Publishers Weekly
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Bestseller Woods and Quertermous’s busy fifth Teddy Fay novel (after 2020’s Bombshell) takes the former CIA operative to Macau, where Centurion Studios owners Peter Barrington and Ben Bacchetti, who employ Teddy in his guise as movie producer Billy Barnett, need his help. Someone is threatening to blackmail Peter and Ben, who are in Macao for a film festival, with a fake video showing them cheating at a local casino. In his search for the culprit, Teddy crosses paths with American billionaire Arrow Donaldson, the head of a casino conglomerate in China; Li Feng, the CFO of China’s largest telecom company, whose testimony could affect an impending trade deal between China and the U.S.; and CIA agent Millie Martindale, who’s been part of “a task force in one of Arrow’s Chinese casinos to identify Chinese government workers with gambling problems and recruit them as U.S. spies.” Keeping track of the many players and their various schemes isn’t easy, and Teddy has fewer opportunities to use his disguise skills than in his previous outing. Series fans will enjoy the ride, but this isn’t the place to start for newcomers. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit. (June)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

CIA operative–turned-killer Teddy Fay, aka Hollywood producer Billy Barnett, gets his fifth sort-of-starring role in a splashy, muddled thriller set in Macau. Centurion Studios president Ben Bacchetti and his partner, director Peter Barrington, see no reason why their visit to the Macau Film Festival should be all business. They’re dismayed when their visit to a baccarat table at the Golden Desert Casino and Resort is used as material for a deep-fake video that seems to show them cheating. The video, which has evidently been engineered by Bing-Wen “Bingo” Jo, bids fair drag them into the iron grip of fearsome media/casino mogul Arrow Donaldson, for whom Bingo works off the books on matters concerning digital technology and violence. But Centurion producer Teddy, who’s every bit the equal of Bingo and Donaldson fixer Zhou "Ziggy" Peng put together, is on the case. His improbable sometime partners are Li Feng, the heiress and CFO of QuiTel who’s fighting to keep her company exempt from the U.S. blacklist of competing Chinese telecom corporations suspected of spying, and Millie Martindale, a CIA administrator who’s a lot more resourceful than most administrators you’ll ever meet. The first partnership between Woods and Quertermous is full of casino underlings, biddable cops, fake shootings, and doubles living and dead. But the plot never thickens, and readers confident that Teddy will live to fight, pressure, cheat, and kill another day may be indifferent to the fate of the nefarious forces arrayed against him. The first of Woods’ many collaborations to be unquestionably inferior to his solo performances. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Woods' latest novel is the fifth entry in his Teddy Fay series (after Bombshell, 2020), cowritten with new partner Quertermous. The book opens with a jet-lagged Teddy napping during a Hong Kong layover on the way to Los Angeles. He is abruptly awakened by an attack from a mysterious woman, Dale Gai, who later claims to need his help, plunging Teddy—and readers—into nonstop action, as he navigates both the glitzy world of Macau's film scene and the criminal shadowland mirroring it. Fans will recognize several of Teddy’s friends, including the Bachettis and the Barringtons, who reach out to him seeking assistance clearing their names after a deepfake video threatens their reputations. The roster of characters includes a brash billionaire, frustrated CIA agent Millie, and Chinese tech heiress and CFO Li Feng. Duplicity and shifting allegiances abound throughout, and the risk of heightened U.S.-Chinese tensions looms. Good for readers who enjoy James Patterson and Harlan Coben.