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Panic is the Jeff Abbott standalone that takes a clean propulsive thriller premise (Evan Casher, a young Texas documentary filmmaker, gets a phone call from his mother telling him to come home immediately; by the time he arrives she is dead and the killers are still there) and rides it for 350 pages without letting up.
Abbott's thriller chops sharpen here in the way they did with Collision. The action is well-staged. The deeper conspiracy (Evan's parents had a past Evan did not know about, which involves Cuba and the CIA and a long-standing operational coverup) is doled out at the right pace. The film-school touches give the book a particular early-2000s texture.
The romance is conventional. The rest of it moves. Four stars. Recommended for thriller readers who like their puzzle layered and their pacing relentless.
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