In "Valley of Death," the seventh in the Jason Trapp series, Jack Slater takes on the turmoil in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal and subsequent Taliban takeover by sending his super agent to assist a covert diplomatic mission within the backward nation. Trapp is already on the outs with the various clandestine services after his foray into a particularly nasty Siberian gulag, where he got imprisoned to rescue a friend spirited away to the facility's dark site. Trapp doesn't pay much attention to niceties, much less politics. But the president has asked that he tag along. The mission starts sketchy — unofficial, a team air dropped into the mountains near the Pakistani border, and danger a certainty. Of course, something goes wrong, and Trapp must improvise. Alone with the translator, he's forced to find a way out of a hostile country with a team of killers hot on his trail. Slater, following his previous novel in the series, makes the adventure gritty and the outcome uncertain. Trapp's good. But he's no superman. He needs help, and he finds it but also assumes a huge liability. Slater also does a good job of framing challenges the new Afghanistan regime faces, presenting a ruthless counter insurgency, making the Taliban look like Boy Scouts in comparison.