As I have gotten older, I have become more nostalgic. As a lifelong reader, I sometimes think about some of my favorite authors who have passed away during my lifetime: Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, James Herbert, Peter Benchley and Richard Laymon, to name just a few. Not only do we lose all the creative genius that made their work so memorable, we lose their characters as well.

That is why I am so thankful that authors like Jon Land are just as nostalgic as I am, if not more so. In the past handful of years, Land has continued the Murder, She Wrote series after Donald Bain passed away, and now he has taken the reins of the Capital Crimes canon made famous by the late Margaret Truman with its 31st installment, MURDER ON THE METRO.

"Jon Land has taken the Capital Crimes template and elevated it to create a work that is truly global in scale and more on par with his stellar Caitlin Strong novels."

A series of horrific events, all of which are connected, kick off this high-octane read. A drone attack kills people on a family beach in Israel, where former Mossad agent Lia Ganz is spending time with her granddaughter. They survive because they are in the water when it happens, but those who are lying on the sand are not so lucky. In Washington, D.C., Vice President Stephanie Davenport succumbs to what appears to be a heart attack, while her lead Secret Service agent, Kendra Rendine, is powerless to bring her back to life.

That same morning, international private investigator Robert Brixton is reliving the terrorist attack that took the life of his daughter five years earlier when he spots what looks like a suicide bomber while riding the Washington Metro. He thwarts the attempted attack, and many lives are saved. A gentleman who identifies himself as Detective Rogers questions Brixton about his involvement. However, it turns out that no one by that name is working on the case.

Brixton is very much a lone wolf and not sure who he can trust. This is especially evident when he meets with Rendine and learns that the Vice President had three stents put in her heart not long before her heart attack. Unfortunately, the stents that were removed in the autopsy are not the same ones that Rendine had seen during the operation. She then remembers someone delivering new stents to the operating room who looked amazingly like Rogers.

Meanwhile, Ganz has made her way from Israel to D.C. because her intel notified her of an imminent terrorist threat on U.S. soil, one that would put the events of 9/11 to shame.  Brixton has another run-in with Rogers, and this time it is a fight to the death, with Brixton coming out on top. Somehow, Rogers’ body is moved before it can be taken into apprehension by the U.S. government. Brixton, Rendine and later Ganz all share information and begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It appears that the President is mentally incapacitated and not fit to hold office. This has all been a guarded secret between the First Lady and select members of the Cabinet, who are trying to figure things out before the next election. It now seems like the Vice President may have gotten wind of this coup and was killed for it.

Brixton and Ganz realize that they are getting too close and are up against some powerful folks who will stop at nothing to forward their deadly agenda. When they learn of a potential terrorist attack at a nuclear facility on U.S. soil that would kill millions of people just to cover up the political change of power in the White House, they must race against time to stop it. They are armed with just their wits, years of experience, and an 85-year-old nun who knows everything about this clandestine nuclear site and the hidden tunnels beneath it. What follows is a breathtaking series of events to save the U.S. from being harmed, possibly beyond repair, by an internal threat that the people are powerless to stop.

Jon Land has taken the Capital Crimes template and elevated it to create a work that is truly global in scale and more on par with his stellar Caitlin Strong novels. He already is working on the next entry in the series, MURDER AT THE CDC, and I can only speculate how intense and relevant that story will be. On behalf of all Capital Crimes readers, thank you, Mr. Land!