The novel “Fireball” by Lee Gimenez was published for the first time in 2018. It’s part of the J.T. Ryan series.
The murder of three important people convinces the president of the USA of the existence of a conspiracy to throw the nation into chaos. For this reason, he calls a top-secret meeting to assign FBI Assistant Director Erin Welch and Alex Miller of the CIA to the investigation. J.T. Ryan is summoned also due to his military background and Miller announces that he will include agent Rachel West in the operations.
The investigation is even more complex than normal due to the need to keep it very confidential. J.T. Ryan cannot count on Lisa Booth’s assistance and must expose himself more than ever to the risks that come with his job. The political ramifications indicate that someone behind the conspiracy is capable of applying pressure at high levels through bribery or blackmail to target American institutions.
“Fireball” is labeled as a thriller part of the J.T. Ryan series. However, from the beginning, there’s an involvement of the Factory, the code name for the CIA section run by Alex Miller. It’s the section for which agent Rachel West, the other central character in Lee Gimenez’s stories, works.
For this novel, the author took inspiration from classic concepts of international conspiracies aimed at attacking the American government. The culprits and their collaborators keep their identities secret by using only numbers in their communications. They take advantage of the weaknesses of people in positions of power by bribing or blackmailing them.
The idea developed by Lee Gimenez is that the nation can collapse only if its representatives put greed before their duty and accept bribes or have secrets that expose them to blackmail. Even without specific insights, there are clear ethical and moral considerations linked to the behavior of people who have a duty but don’t always put it first.
It’s a situation in which it’s really difficult for the protagonists to understand who they can trust. Erin Welch is an Assistant Director of the FBI and Alex Miller runs a section of the CIA but in this case, both must conduct their investigations in total secrecy because both agencies may have been infiltrated by corrupt or blackmailed people.
The result is a thriller that mixes all the typical elements of Lee Gimenez’s novels with the addition of a sense of paranoia due to the risk that even at high levels, government agencies are compromised. Both J.T. Ryan and Rachel West end up in various dangerous situations while trying to find crucial information to discover the identity of the people behind the conspiracy. A part of the fun comes from reading how they manage to make it out alive. From this point of view, personal relationships can be a complication.
J.T. Ryan’s personal story is sort of a common thread through the various novels, which are otherwise almost completely autonomous. In this case, it may be helpful to have already read “The Washington Ultimatum” because “Fireball” includes some connections to that novel. Lee Gimenez offers explanations to those links that supply all the information you need.
“Fireball” is another action-packed thriller by Lee Gimenez that has a very fast pace and a plot with many twists and turns. It contains elements of spy stories and is perfect for readers who appreciate stories with political ramifications. It has a real ending so you can read it and then decide if and when to continue with the novels in this series that the author wrote in the following years. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
