Caden O'Brien's Website

I just wrote a review of Noah Boyd’s wonderful debut novel, The Bricklayer, and you can read it here on the LibraryThing site. It’s the kind of book that would appeal to those who don’t particularly care for thrillers, because it delivers great characters in protagonist Steve Vail and his maybe-love-interest Kate Bannon. The heroes in thrillers can be very wooden and uninteresting, but Boyd does a nice job in introducing Vail, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series!

Available on January 26, and you can pre-order now.

First of all, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I’m a little late, but things have been a bit hectic. Hope you had a day filled with love and family and friends, not to mention lots of good food and a safe amount of libation!

Second, I got a fun piece of good news the other day. As you may have noticed, I’m a member of  LibraryThing.com, which lets you organize, catalog, review, and share your library and wishlists. It’s yet another variant on social websites, geared toward book lovers, librarians, authors and other literati. Called a “social cataloging” site, it’s a lot of fun. One thing they offer is a lottery for new books being released, either by publishers or privately by the authors themselves. They want volunteers to review the books on LibaryThing and other places, and usually there’s a much bigger volunteer list than there are books available. And guess what? I scored a book my first time out! I get a free book, and I’m happy to give it a review even though that’s not a requirement for getting the book. But the more you review, the better your odds are for ‘winning’ a book in the future!

So in the mail is a copy of The Bricklayer: A Novel written by Noah Boyd. Here’s a brief description from Amazon’s site:

… introducing Steve Vail, one of the most charismatic new heroes to come along in thriller fiction in many years. He’s an ex–FBI agent who’s been fired for insubordination but is lured back to the Bureau to work a case that has become more unsolvable—and more deadly—by the hour.

A woman steps out of the shower in her Los Angeles home and is startled by an intruder sitting calmly in her bedroom holding a gun. But she is frozen with fear by what he has to say about the FBI—and what he says he must do. . . .

A young agent slips into the night water off a rocky beach. He’s been instructed to swim to a nearby island to deposit a million dollars demanded by a blackmailer. But his mission is riddled with hazardous tests, as if someone wanted to destroy him rather than collect the money. . . .

Vail has resigned himself to his dismissal and is content with his life as a bricklayer. But the FBI, especially Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon, needs help with a shadowy group that has initiated a brilliant extortion plot. The group will keep killing their targets until the agency pays them off, the amount and number of bodies escalating each time the FBI fails. One thing is clear: someone who knows a little too much about the inner workings of the Bureau is very clever —and very angry—and will kill and kill again if it means he can disgrace the FBI.

Steve Vail’s options —and his time to find answers—are swiftly running out.

Looks pretty cool, eh? Can’t wait to read it, and I’ll post the review here too.