Book Review: Double Tap by Cindy Dees

Is it urban legend that a mother can find the superhuman strength to lift a car in order to save her trapped child? Or is it apocryphal? Most would agree that it’s a rare circumstance. Unless you’re retired CIA agent Helen Warwick, from Cindy Dee’s brilliant debut thriller Second Shot.

Fifty-five-year-old Helen Warwick is as good as it gets at spy craft but that didn’t stop her masters from forcing her retirement. Ruefully, she sees it as an opportunity to foster better relationships between her and her three adult children. The secrecy of her career, the long stretches when she was away from home, all contributed to her estrangement from her family.

Helen Warwick is a fierce, intensely capable mother, ready to step in front of anything that threatens her family. Second Shot opened with her protecting her son Peter’s house (and grand pup) from home invaders on New Year’s Eve. She rescued the puppy and a small Renoir, but the house was severely damaged. Oh, and she killed three assassins. That’s what retired CIA assassins do: it’s in their wheelhouse. 

Fast forward to her ambitious and talented son Mitch, the acting district attorney for Washington, DC. Like Helen’s late father, he’s a politician for whom the sky’s the limit. Being at Mitch’s press conference where he’ll announce his campaign for the permanent DA job is a non-negotiable mother duty. Helen is a mistress of disguise and one of her most effective covers is the getting-on-in-age mama. Her CIA colleagues wouldn’t recognize the woman on the stage proudly applauding her son. 

With a sigh, Helen pasted a fake smile on her face and suppressed an urge to tug at the collar of her silk blouse. She felt the caked-on stage makeup cracking on her skin and dialed down the smile a little. No need to add more wrinkles to her face than she already had.

Helen surreptitiously moves to the edge of the stage to get out of the spotlight—she spots “a flicker of lime green,” and realizes immediately what’s happening. She tries to argue with herself but pulls up short: “What if that was a targeting beam from a laser gun sight?” It’s too dark for her to kill the assassin who has her son in his sights, so she launches “herself airborne, leaping at her son with the intent to take the bullet for him.” She saves the day but frankly, the incident in the announcement press conference is merely an unexpected interruption in the life of Helen Warwick. She’s still retired and she’s still trying to make an apple pie that doesn’t consist of questionable crust and barely cooked apples. 

Until, that is, her superior orders her to get back in the saddle. There’s a mole, deeply ensconced in the agency, working for and with the Russians: Helen’s job is to lead a hush-hush team to identify him. And to think she thought she killed him in Second Shot. 

His code name is Scorpius. A Russian mole embedded in the CIA, he recruits dangerous sociopaths ejected from the military and trains them to kill at command. None of his CIA colleagues—including Helen Warwick—know his true identity. 

The only thing that would bring Helen Warwick in from the cold is a threat to her family. To borrow from The Godfather: Part III, Helen is Michael Corleone, stating the obvious: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! Mitch and others may pooh-pooh the notion that an attempt was made on his life, but Helen is a realist. Scorpius isn’t just after her, he’s after her family. In the meantime, capable colleagues are being murdered, she’s sure Mitch has done something in his past that makes him vulnerable to blackmail, and her husband is back from South America acting a lot like the man she fell in love with. 

The kill count is incredibly high and the viciousness of the deaths is not for the faint of heart. What humor there is, is sardonic and tinged with there but for the grace of God go I variety. If Cindy Dee’s thriller series were to show up on Netflix, Manny, her chop shop guy, would make a memorable cameo. Helen shows up late in the evening at “a car repair shop in a rough part of town.” The bad guys tried to gun her down in her tricked-out car, but she discovered and removed a tracker and made haste to safety. She tells the security guard she needs a trade-in: “Tell Manny that Grandma Helen is here.”

“What brings you here at this hour?” her host, Manny, asked. “You need an emergency modification on my baby here?” He stroked the hood of her car affectionately.

 

“I need a new car. With body armor and bulletproof glass. This one is hot.”

 

He tsked. “What’s a nice lady like you doing getting into so much trouble?”

 

“Believe me. I don’t go looking for it. Trouble has a way of finding me.”

To upend a Taylor Swift lyric, we knew she was trouble when she walked in. I can’t wait for the next Helen Warwick thriller. She has three children—will the next book see her youngest, Jayne, under siege? Stay tuned: my money’s on Helen Warwick, an intensely focused and capable woman of a certain age, to save the day.

READ MORE: Our Review of Second Shot by Cindy Dees