The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd

Paperback 2010, 382 pages
April 16, 2011
South Amboy, NJ

From what I could tell, this is the first novel written by the former FBI agent. It is about the group Rubaco Pentad which extorts money ($5M total) from the FBI by killing and threatening to kill various people if its demands are not met. The FBI calls in a former agent (who works as a mason, hence the title of the book) Steve Vail to help solve the problem. The bad guys keep throwing in mental and physical challenges at Vail which he meets, and in the process kills many (or all, I forget) of them, including the mastermind Victor Radek.

The general technique of escalating challenges works quite well for the writer, but he seems to go to the same well a couple of times too many. The final twist (that the outgoing Deputy DA is involved) is quite unnecessary and not well-developed; the author uses a short narrative to describe what happened. If I were his editor, I would say either cut out that part of the story or make it more central and elaborate on it.

It would have been a much better book if the storyline ends say 2/3 of the way; as it is it drags on a bit. Nonetheless I enjoyed this book, and would gladly read other books by the same author.