Painkiller

Mr Staeger has a talent in building a fast-paced, non-stop, slam-bang action thriller. But what makes this thriller worth-reading to the end is the inter-exchange chemistry between the two main protagonists: D. Cooper and Julie Laramie. While Cooper leads his daily life with "live slow, mon" attitude, Julie Laramie seems to have a stressful career life, eager to prove her ability. When the two meet, their exchanging dialogues have been hilariously painkiller. The best odd couple since Remington Steele & Laura Holt.

Mr. Staeger has given us a fast paced thriller with almost non stop action. It is an exceptionally good debut novel that is hard to put down. W. Cooper, an irascible, semi-retired CIA agent gets himself into a mess of international proportions and ends up working with Ms. Laramie, a suspended CIA analyst. The action is quick paced and exciting. The plot is a bit out there sometimes, but this is the stuff thrillers are made of. I hope to see this pair together in future novels. Highly recommended.

The logline might be Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, and Hunter S. Thompson cut loose in the Caribbean, but there's nothing formulaic about Will Staeger's first espionage thriller. This debut rocks. Staeger serves up the rare combination of a complex hero to bond with, a wildly original storyline, head-rattling action, and literary talent to burn. Start with a burnt out husk of a soul damaged by torture, mix with agility and lethality honed over years as a CIA paramilitary operator, and toss in a talent for extorting Washington scoundrels to access money and favors, and you have W. Cooper, CIA's solo station head and "spy-a-de-island" on Tortola, BVI. By day, Cooper skin dives, pounds his Apache racing boat over the turquoise chop, and, on a beach kissed by balmy trade winds, lays naked in his deck chair to receive Langley's memos in a diplomatic pouch, reading and burning them one by one with the tip of a good cigar. At night, he picks up married women at the Tiki bar. And, oh yes, knocks back a steady diet of a rum concoction called "Painkillers" to dull his nightly onslaught of skin-flaying memories. And he would go on that way forever, if not for Cap'n Roy, local police chief, who requests Cooper's skills to dispose of a burned, shot, and battered corpse that inconveniently washed up in his jurisdiction. Cooper obliges to replenish his favor bank. But the simple job turns complicated when the corpse reveals traces of both nuclear radiation and Voodoo magic. Identifying with the anonymous nineteen-year-old as a fellow victim, Cooper becomes pro-bono private investigator for the dead man. Thus begins a twisted and violent path that ultimately crosses another seeker of truth. In Langley, VA, a fit and brilliant young SATINT analyst named Laramie identifies a pattern of secret Asian military buildups on Keyhole satellite photos. But it's quashed by her boss for blatantly Washingtonian motives until Laramie herself becomes a target of CIA's darker side. Suffice to say that Cooper and Laramie finally connect to bite off more than they can chew in a gallery of engaging villains-led by a Chinese Vice Premiere and military strategist executing a flawless plan for China to immediately become the world's lone superpower from a private island in the Caribbean. A 21st Century "Dr. No" operation that, absent the death ray and orange jumpsuits, is astonishingly credible and will clearly succeed in the face of Washington's selfish stupidity. Staeger's tale of global-stakes espionage, Voodoo magic, and the painful cost of redemption has me eagerly waiting for Cooper to kick the sand out of his shoes and get back to work.

Painkiller is a riveting 352 page spy novel that expertly interweaves contemporary politics with Caribbean magic and myth. There is a rogue faction within the Chinese military that is threatening to use nuclear terror within American borders with the intent of replacing the United States as the dominant world superpower by the juggernaut totalitarian nation that is China in a growing era of globalization. It will take Julie Laramie, a junior analyst for the CIA at Langley, Virginia to uncover this horrific plot against her country. But it will take the help of quasi-retired, Virgin Islands-based CIA operative known as W. Cooper to buck the CIA brass, deal with a litany of enemies that range from an Haitian witch doctor, to a slave-trading albino serial killer, to a bodybuilding fanatic, to stop a terrifying conspiracy. Painkiller is a roller coaster ride of a read -- and begs to be the stuff of a big-screen movie. Hollywood take note!

I am an avid reader of these tangled mysteries. Page turners which make you not want to put the book down signify for me a great read. I escape my world in these type of books and Will Staeger's "Painkiller" is one of the best. Read it in one sitting! I was concerned initially how the varried characters and subplots teasingly illustrated in the first fifty or so pages were going to come together but, boy!, did they. I can wait to see how WC continues with his fairy tale life and how Laramie recovers from her wounds and joins WC in their next adventure. While most books are much better than the movies I can't wait for the movie to be developed!