I wasn't at all familiar with Ben Coes' work before I read THE LAST REFUGE, the third of the Dewey Andreas novels. I'm a thriller fan, first, and a political thriller junkie as well.

Here we have an Israeli, the great-grandson of Golda Meir, kidnapped off the streets of New York and smuggled into Iran or a show trial and public execution. He was supposed to meet Dewey for a secret job he needed help with. He's being held in the most secure prison in Iran and the torture has already started.

In the last book in the series, Meir had rescued Dewey, nearly dying himself and in fact losing six men to do it. Dewey felt obligated to do something about this latest development.

The secret operation Meir needed help with was a huge problem. Iran had developed a nuclear bomb and had plans to get it into Tel Aviv on a small boat and destroy the city. Assets in Iran that abhorred what was going on had gotten the word out and were working on finding it's location.

It was all done in secret because if Israel was notified, the mole in the Mossad, known of but not identified, would move the operation up. If the Americans were notified, they might launch a strike on Iran. Same result.

American had just lost it's President to a heart attack and the sworn-in VP was new at the job and naive. He believed Iran's talk of signing agreements and allowing inspectors to search plants.

Dewey comes up with an audacious plan to grab the bomb and use it to trade for Meir before he could be executed. Could it work? And the bomb had to be found first.

A nicely paced thriller that kept me flipping those pages until the end.

If one likes that sort of thing, highly recommended.