Last Snow

by Eric Van Lustbader Narrated by Richard Ferrone

Overview

The electrifying follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Jack McClure thriller First Daughter

Jack McClure, Special Advisor and closest friend to the new President of the United States, interprets the world very differently from the rest of us. It's his greatest liability, and his greatest asset.

An American senator, supposedly on a political trip to the Ukraine, turns up dead on the island of Capri. When the President asks him to find out how and why, Jack sets out from Moscow across Eastern Europe, following a perilous trail of diplomats, criminals, and corrupt politicians. Thrust into the midst of a global jigsaw puzzle, Jack's unique dyslexic mind allows him to put together the pieces that others can't even see.

Still unreconciled to the recent death of his daughter and the dissolution of his marriage, Jack takes on a personal mission along with his official one: keeping safe from harm his two unlikely, unexpected, and incompatible companions-Annika Dementieva, a rogue Russian FSB agent, and Alli Carson, the President's daughter. As he struggles to keep both young women safe and unearth the answers he seeks, hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the Ukrainian police to his own NSA, Jack learns just how far up the American and Russian political ladders corruption and treachery has reached.

In the vein of Eric Van Lustbader's latest bestselling Jason Bourne novels, Lustbader takes us on an international adventure in this powerful page-turner that will keep you reading through the night.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Lustbader's wordy sequel to First Daughter takes dyslexic Jack McClure, former ATF agent and now adviser to recently elected U.S. president Edward Carson, to Moscow, where Carson is negotiating an important treaty with Russian president Yukin. When minority whip Sen. Lloyd Berns dies in a mysterious hit-and-run accident on Capri, the president asks Jack to investigate. Accompanied by Annika, a beautiful Federal Security Bureau agent who's part of a complicated Russian trap, and Alli, Carson's 22-year-old daughter whom Jack saved from a bad guy in the previous book, Jack travels to Ukraine, where Berns was supposed to be on a fact-finding tour. In Kiev, Jack finds a secret agency called Trinadtsat, a shadowy group of Russian oligarchs, and plenty of trouble, including a retired American general out to have him killed. Lustbader fritters away many pages with Jack's navel-gazing, time that could have been better spent in gunfights and derring-do. (Feb.)

Library Journal

In this follow-up to First Daughter, the Cold War has never really thawed. ATF agent Jack McClure, having rescued President Edward Carson's daughter, is now the president's strategic adviser. While McClure is with Carson in Moscow, U.S. Senator Berns is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Berns was a crucial ally in Carson's strategy to get legislation passed in the Democratic-controlled Congress. Is the death an accident or was it a deliberate act by Carson's enemies? Carson sends McClure to investigate. Working the case with McClure is Annika, a rogue Russian counterintelligence agent, and Alli, Carson's daughter. Their investigation delves into a nefarious political intrigue that reaches beyond the death of one man. VERDICT Lustbader carefully weaves a suspenseful political tale that keeps readers guessing what truth will be revealed when the last snow melts away. With an exciting pace reminiscent of the best works by Tom Clancy and David Baldacci, this is sure to appeal to political thriller enthusiasts who love conspiracy narratives with surprises down every dark, twisted alley.—Susan O. Moritz, Montgomery Cty. P.L., MD

Kirkus Reviews

A lascivious senator meets an untoward end. The president's bewildered daughter is involved-and so is tough but sensitive ATF agent Jack McClure, the hero of the piece. Readers met McClure (and said bewildered one) in First Daughter (2009). Van Lustbader (The Testament, 2006, etc.), carefully fueling the franchise, drops us smack down where the thrills and spills left off. McClure, dyslexic but a close reader of human nature all the same, is now in President Edward Carson's inner circle, charged, among other things, with keeping young missy out of danger. Fat chance, for the bad guys have designs on her, on the president, on all that is good and noble about the American way of life. Of course, there's bunches of politicos on Capitol Hill who have no idea of what those ideals might mean, and they've been shacking up with the apparatchiks and new rich and uranium hustlers across the waters in Putin's Russia, aka the Evil Empire. McClure knows that the game's afoot, and that he's pretty much on his own ("He had always been an outsider-from his dyslexia to his unorthodox upbringing he's never fit in, and, as he'd finally been able to admit to himself if not to anyone else...he didn't want to.") Enter sweet, sassy and ever so lethal Annika, "a member of an undercover unit of the Russian Federal Police...you could call her a spy without fear of contradiction," who has Electra complex issues of her own, and the fun really gets going. The necklines are low and the body count is high, fulfilling formula obligations; but Van Lustbader is an old hand at this spy-vs.-spy stuff, having resurrected Jason Bourne in the wake of Robert Ludlum's departure from the planet, and he throws in enough twists andturns (and karate chops and slippery Crimean byways) to keep things original and interesting. Will the forces of good prevail? Stay tuned-but bet your bippy that there will be a sequel.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169138931
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	02/16/2010
Series:	Jack McClure Series , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged

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