Publication Date January 14, 2025
When I reviewed James Grippando’s Twenty (in 2020), I noted that I couldn’t recall reading any of James Grippando’s books. And when reading about that title, Jack Swyteck wasn’t a guy I felt like I knew (despite that one being #17 in Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series). Jack Swyteck, the protagonist of that book and many others that I had missed for some unknown reason, is a criminal defense attorney who lived in Florida with his FBI Agent wife Andie Henning and their daughter Righley, and I REALLY liked that book (solid four stars).
In the latest Swyteck novel, Grave Danger, Swyteck has a new client with a case that includes a complex plot with interesting characters, and involves politics and international diplomacy along with more standard crimes such as kidnapping. The woman who hires him fled Iran to Miami with her daughter, and was subsequently accused of kidnapping by her husband. In order to keep the child’s father from taking the girl back to Tehran, Swyteck needs to build his case under international law as well as proving that returning the child to her father would definitely put her at risk.
In addition to this, he finds out that the woman who is his client, claiming to be worried about her daughter, is really the child’s aunt and that her sister, the child’s biological mother, may have been killed by Iran’s morality police. But one big question is what was the father’s role in his wife’s death? And if that isn’t enough, why is Jack’s wife Andie (an FBI Agent) being pressured to try to get Jack to drop the case? Yikes. Jack’s effort to figure out who is behind all this, and how politics (both in the U.S. and internationally) seems to be about to destroy all his work on the case? AND can Jack and Andie’s relationship survive them being on opposite sides in this whole mess?
It’s a LOT. A lot of great storytelling and writing, with plenty of suspense and some total surprises. I loved it. Highly recommended. With thanks to Harper and NetGalley, this one gets five stars.