The Bottom Line: A must-read assassination thriller that pits a lovable superhero against a sniper targeting American extremists.
The eighth book in Howard Seaborne’s DIVISIBLE MAN series returns lovable superhero Will Stewart to a crisis that threatens to rip America apart. A pilot by trade, Will doesn’t need the assistance of a stealth aircraft in order to fly, vanish and reappear. With a touch, he can help others do the same thing. As EIGHT BALL opens, we learn that Will has been sneaking into hospitals and making kids with cancer disappear for a minute or two. So far, 80% of those “cooked” are going into remission.
But curing cancer is far from Will’s only concern. When FBI Special Agent Leslie Carson-Pelham asks Will to spy on right-wing leader Darryl Spellman, he flies to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where Spellman is getting married. It seems that the leader of a white supremacist group has given his daughter to Spellman in order to form a political alliance. But before Will can get the intelligence he came for, a sniper blows Spellman’s brains out.
Spellman is just one in a series of assassinations that have been just below the radar of the national news. Among the dead are a militia leader, a congressman, a state legislator and a right-wing broadcaster. While none of the victims appear to have direct connections with each other, all are known conspiracy theorists who talk a lot about the “Deep State.”
Author Howard Seaborne has thrust Will into a situation where the assassin seemingly has every advantage. The shooter picks the targets and the time, and other than a specialized caliber of bullet, Will has virtually no leads. Meanwhile, Will’s devoted wife, Detective Andy Stewart, has been undergoing intense FBI training in Quantico. It’s a dream come true, but she struggles with her simultaneous desire to start a family, and invites her husband on a “date” on her upcoming 24-hour leave. But when the body count rises and Will’s back is against the wall, fans of the series already know she’ll find a way to help.
The way Seaborne unmasks the assailant is worth the price of admission alone, but readers should really stay for the sheer humanity he has created. In a genre where nearly every law enforcement professional is either a prototype lone wolf or a twice-divorced heap of damaged goods, Seaborne has created an aspirational but realistic-seeming union between two crime fighters who will do anything for each other. The couple fights crime together, but they also navigate life together. Will’s ongoing testimony of how he navigates their partnership (“I have a better chance of finding Amelia Earheart than solving the mystery that is marriage”) through good times and bad is downright moving. And when Will decides someone has to pay for doing Andy wrong, he has few peers.
