Walking Dead

Greg Rucka keeps the reader hooked in this heart-pounding, wrenching story of human trafficking. The book starts off in Georgia, where Atticus Kodiak lives with Drama. The brutal homicide of an entire family entices Atticus to risk his life, seeking to solve the details of this mystery. As he gets closer to finding what he is looking for, a personal surprise he did not expect, raises the stakes. Atticus must choose to save, and protect multiple lives as he trots across the globe using different guises. This book is an eye-opener into a major problem that sadly exists today, around the world.

Atticus Kodiak is an assassin and sometime bodyguard. Currently he's hiding out with his lover, Alena Cizkova, in Kobuleti, a Geogian town in what used to be U.S.S.R. Someone makes the mistake of killing Atticus' neighbor, and the man's wife and son. However they take the man's daughter in order to sell her to human trafficers so she can be used as a prostitute. In a plot similar to the movie, "Taken" with Liam Neeson, Atticus decides to save the girl. He learns the name of the man who killed the neighbor and took the girl. First he learns where the man took her, then he permanently pays the man back for his crime. The action is swift and the suspense excellent. In addition to an exciting story, it's interesting to see the places Atticus travels to in attempt to save the child. He goes to Dubai where he finds a house with child prostitutes. He kills a number of very ban men and rescues 7 young girls but not the one he wanted. When he returns to Kobuleti, his home has been burned to the ground but his lover, Alena is safe. Nothing is going to stop Atticus. He gets beaten up, inflicts pain on others but in the end (you will have to read the story to find out). Well done and highly recommended. A real page turner!

It's been almost two years since the release of a new Greg Rucka thriller. It's not as if he's been idle; Rucka is active in the comic book world, currently writing Action Comics for DC. We last saw him in novel form, however, in 2007's PATRIOT ACTS, which continued his Atticus Kodiak series. WALKING DEAD, his latest work, also stars Atticus, and it's a fine addition. Rucka is in pulse-pounding form here, combining an addictive narrative with a riveting storyline to create what may well be his best book to date in the Kodiak mythos. WALKING DEAD opens with Atticus and his lover, Alena, living in Kobuleti, Georgia. As Atticus describes it, Kobuleti is a place where people go to hide, and indeed, that is precisely what Atticus and Alena are doing. Their neighbors, the Lagidze family, appear to be doing the same thing, and the two households maintain a cordial but respectful distance from each other, with the primary contact between them consisting of dance lessons provided by Alena to Tiasa, the Lagidzes' 14-year-old daughter. All of that changes suddenly and irrevocably when the Lagidze family is slaughtered in the dead of night and Tiasa is abducted. The plot from thereon is simple: Atticus moves heaven and earth and attempts to find Tiasa and bring her back. What does he do? Everything. What does he expend? Everything. What does he sacrifice? Money, body, and a part of his soul. Tiasa, he quickly discovers, is in the hands of people who are the embodiment, the manifestation, of an evil so dastardly that there is no justice appropriate for it other than the ultimate one that Atticus, for the most part, dispenses as he follows a trail that grows cold within a matter of hours and seemingly impossible to track with each passing day. It is one that will take him from the former Soviet bloc to Dubai, from Turkey to New York, from Ireland to Las Vegas, trailing an opponent who is fully prepared for trouble. If you thought you knew Atticus before, think again: he has never been so focused, so driven, so formidable. Yet Rucka instills within him humanity, goodness, and fragility, if you will that we don't always find in fictional heroes. Atticus gets banged up here, sustaining damage that he almost can't walk away from, and it takes its toll as the novel progresses. But he has much to live for, including a bombshell that relieves some of the unrelenting grimness of what he encounters. Rucka is possessed of a fine sense of irony steeled with tension, one that is infused into WALKING DEAD from first page to last. You'll have this book open for so long at one sitting that you will feel as if it is bound with a coiled spring until you finish it. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

If this does turn out to be the last Atticus Kodiak book, as the author has hinted, it's a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging conclusion to the series. Rucka's craftsmanship is at his deftest here - it's one of those books that will get its hooks into you and not let go to sleep until your eyes utterly fail you. He explores some dark areas and topics of the international scene, and as usual, mixes up kickass action with great locales, research, character beats and humor. While not my favorite of the Atticus series - still Critical Space for me - it's still a 5 star/can't put it down book. Highly recommended.

In Kobuleti, Republic of Georgia lives former bodyguard Atticus Kodika and his lover retired assassin Alena Cizkova. The couple use aliases to hide their identity from the outside world. However, even in this remote village violence explodes. Someone assaults and violently kills their neighbor Bakhar Lagidze, his wife and his eight year old son; they kidnap his fourteen years old daughter, Tiasa. The local cops quickly rule murder-suicide; outraged Atticus pledges to rescue the teen though that means breaking his vow to not get involved after the massive manhunt directed by top government officials (see POLITICAL GAMES). Following her trail, he learns she was abducted to sell as merchandise to pay off her late father's debts. Keeping to his vow though he detests having to even make inquiries inside the sordid human trafficking slave market, he pursues clues that lead to the Middle East, back to Europe, and eventually to Nevada. However those he seeks to pay for their murders and kidnapping know he is on their tail and go after Alena. No "Drama queen", she flees for her life with the help of Atticus' former lover New York based private investigator Bridgett Logan. The action is non-stop, brutal, and bloody even before Atticus begins his rescue quest. Obstinate and brave Atticus is like a bull dog refusing to give up the mission though the odds are overwhelmingly against him. However, what makes this electrifying thriller super is the ease in which Greg Rucka interweaves without preaching or slowing down the plot a political commentary on human trafficking in which governments pretend the slave market does not exist. Harriet Klausner