, and to get him back, Sam has to track down and kill Jack Ming, a computer nerd who has information harmful to the organization. Helping Sam in uneasy alliance is the mysterious and beautiful Mila of the Round Table, as well as the equally beautiful and mysterious Leonie, a computer expert whose child was also kidnapped by Nine Suns.
There is no way to adequately summarize all the twists in this incredibly fast moving, complex plot. Like a roller coaster it’s best to just go along for the ride and accept the thrills as they happen. It may not all be credible but it is definitely exciting, and, even better, downright fun. The Last Minute is the follow-up to Abbott’s bestselling thriller Adrenaline, in what I hope will become a long-running series.
