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Ray Favor, one of four members of Bravo One Nine (a special ops cell), is restless in retirement. Missing the thrill of special ops work (and, yes, killing) has him feeling unsettled. Luckily one of his other cell members (there are four) beckons the others from their placid lives, and they meet in Lake Tahoe, Ray's home base. Another cell member, a Filipino-American, gets a call from a distant relative in the Philippines that her teenage daughter has disappeared, later followed by her son, and she could use some help. The cell members agree that they will enjoy a vacation in the Philippines together and spend a little time looking into the matter. What they discover once they arrive is far more than they bargained for. The teenage girl has been recruited by an employment agency to work overseas. When her family loses communication, her teenage brother decides to follow her to Manila to locate her, despite the employment agency's denial that she ever arrived. When Ray and his fellow black ops cell members start looking into matters, it quickly becomes clear that there is a sinister force behind the employment agency, and they have a take-no-prisoners attitude toward anyone asking unwanted questions. It soon becomes another black ops mission to rescue the teenagers and recoup a little of the karma (for good) that they have spent over the years in carrying out their jobs. When the Russian mob turns out to be behind the employment agency (and the kidnapped teenagers), things move into high gear, with plenty of action and high-tech toys. Still, these things never overshadow the storyline of the missing youth or the coming to terms with what their lives as cell members have been about. Author Phillip Finch maintains a strong balance in his novel, DEVIL'S KEEP, between the world of the Russians vs. the trained killers (the special ops cell) and the storyline of the young people whose lives have been compromised because of who they are (poor country people who are trying to make a better life for their family). Also one rarely finds a book so insightful about the toll that the years of conducting secret operations takes on those who work in special ops capacity. Unlike so many other thrillers, this novel never gets too far fetched. Its grounded nature gives it power and strikes a chord, without losing any of the normal action one comes to expect from the genre. DEVIL'S KEEP is an interesting novel with a fresh location (the Philippines) and solid character building. The book ends with a fitting twist to the storyline, and readers are left satisfied with the story‘s conclusion, despite the door being left ajar for new developments. Author Phillip Finch has dotted his i's and crossed his t's to the reader's overwhelming benefit.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, April 2010
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