Give Us This Day: A Brooke Burrell Thriller by Tom Avitabile

Give Us This Day – A Brooke Burrell Thriller. Tom Avitabile. The Story Plant. October 2015. 350 pp.  ISBN#: 9781611882095.

Brooke Burrell is tired and would like to step away from her FBI Director role and retire to Hawaii with her husband Mush.  But she also still has the fire in her belly and is now quickly drawn into a devious plan in which certain high finance leaders are funneling money into terrorist pockets for use in an act of terrorism as yet unknown.  What initially comes to light is that there’s a leak somewhere in the group trying to find out how the Prescott firm is involved in the financial side.  Even Brooke is subject to temptation but chooses otherwise. She seems to be one of the few who realize how many deaths could result from the successful transfer of monies to these fundamentalist Islamic groups. 

Meanwhile violet acts are occurring at an increasingly alarming rate.  An art gallery explodes to the point where there’s nothing left to analyze inside the non-existent building.  Several women who are involved in passing funds are now romantically involved with some very, very dangerous people.  Even some of the criminals involved in this carefully planned act of terrorism are being watched carefully as they aren’t deemed as religiously committed as they should be.

Now the countdown toward disaster is moving forward far too quickly but the terrorists have been sloppy and left behind evidence that only someone of Brooke’s high caliber intelligence is able to find.  The search is fraught with danger and even ambivalent support from her Washington boss who suffers from a case of paranoia about Brooke and the President who holds the power to decide everyone’s future. 

As the reader is now fast and furiously turning the pages, the violence accelerates and many will die before Brooke’s discoveries bear fruit.  One extreme act will kill far too many of Brooke’s team but her action will prevent something ten times worse from occurring.

Give Us This Day… is an awesome thriller that will please lovers of that genre and particularly of Tom Avitabile who never fails to provide powerful, realistic scenarios reminiscent of the best spy or thriller novels.  Highly recommended reading that again would also make for a captivating movie!