ramblingmads

A kidnapped girl. An impenetrable fortress. Sounds like a job for Breed.

Keen to discover what she knows about a looming conspiracy, Breed and Stein plan to question German cabaret performer Käthe Ziegler in New York.

Their plan is derailed when Käthe is kidnapped by a team of professionals. They want her and a piece of jewelry she’s been hiding — an ancient gold seal she stole from the most dangerous man in Europe.

Karl Graf is Germany’s Vice-Chancellor, the head of a secret society of senior
politicians and industrialists, and a man with a plan to reshape the continent. He wants his seal back. He wants Käthe back. And he’s prepared to kill anyone who gets in his way.

Breed and Stein discover that Kathe has been taken to a castle high in the Bavarian
Alps. Against all odds, they climb to the fortress, which sits atop a lethal three-thousand-foot peak.

Inside, they find Käthe, Graf, and the truth about an eighty-year-old conspiracy that
began in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and ends — in a bloody climax —
on Christmas Eve.

Blood Pact — Book Thirteen in the stunning Breed action thriller series. Perfect for fans of Jason Kasper, Jack Carr, and Lee Child.

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Cameron Curtis has spent thirty years on trade floors as a trader and risk manager. He was on the trade floor when Saddam’s tanks rolled into Kuwait, when the air wars opened over Baghdad and Belgrade, and when the financial crisis swallowed the world.

Having written fiction as a child, he is the author of the Breed action thriller series.

My thoughts: Breed and Stein are in Germany, which is supposed to be an ally, but as they attempt to keep Käthe from her captors, they discover a conspiracy that dates back to during WWII and the Nazi obsession with the supernatural.

As with all the Breed thrillers, the plot moves very quickly and I found the parts where Käthe is relating the history of her family and their relationship with the Grafs, quite slow in comparison.

There’s also a lot of gunfights and dead bodies – obviously they’re mostly henchmen so even their employer doesn’t really care, even when Breed is chucking them down the cliff the German castle they’re holed up in, stands on.

As Käthe fills in the back story, Stein and Breed are working out what the group of powerful politicians are up to in their castle stronghold at Christmas. Could they be preparing to bring down the world as it currently stands and go back to their grandparents’ time?

Thankfully Breed and Stein are there, as there seems to be a mole and worryingly their Director and President might be a bit more involved in this than either operative would like.

We still don’t learn anything about Breed, his past is a closed book, but he does get to be the hero of the hour, and even if he doesn’t believe in the supernatural element of this mission – he is very clear on the potential fall out should it succeed. 

After another success, he and Stein must head back to the US to confront their Director and try to locate the mole – the one who almost cost their lives this time. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.