Devotees of Valerie Plame’s Vanessa Pierson books will welcome Fox’s gripping thriller featuring a strong female lead. In the prologue, CIA operative Isabella Bendel’s maverick approach to a hostage situation results in the successful rescue of Sen. Robert Matthews. A decade later, Matthews is in the White House, and Bendel is the chief supervisor of the CIA’s Cyberterrorism Unit, though she’s now a widow after her husband’s death from cancer. When she’s attacked during her morning jog near her Washington, D.C., house, Bendel is able to overpower and capture her Russian assailant, Viktor Gachev, who reveals during his interrogation that her six-year-old twins are at risk. When Bendel reaches home, she finds the twins and her mother, who’s a retired CIA agent, missing amid signs of a struggle. The abduction coincides with credible intel about an impending cyberattack that could cripple the U.S. A mole within Bendel’s own unit imperils her desperate efforts to save her family and country. Unspectacular but solid prose enhances the familiar story framework. Fox provides the surprising twists and fast-paced action that genre fans expect. (BookLife)