Los Angeles is no stranger to violence. Sheriff's Homicide Detective Jim O'Brian and FBI profiler Special Agent Steve Hoffman know the city's dark history well, but something has changed: a serial killer is preying on other serial killers, some known to the police and some never even suspected.
"The Iron Eagle" is a vigilante who takes vengeance on behalf of the victims of the city's killers. His methods are meticulous and his killings brutal, and he moves through Los Angeles with apparent impunity. O'Brian and Hoffman set up an elite task force to catch him, but the deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes that he may be one of their own.
Not for the faint of heart
Rise of The Iron Eagle, book one of the Iron Eagle series, contains graphic violence and scenes of torture. What makes it more intriguing than most police procedurals is the moral bind at its centre. The vigilante seems to know about killers the police had no idea existed, so the detectives face a real dilemma: take down the Iron Eagle, or let him lead them to murderers they would never otherwise find? He is both a suspect and a strange kind of asset. The problem is that he does not wait for the courts. He delivers his own punishment, in the most brutal way.
The investigation is complicated further by connections inside the department. The vigilante appears to have friends among senior officers, and pursuing him may cost the detectives their careers. It is a high-stakes game in which every move could be the one that loses everything, and Teel plays the tension like a patient poker player, letting the reader sense the bluff long before the cards are shown.
Villain or hero?
The masked Iron Eagle is not so different from comic-book anti-heroes, but Teel, who has written several thriller series, crafts a story full of surprises and gives his detectives enough flaws to feel real. As more is revealed about the vigilante's past and motives, the reader shares the detectives' conflict: should we root for him or hope he gets caught? That conflict, combined with spare, evocative prose and a tight plot, makes this a suspenseful read that many readers will finish in one sitting.
About the author
Roy A. Teel Jr. turned to full-time storytelling after many years living with multiple sclerosis made a high-pressure executive career impossible. Writing, he has said, gave his life a new mission: to inform and entertain.
Like your thrillers with higher stakes still? See our pick of crime and spy novels set at the tables in the reading list for poker and casino fans.