September 16, 2013
Bunn, a four-time Christy Award winner and writer in residence at Oxford University, does something few Christian fiction writers do. Starting with what seems to be a narrow view, his stories open readers to a bigger multicultural and multireligious world. Granted, some of the stereotypes he employs play into everyday prejudices about who are America’s international enemies and friends, yet he always seems to surprise and lead into places readers don’t expect. Intelligence agent Marc Royce is back for another international rush to avert a world war as axis-of-evil nations join forces to commit genocide against Israel and the United States. The pace slows but still feels energized when characters visit an underground church: “What you see here is an impossibility. We are Kurds. We are Turks. We are Syrian and Lebanese and Ethiopians and Iraqi. We are Persians... We were enemies.” Bunn’s strength is that he stretches the worldview of Christian readers with such stopovers in a story that also includes a love interest between a Christian and a Jew, showing how they work out their relationship and their faith.
October 15, 2013
Marc Royce, the former State Department investigator (recently fired, he's now a freelancer), is hired to find out who's secretly funding the Iranian nuclear program. In Geneva, trying to follow the money trail, he is unexpectedly reunited with Kitra Korban, the Israeli nurse with whom, following the events in Rare Earth (2012), he had an intense but short-lived relationship. Their reunion is strained: Marc had broken off the relationship, neither knows the other is in Geneva, and they meet again just as a bomb detonates, nearly killing them both. The book follows Marc's investigation into the Iranian matter, but also traces the personal story of Marc and Kitra. Astute readers will have no trouble figuring out, very early on, how their story works out, but that's OK: sometimes the journey is interesting enough that we don't mind knowing how it will end. As always, Bunn works Christian themes into the story but in a subtle way. They're there if you want to see them, but if you'd prefer to see the book strictly as an engaging action thriller with a romantic subplot, that works, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)