The novel “Killshot” by Lee Gimenez was published for the first time in 2022. It’s part of the Rachel West series.
When an assassination attempt on the US president narrowly fails, only a few trusted individuals are included in a highly sensitive investigation. New attempts to kill the president fail, but they indicate that someone with intimate knowledge of his movements is providing highly classified information to the would-be assassins.
Alex Miller is one of the very few people the president trusts and is forced to lift the suspension of Rachel West, his best but least disciplined agent. Even the White House staff is scrutinized with every means the CIA can muster to find the mole. Concerns for Rachel grow when her boyfriend J.T. Ryan disappears.
The various thrillers by Lee Gimenez tell independent stories, even within the same series, but there may be some connections to other novels. In this case, there are some references to the novel “Tripwire,” linked to previous investigations conducted under the direct command of the US president and, more importantly, to an important presence of Alex Miller and Rachel West of the CIA, two recurring characters.
Rachel West has appeared several times in the novels of the J.T. Ryan series, and she began a personal relationship with him, but in those novels, it’s clear that the private investigator is the protagonist. In “Killshot,” the situation is reversed, with the CIA agent taking center stage. J.T. Ryan is an important character, as is the relationship between the two of them, but he’s absent from most of the story.
Anyone who has read any of Lee Gimenez’s thrillers is familiar with his plots based on international conspiracies, often involving accomplices within national governments. This is especially true in “Killshot,” which has far-reaching global ramifications with truly unsuspected involvement.
The plan to assassinate the US president is carried out primarily by a couple in a dysfunctional relationship, another typical element of Lee Gimenez’s stories. Their accomplices are gradually revealed, along with their roles in the grand conspiracy, sometimes through dramatic twists. The various members of this group have different motivations, sometimes classic ones like greed and a thirst for power, but sometimes more complex ones. Their respectable facades make them really difficult to identify.
The CIA has very powerful and sophisticated intelligence gathering systems, and Rachel West has computer skills that are far better than J.T. Ryan’s meager ones. For this reason, in “Killshot,” there are uses of intelligence tools in the investigation that are far greater than those in other Lee Gimenez thrillers. This doesn’t slow the pace because the author recounts those parts of the investigation without delving into technical details.
Rachel West is an operative agent, and in “Killshot,” her investigation also takes her on a few trips. In these cases, she typically faces some dangerous situations. Her personal situation ends up adding risk to a story where events and decisions that sometimes are extremely difficult generate a growing tension.
Overall, “Killshot” is an action-packed thriller with twists and turns, perfect for fans of this genre. It has a standalone story that doesn’t require you to have read the previous novels in the series and a real ending, so you can read it and then decide if and when to continue with the novels in this series that Lee Gimenez has written in subsequent years. You can find it on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
