Cutting Edge

Author: Ward Larsen

Publisher: Forge Books

Release Date: January 23, 2018

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Reviewer: Jessica Higgins

A new type of super soldier that is hard to wrap your mind around!

Trey DeBolt is a young rescue swimmer with the coast guard stationed in Kodiak, Alaska. While out on a rescue, severe weather causes his team’s helicopter to crash.  Everyone is killed, including Trey, or so it says on paper.  Sometime later, Trey wakes up in a cottage in Maine with a personal nurse.  She fills him in on some of the details of what has happened, but will provide very little information.  She oversees Trey’s physical recovery and explains about the brain surgery that was required to save his life.  One night while Trey is outside, a team of combat men show up and murder the nurse.  As they try to find him, Trey dives in the freezing north Atlantic water and manages to swim away before they can kill him too.  Now Trey has no money, no phone, no place to go, and no idea what is going on.  However, he is starting to discover that he has new abilities.  He can ask questions of his mind and discover details about people and places that he shouldn’t know.  It’s almost as if his mind has full access to the internet.  Is this why those men wanted to kill him?

Shannon Lund is a civilian officer with the coast guard investigative service (CGIS). While looking into the accidental climbing death of a coast guard member, things start to resurface for the case of Trey DeBolt.  A private Lear jet took DeBolt to a hospital instead of an air ambulance.  Further investigating tells her that it didn’t go to Anchorage as they were told, but changed the flight plan to Minneapolis and then dropped below 18,000 feet to go visual flight so they wouldn’t be tracked.  Then she receives a call from a detective in Maine that Trey’s fingerprints have been found out a doorknob to a cottage by the coast that was destroyed in an explosion.  Lund’s decision to further investigate could be the end of her career.

This was a new idea of a technological thriller. I enjoyed the way that Larsen played it out with Trey by slowly building up his abilities and scaring him half to death.  It made it feel much more realistic than just suddenly having the full abilities at once.  There was definitely some cat and mouse games going one with some of the characters, which made the story keep going strong in several places.  The main characters were well developed, but sill flawed enough to keep it real.  The plot was exciting and changed once or twice to keep me on my toes.  And the twist was a surprise, but shouldn’t have been unexpected.

If you are looking for a new type of thriller, give this book a try . Then grab the Assassin series!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.