Sirocco is the second book in the St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking Series, and I have to say, it’s great fun.

The duo behind St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking – a sham company – an ex-cop named Finnegan and an ex-spy assassin named Fiero, work out of Cyprus as international bounty hunters. One day, the Paris Station Chief for the CIA, Annie Pryor, and Hugo Llorente, from the Spanish Central Intelligence (who also trained Fiero to be a killer) come to the office in Cyprus to hire them to track down the leadership of a jihadist group that has taken responsibility for bombings in various countries. The group follows up each bombing by releasing a video, with the usual death to the infidels sort of thing.Pryor and Llorente have dark money slush funds, so they’re paying an unspecified (tot he reader) but probably obscene amount of money, and promising that the two will have whatever support the can clandestinely give – a sort of blank check for a rollicking story that rolls through Switzerland, Spain, Germany, and France.

As Finnegan and Fiero dig around in the history of the bombings, a security company (think Blackwater) ALSO want to find the jihadis – and they want to get Finnegan and Fiero away from the trail because those two want to bring in the leader of the group for trial, but the security firm intends to kill him.

But as we learn through Finnegan and Fiero’s investigation, not everything is as it seems, and the truth of the reason for the bombings eventually reveals itself. A truth that brings danger right to their doorstep. To go deeper into it would be much too spoilery – and would take the fun out of reading it.

This is a fun, fast read. Some of the things that are done are not particularly believable, but beyond a couple of instances, the action was plausible, and the banter between Finnegan and Fiero was, at times, quite witty.

A solid four out of five stars.