Author: James Byrne

JAMES BYRNE is the pseudonym for an author who has worked for more than twenty years as a journalist and in politics. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he lives in Portland, Oregon.

#BookReview Deadlock by James Byrne @JByrnemystery @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress #MinotaurInfluencers #JamesByrne #Deadlock #DezLimerick

#BookReview Deadlock by James Byrne @JByrnemystery @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress #MinotaurInfluencers #JamesByrne #Deadlock #DezLimerick Title: Deadlock

Author: James Byrne

Series: Dez Limerick #2

Published by: Minotaur Books on Aug. 8, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 368

Format: Hardcover

Source: Minotaur Books

Book Rating: 8.5/10

In this sequel to the highly praised The Gatekeeper, Dez Limerick, one of the best new thriller heroes returns.

Desmond Aloysius Limerick (“Dez” to his friends and close personal enemies) is a man with a shadowy past, certain useful hard-won skills, and, if one digs deep enough, a reputation as a good man to have at your back. Now retired from his previous life, Dez is just a bloke with a winning smile, a bass guitar, and bullet wounds that paint a road map of past lives.

Jaleh Swann, a business journalist hot on the trail of an auditor who was mugged and killed, lands in the hospital just one day after her Portland apartment is ransacked. When Jaleh’s sister, Raziah, reaches out to an old friend for help, Dez has no choice but to answer. The Swann sisters have been pulled into a dizzying web of cover-ups and danger. At the center lies an insidious Oregon-based tech corporation, Clockjack, which has enough money and hired guns to silence just about anyone—including this rag-tag trio. Luckily, Dez’s speciality is not just to open doors, but keep them open—and protect those working to expose Clockjack’s secrets.

More stands in the way of the truth than just one corporation. When hired thugs come to the finish the job and attack the Swann sisters at the hospital, Dez does what he does best. Now, the two captured men (and the corpse Dez left behind) attract the attention of not just Clockjack, but of the Portland police, the D.E.A, and the U.S. Marshalls. Dez and the Swann sisters are on the run from powers beyond their control and means. Outnumbered, under resourced and outgunned, Dez must use all his skills to keep his friends safe and stand up to corporate conniving. After all, the one thing Clockjack didn’t count on? A good man with a simple job to do.


Review:

Action-packed, ominous, and intricate!

In this compelling second instalment in the Dez Limerick series, Deadlock, Byrne has written an adrenaline-pumping thriller that sees the arrogant, part-time musician and talented ex-mercenary Desmond Aloysius Limerick back doing what he does best when fellow musician Raziah Swann phones him for a little help when it seems that her sister has become the target of some people who would not only prefer her journalistic investigation into the successful Oregon company Clockjack Solutions to come to an end quickly, but who are more than happy to leave bodies behind in order to make that happen.

The writing is descriptive and tight. The characters are astute, tenacious, and confident. And the plot keeps you on the edge of your seat with its short, zippy, intense chapters that submerge you, page after page, into a world full of danger, deception, secrets, corruption, lies, arrogance, violence, and murder.

Overall, Deadlock is a meticulously woven, sinister, highly entertaining mystery with a good sense of urgency, great characterization, and a brisk pace that’s a fabulous addition to the Dez Limerick series and a novel that really shouldn’t be missed.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press – Minotaur Press for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About James Byrne

JAMES BYRNE is the pseudonym for an author who has worked for more than twenty years as a journalist and in politics. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he lives in Portland, Oregon.

#BookReview The Gatekeeper by James Byrne @JByrnemystery @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress #MinotaurInfluencers #JamesByrne #TheGatekeeper #DezLimerick

#BookReview The Gatekeeper by James Byrne @JByrnemystery @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress #MinotaurInfluencers #JamesByrne #TheGatekeeper #DezLimerick Title: The Gatekeeper

Author: James Byrne

Series: Dez Limerick #1

Published by: Minotaur Books on Jun. 7, 2022

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 336

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Minotaur Books

Book Rating: 8.5/10

James Byrne’s The Gatekeeper introduces Dez Limerick in the most anticipated new thriller in years.

A highly trained team of mercenaries launches a well-planned, coordinated attack on a well-guarded military contractor – but they didn’t count on one thing, the right man being in the wrong place at the right time.

Desmond Aloysius Limerick (“Dez” to all) is a retired mercenary, and enthusiastic amateur musician, currently in Southern California, enjoying the sun and sitting in on the occasional gig, when the hotel he’s at falls under attack. A skilled team attempts to kidnap the Chief legal counsel of Triton Expeditors, a major military contractor – in fact, Petra Alexandris is the daughter of the CEO – but their meticulously-planned, seamlessly executed scheme runs into the figurative ‘spanner-in-the-works,’ Dez himself.

After foiling the attack, and with nothing better to do, Dez agrees to help Alexandris with another problem she’s having – someone has embezzled more than a billion dollars from her company and left very few tracks behind. But Dez is a gatekeeper – one who opens doors and keeps them open – and this is just a door of another kind. And the door he opens leads to a dangerous conspiracy involving media manipulation, militias, an armed coup, and an attempt to fracture the United States themselves. There’s only one obstacle between the conspirators and success – and that is Dez, The Gatekeeper.


Review:

Tight, sinister, and suspenseful!

The Gatekeeper is the start of a brand-new series by Byrne that sweeps you away to California, where the cocky, confident, retired mercenary Dez ‘The Gatekeeper’ Limerick finds himself inadvertently swept up in the investigation of an embezzlement and conspiracy scheme involving military contractor, Triton Expeditors when one night after playing a local musical gig he successfully thwarts the attempted kidnapping of their CLO Petra Alexandris.

The prose is direct and well-paced. The characters are resourceful, talented, and committed. And the plot is a thrilling tale full of greed, power, deception, abuse, violence, manipulation, passion, politics, murder, and corruption.

Overall, The Gatekeeper is a darkly comedic, edgy, action-packed thriller that kept me highly entertained from the very first page and is without a doubt an exceptionally promising debut by Byrne that left me more than a little eager to read what Dez Limerick manages to get mixed up in next.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

            

 

 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press – Minotaur Press for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About James Byrne

JAMES BYRNE is the pseudonym for an author who has worked for more than twenty years as a journalist and in politics. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he lives in Portland, Oregon.