Play Book Tag discussion

I've been waiting for quite awhile to get to the story of FBI agent Max Bhagat and the much younger Gina Vitagliano. The two met in 2001's Over the Edge when Gina was beaten and raped by terrorists aboard a hijacked plane. Arriving at work one day, silent, straight-laced, Max receives a piece of horrible news. Gina's name is on the list of those killed by a terrorist bomb in Hamburg, Germany. Devastated and sorry for all the things he should have said to her, Max travels to the scene of the attack, only to discover the dead woman is not Gina.

He traces Gina back to an African AIDS camp, where Gina was doing volunteer work. One of the other volunteers is Molly Anderson, a character we met in Out of Control. Molly headed to Africa after losing her love, David Jones (aka Grady Morant), a former Special Forces soldier who's wanted dead or alive by a Chinese criminal.

Quite a bit of the story is told in flashbacks from a few months before the bombing attack, set in the AIDS camp in Kenya, where Gina went after she left Max. In those chapters, we mostly see the secondary storyline, which features Molly and Jones. We see Jones show up under a fake name and be reunited with Molly after many years apart, with Gina looking on and helping. There are also an extensive use of flashbacks to a time when Max was in the hospital. I think the author was using them to establish Max's personality in withdrawing from emotion, but I felt like it really slowed down the story narrative.

Jules has a minor storyline about his ongoing recovery from an emotionally abusive relationship and his devotion to Max and Gina. That must mean Jules's primary story will be coming up soon.

When we get to the point where the story continues in the present time, the tone changes a bit and the book turns into a more action-driven story. I really enjoyed it and was glad that a couple of my favorite pair of characters finally got their happy ending.