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!

The Devil's Quota by Tom Avitabile

The Devil’s Quota. Tom Avitabile. The Story Plant. October 2014. 320 pp.  ISBN#: 9781611881929.

A well-known Judge is found dead after having a massive heart attack while in the throes of sexual bliss with a call girl in a seedy building far from his luxurious home.  The only problem is his wife tells Detective Mike DiMaggio that her husband was impotent.  Add to this fact the reality of a sex clinic run by a professional sex counselor Cassandra Cassidy.  It turns out she runs several floors in the building where she offers therapy for high profile customers.  Unfortunately, DiMaggio quickly figures out she is being protected by those same higher-ups, which leads to him being followed.

DiMaggio, however, calculates that losing his job merits his determination to find out who is behind his removal, and that’s where the action and complex nature of this investigation really begins and propels him into action.  It also advances considerably when someone tries to take out Cassidy.  The relationship between the two now changes into something more personal but is complex enough to defy predictability.

The story then switches to a sniper, Master Sergeant Eric Ronson, who is a Special Forces operative serving in Afghanistan.  He has fallen in love with Setara, an Afghan girl, who is connected to international traffickers and thereby leads Ronson into a heap of trouble.  Eventually he and DiMaggio will connect but that’s a spoiler not happening here.  Suffice to say there’s a great deal of killing happening on this end of the story!

Tom Avitabile’s plots are page-turning, gripping read.  The Ronson involvement eventually ties in but seems separate and disconnected at first, but eventually it all ties together to form a seamless plot.  DiMaggio and Cassandra Cassidy are characters with some unique, quirky qualities to their relationship right up to the last page.  Good read for all fans of crime/thriller fiction!

The Hammer of God by Tom Avitabile

The Hammer of God. Tom Avitabile. The Fiction Studio. April 2012. 404 Pages. ISBN #: 9781936558384. 


Twenty-four small jars of cold cream are ready for shipment and it's a job well-done. So begins the innocuous journey that ends in a crushing accident and what seems to be deliberate end to this shipment, forever encapsulated in layers of concrete. Yet is that really the end? 


  The plot now shifts to a bunch of science geeks in the Bronx who do nothing that normal teenage kids do but are excused for their obsession with science and electronics because of their formidable intelligence. Although frequently separated by miles as they grow older, they remain bonded friends whose link may well one day save mankind! 


Again, another shift takes us to an opposite group of characters who believe the West is evil incarnate and who must be destroyed. Each member of this cast trains hard to ensure success in the ultimate question of total destruction. What does it involve and how will it be accomplished? 


A renowned scientist and his committee hold a secret about a global harmonic grid which other scientists and government person deem nonsense but which targets each member of the committee for assassination. Killed or otherwise,they disappear just when they are needed most. 


Meanwhile, the plot is thickening, with Bill Hiccock and his Quarterback Ops Group attempting to forecast and prevent a terrorist act or acts from killing thousands or millions of U. S. citizens. 


The Hammer of God is a tightly plotted, fear-filled and all-too-realistic thriller that is finely written, in fact the best this reviewer has read in a long time. It should be a best seller and will make the reader anxiously awaiting the third and final novel in this thriller trilogy! Great job, Tom Avitabile!!!