By Cameron Woodhead
Dark Heart
James Phelan
Hachette, $29.99
This is the fourth Jed Walker novel from James Phelan (an author who can really pump them out, though he has a way to go before he catches the exemplar of the action thriller genre Lee Child, whose 21st Jack Reacher book was published last month). Like its predecessors, Dark Heart features high-octane action, pitting lone wolf against sinister conspiracy. Walker is ex-CIA and this time he finds himself confronted by the nightmare of the war in Syria, where a massacre survivor is instructed to seek him out. Terror networks and human traffickers, lethal adversaries and a very high body count await Phelan's tough guy, as he tries to navigate a situation with a horrendous cost in innocent lives, and set to rights whatever small part of it he can.