“Extinction Agenda,” “Tracking Game” and more

“The Extinction Agenda,” by Michael Laurence (St. Martin’s Press)

In“the Extinction Agenda,” Denver author Michael Laurence writes a thriller with a hero facing enough twists and turns to make James Bond look like a piker.

FBI special agent James Mason takes part in an Arizona operation to catch killers who are injecting illegal immigrants with some kind of virus. In a shootout in a desert warehouse, Mason has the choice of killing a terrifying blue-eyed man ready to incinerate the facility or a man holding a gun on his FBI mentor. He chooses to save his partner’s life, but to no avail. The partner is burned to death in the conflagration.

A year later, Mason’s wife, an IRS agent, is killed in a fire in a cheap motel, where she apparently was having a love tryst with her boss. Then, Mason views a security tape showing his wife wearing sunglasses. Reflected in them is the blue-eyed man. Mason goes rogue when he suspects some kind of conspiracy.

And oh, boy, what a conspiracy. With the help of the only two persons he can trust — a casino operator and an internet security expert — he discovers the blue-eyed man is the scion of a German family associated with pandemics over the past 100 years. The man’s veniality is confirmed when Mason meets a badly scarred Mexican woman who was the mass killer’s intended victim.

The blue-eyed man isn’t alone. He is part of vast conspiracy involving multinational companies and government agents. Mason learns he can trust no one.

“The Extinction Agenda” is filled with harrowing confrontations and escapades, fires and killings, which Mason, of course, escapes. There’s also a bit of gunpoint philosophy. It’s a nail-biting thriller, and if the superhero is larger than life, the plot leaves you wondering if just maybe there’s a little truth in it.

“A Perfect Eye,” by Stephanie Kane (Cold Hard Press)

Denver readers will love this book. The city is on almost every page — the Brown Palace, the Mark Twain apartments, South Broadway antique stores, the Rockies, even the Tropics and Tempest Storm.

But come for the setting, stay for the story. “A Perfect Eye” is a nicely done mystery set in the Denver Art Museum. Lily Sparks is the conservator of paintings at the museum. A former lawyer, she turned to museum work after working with an FBI agent investigating a fake painting. The two had a torrid affair, until Lily discovered he was married.

That was 10 years ago. Now the agent, Paul, is back in town looking into the savage murder of the museum’s major benefactor. He calls on Lily for help because she has a “perfect eye.” She spots things nobody else sees. Taking in the grisly scene, Lily tells Paul the murder was done as a work of art, with the dead man posed as the subject of a painting, similar to a major work of art the benefactor gave the museum.

She’s shaken by Paul’s reappearance, and to distract herself, she launches an affair with a museum docent. But he turns out to be a suspect in the murder, just like everyone else at the museum: the director, a vicious curator of paintings, an aspiring young assistant, a genial art dealer, even her father. Lily’s life, of course, is in peril, as she attempts to convince Paul and others that the big new painting is a fake and that she is on the trail of the artist-killer.

“A Perfect Eye” is an absorbing mystery set in familiar territory by local author Stephanie Kane. A bonus: You learn an awful lot about art restoration. “A Milwaukee Inheritance,” by David Milofsky (University of Wisconsin Press)

When his mother is terminally ill, Andy Simonson returns to his native Milwaukee. The Yale graduate with the stunningly beautiful wife lands a job in a prestigious law firm and buys a house on the lake. He’s made it. Or has he? Having gone away to school, he’s now something of an outsider, and his wife, Moira, hates the city as a backwater barren of culture.

Moira wants to return to Boston where her father is a powerful lawyer. Even more than that, she wants to get pregnant. In fact, she is so determined to have a child that she eschews Milwaukee’s doctors and goes east to find out why she can’t conceive.

“A Milwaukee Inheritance” — it refers to a crumbling apartment that Andy inherits from his mother — is an eloquently written story. Author David Milofsky, professor emeritus of English at Colorado State University, is one of Colorado’s finest writers, and the novel is graceful and witty.

Andy is a gentle, sometimes bumbling man with a dry sense of humor, who is caught between the demands of his wife and his attachment to Milwaukee. The latter is underscored when a high school acquaintance with the improbable nickname of Frankie the Pin asks Andy to represent him in a palimony suit. Frankie, who is Andy’s tenant, is a young hood whose father controls Milwaukee’s underworld, such as it is. Meanwhile, deserted by his wife, Andy is tempted by her best friend.

“A Milwaukee Inheritance” is a story about past and present, about marital conflict, and about whether you really can go home again.

“Tracking Game,” by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane)

In the fourth Timber Creek K-9 mystery, police officer Mattie Cobb is dealing with two problems: the murder of a local man and whether to tell her boyfriend, Cole Walker, details of her childhood abuse.

First, the murder. Outfitter Nate Fletcher is shot and his van burned. Mattie sets Robo, her trained dog and best friend, loose to track the killer and finds clues but no suspect. Nate had married Kasey Redmand, member of a Colorado ranch family. The Redmans are in danger of losing the ranch because of money they loaned Nate to pay his gambling debts. Nate wasn’t only into gambling, it seems, but also drug running and illegal hunting — like setting loose a Siberian tiger for a couple of hunters from California.

They hunters are also land developers with ties to a local realtor (and Kasey’s former boyfriend) who has his eye on the Redmand ranch. Colorado author Margaret Mizushima, who runs a veterinary clinic with her husband, includes a lot of good K-9 work in here.

Second, the relationship. You’ll have to read the book to find out about that.

“First Tracks,” by Catherine O’connell (Severn House)

Things aren’t going well for Aspen ski patroller Greta Westerlind. Her dog dies. She survives an avalanche, although her best male friend (and secret love) is killed. She barely escapes death from carbon monoxide poisoning. And now somebody is trying to burn down her house with her in it. Talk about a bad couple of days!

But she has her job, and she has Aspen. Part-time Aspen resident Catherine O’connell writes a novel that is as much skiing as it is plot. Although she has to find who is trying to kill her, Greta spends much of her time on the slopes, rescuing stranded skiers or schussing on her own. Skiers will love O’connell’s descriptions of the sport.

Sandra Dallas is a Denver author. Contact her at sandradallas@msn.com.