Review: Downfall by Jeff Abbott

Downfall is the latest in the Sam Capra series by Jeff Abbott. It begins a few months later from the end of The Last Minute with Sam Capra still balancing his life as a spy/bar owner.  He's fighting Mila at every turn to be a normal person that comes home to his young son every night and isn't constantly being in life or death situations. He's fallen into a sort-of routine until a young woman whispers "help" across the bar to him. That one instance changes the course of his quiet existance to a person who's in a target for a very powerful man.

Diana begins this novel with finding that her mother may in fact be hiding something from her when she finds three cell phones in her purse. Diana's mother, Janice, claims to be going on a retreat where phones are banished so Diana is automatically suspicious. After some amateur sluething, Diana finds info that Janice would rather her not know. This information puts Diana at risk. In an effort to save her self, Diana goes to Sam Capra's bar to find Felix, her mother's friend, but instead causes Capra to unleash the big guns and do his whole...um... spy thing.

I actually enjoy the Capra character. I have read all the previous Abbott novels written in this series Such as Adrenaline and The Last Minute so I knew what to expect from this thriller. What I expected was action. Lots and lots of action. Abbott does a good job at maintaining the pace throughout this novel. There's barely time to for Capra to breath it seems. The characters from The Round Table, the secret organization that Capra is with, maintain their storylines from previous novels. I appreciate that Abbott gives snippets of information about regarding their past so that it is easy to read these as standalones. Also it gives people a refresher coarse on what they may have forgotten from previous novels.

One other element to this novel I enjoyed was that many of the assassins from the opposing group The Network were just as human and well developed as Sam Capra.  They all share a commonality that bordered on getting old because of how often it was mentioned, but still manages to make them worthy of sympathy. All except their leader seem less heartless. Although they have put themselves in their current predicament, I still felt bad for these people.

Overall, Downfall is an interesting thriller that supplies more than enough thrills. Capra is still doing his parkour thing and his son is still his main motivation... from afar. I look forward to book 4 in the Sam Capra series. I will definitely be reading other Abbott novels. It's safe to assume I'm a fan at this point. And if I learned nothing at all from this novel except one this it is to never make deals with the devil. If the deal is too good to be true, it probably isn't true.  ***