Decker and Nash are both interested in Bailey. Decker and Nash are long-time partners and friends, so there's some agonizing there. Then Decker gets distracted by Sophia, who no one is sure whether to trust or not. And there's a reporter in the mix. Also a couple of other employees of Troubleshooters. Their hosts in K-stan. A teenager whose younger brother they pull out of a school that collapsed. A horse named Marge (as in Simpson; the glories of satellite TV).
I have mixed feelings about the way Brockmann handled infrastructure issues. Bailey rechargers her laptop with a small generator (not one of those solar gizmos, apparently). People drink out of the taps without negative effects at least occasionally (but for the most part, people are drinking tap water). The cell phone/communications issue is a central plot point so that's handled reasonable well.
I did really like the way the wrap-up of Bailey and Nash is handled. She is, after all, a computer specialist, and right from the beginning, she's hacking away at the computers at thee Agency they worked at prior to Troubleshooters. It makes sense that Bailey would have dug up Nash's buried file and read it. It even makes sense that Nash would be not expect her to have done that and have trouble processing that. Kinda cool. A bit idealistic (in the contents of the file), but that's okay; this is fiction, not reality.
I have to say, tho, that depicting Bailey as always authentic (and that's what Decker, Nash, and the rest of the crowd love about her) suggests she isn't going to make a great field operative. Or, alternativley, she's going to make a _great_ field operative -- and she's not nearly as authentic as everyone thinks she is. Which should make them worry.
No WW2 backstory in this one, and I, for one, do not miss it. In a lot of ways, this is a stand-alone novel only tangentially related to the rest of the series (SEAL Team 16 shows up at the end, but very peripherally). I've got the next two in paperback (one used, one from Costco), then there's one more paperback that's out, and after that, one current hardcover and one hardcover due out this month. It's a remarkably good run; thanks again to K. for the rec. (And there are _other_ Brockmann series out there as well, I know).
