The Peter Ash novels are hands down the most fun action/thriller books that are part of a currently ongoing series.

This series has now made it through six books and is actually getting better as it progresses, which is the opposite direction that series in this genre tend to go after a couple of installments.

Petrie has done a good job of allowing his characters to evolve (but not TOO much), and to do so in a positive way. Certainly we don’t ever want Peter to go straight, as they say, but it’s nice to be out from under the PTSD stuff, which I didn’t particularly enjoy.

The dynamic between June and Peter gets better and better all the time, and most importantly, the buddy comedy trio of Peter, June, and Lewis finally feels fully actualized, and it’ll give you major Michael, Fiona, and Sam from Burn Notice vibes.

Without ever creating unnecessary personal drama for the characters, Petrie continues to find satisfying storylines for them.

The humor and action are top-notch, and Petrie continues to write some of the best villains in the genre. Oh, and wait until you meet Fran. And Spark.

As always, Nick Petrie delivers a heart-pounding, exhilarating read in his latest Peter Ash thriller. This one brought favorite characters, Lewis and June (especially June), to the forefront, which is always a treat when they are on the page. And there were some other characters as well that kept the pages turning when they featured. More La Chispa, please! I didn't enjoy the tech and HYENA angle as much, and even though it was central to the plot my feelings on the matter didn't spoil the book for me. The comparisons to Jack Reacher are apt and well-deserved.

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on January 12, 2021

Nick Petrie is among the handful of Thrillerworld action novelists who have managed to combine interesting, multi-faceted characters with smart plots that generate palpable excitement. The Breaker is the sixth installment in the always dependable Peter Ash series.

The story isn’t quite as down-to-Earth as Petrie’s best work, but it never travels beyond the bounds of plausibility. Petrie imagines that a reclusive tech genius named Holloway has developed a new robotic weapon called HYENAS. The semi-autonomous robots move like animals on multiple legs, have a claw instead of a head, and are equipped with an electronic gun that accelerates bullets toward targets with impressive accuracy. While Holloway could be a legitimate defense contractor who would be despicable for all the usual reasons, his greed compels him to steal the design for the power supply that powers his HYENAS. The power supply inventor gets even by hacking Holloway’s weapon design and threatening to publish it on the internet, potentially allowing anyone with a machine shop to produce an army of killer robots.

Peter Ash, his girlfriend June Cassidy, and his buddy Lewis are minding their own business when they see an armed troublemaker enter a mall in Milwaukee. Naturally, Peter and Lewis intervene. The troublemaker only seems to be interested in stealing someone’s cellphone, but shots are fired. After both the troublemaker and the cellphone owner flee, Peter realizes that the incident has been captured on something like a webcam, placing Peter’s anonymity is at risk. Lewis also enjoys his anonymity, having spent most of his life as a criminal. Hence the need to find the troublemaker and retrieve the recording, a quest that has Peter and Lewis interviewing bicycle machinists and quirky inventors.

June is a reporter who senses a story. She thinks she recognizes the cellphone theft victim from a story she covered many years earlier. Her journalistic inquiries place her at risk when the owner of the pilfered cellphone sends a hitman to kill her. Peter, on the other hand, is given an opportunity to wipe his slate clean if he helps an old frenemy who maintains an “off-books team of special operators.” All of this eventually leads to close encounters with the killer robots.

Collateral characters are the highlights of The Breaker. A young woman named Spark rises above the stereotype of gifted hacker, thanks to a backstory that creates some sympathy for a character who would otherwise be too ruthless and self-centered to be likable. A simple-minded but determined assassin named Edgar loves his work (particularly the part involving knives and torture). Edgar seems to have a hypnotic power over his victims but, unlike those victims, Edgar is quite difficult to kill.

The main characters also have full personalities. Series readers know that Peter is having trouble adjusting to the “static” that fills his head whenever he’s not outdoors. He’s also having trouble adjusting to Judy, who has no interest in being bossed around by an action hero. Lewis is the less complex wingman who, in the tradition of the action hero wingman role, likes to break things while dispensing encouraging advice to Peter.

While action gives the novel its pace, Petrie takes time to create atmosphere. He paints the novel with the local color of Milwaukee, a blue-collar city that has transcended its industrial roots, avoiding the urban decay that plagues less fortunate rust belt cities. A fun plot, troubled but likable characters, and a heartland setting combine to make The Breaker another strong entry in the Nick Petrie series.

RECOMMENDED

This is one of my favorite series - Nick hits it out of the park every time. I love Peter, Louis and June and every book contains such a unique and very entertaining mystery. I just cannot recommend this series enough. I interviewed him for my podcast and thoroughly enjoyed speaking with him.

THE BREAKER: A Peter Ash Novel
Nick Petrie
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
ISBN
Hardcover
Thriller

Nick Petrie in THE BREAKER certainly establishes his bona fides as a thriller author. THE BREAKER is the sixth installment in the Peter Ash series, following a troubled and somewhat damaged war veteran who continues to be drawn back into the life, as it were, despite his wish to simply live quietly and be left alone. While THE BREAKER has a couple of weaknesses, it also contains some of Petrie’s best plotting, characterization, and writing to date. It is more than worth your while if you are seeking some unusual edge-of-the-seat thrills.

Ash, as THE BREAKER begins, is kind-of, sort-of, hiding in plain sight due to the events that took place in THE WILD ONE. So it is that he is somewhat reluctant to intervene when a situation occurs as he and best bud Lewis approach the Milwaukee Public Market to meet June Cassidy, Ash’s significant other, for lunch. June, who possesses the situational awareness that each of us should have, notices a suspicious character who as it turns out is carrying a concealed rifle. Ash and Lewis pursue and witness a strange encounter between the character and a person who is vaguely familiar to June. The character gets away, but not before streaming bullets all over the place. No one is injured, but Ash and Lewis --- and June, to a lesser extent --- are determined to get to the bottom of the encounter. They acquire a great deal of additional motivation when a powerful enigmatic figure from Peter’s past appears bearing an offer that Peter simply cannot refuse. If Peter and his friends can recover some valuable technological information from the principals involved in the incident which they witnessed, Peter’s difficulties --- which include being headhunted, and not in a good way, by two governments --- will vanish. Peter’s motivation accordingly couldn’t be higher. There follow a series of textbook examples of good, old-fashioned detective work, twenty-first-century style, coupled with terrific pursuit and engagement vignettes that get better and better as one proceeds through THE BREAKER. As the story progresses it becomes clear that a great deal of the attraction to this installment of the Peter Ash series is due to two factors. One is the low-key but steadfast inquiry of the local police, whose cop instincts begin tingling whenever they are in even remote proximity to Peter. The other is the introduction of a monstrous, almost inhuman, hitman who becomes involved in the proceedings and who gleefully places Peter, Lewis, and June squarely in his sights. Wait. There are three factors. The third is the technology that Peter and company are tasked with retrieving from the wrong hands and placing in the not-so-wrong hands. Its practical applications are wonderfully and frightfully imagined, or, as author Petrie hastens to tell his readers in the Acknowledgements at the conclusion of THE BREAKER, not so imagined after all.

I didn’t find THE BREAKER to be perfect. The initial scene which kicks things off seemed to go on for a bit too long and almost --- almost --- lost me before things kicked off. This was a shame, as by the time that I was a third of the way through the book I couldn’t stop reading. Your results may differ but if they don’t, please don’t set THE BREAKER aside. Your patience will be more than rewarded. My other problem --- if this is a problem --- is that Peter ironically enough was for me the least interesting of the three protagonists. He seemed in a way to be along for the ride with Lewis rather than the other way around. Your results may differ. These problems were more than counterbalanced by the manner in which Petrie morphed a chance encounter in a public market into an extremely convincing save-the-world scenario set primarily in Milwaukee with a very important side-trip to Chicago. That absolutely worked for me. At the end of the day, I will never hear the word “hyena” again without thinking of THE BREAKER. Read it and see what I mean.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2021, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

The 2021 entry in the Peter Ash series finds the main characters now living in Milwaukee. June plays a larger role, researching who is behind some unusual technology while avoiding someone that appears to be trying to kill her. There is non-stop action leading to a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended.

(The following review will be posted on CriminalElement.com the week of publication.)

It’s been almost a year since former Marine Peter Ash’s misadventure in Iceland landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted (see: The Wild One). Since then, he’s been keeping his head down and living simply in Milwaukee with ladylove June Cassidy, just down the street from his old friend Lewis, supporting the former in her investigative reporting and helping the latter with a home repair business.

But trouble always seems to find Peter, and one afternoon when he and Lewis meet up with June for lunch, the three spot a gunman entering a crowded marketplace.


June put a warm hand on Peter’s bare arm. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. She knew who he was, the man the war had made. Wound up and restless and hardwired to make himself useful. She’d seen what that could mean, in moments like this. She still didn’t like it.
She tightened her grip on his arm and picked up her phone. “I’m calling 911. The police will handle it.”
“Great idea,” Peter said. “Lewis and I will just go into the Market and wait for them to show up.”
June looked at him like she could see the marrow of his bones, down to each individual molecule. Down to the werewolf that lived inside of him. Softly, she said, “Can’t it be someone else’s turn? Just this once?”
Peter knew she didn’t mean it, not really. He leaned in, pressed his lips to her freckled cheek, and breathed in her summery smell, the clean athletic tang of fresh sweat combined with some complex, exotic scent he’d never been able to resist and could no longer live without.
“Is that who you want me to be?” he asked. “Someone who doesn’t step up when something bad is about to happen?”


The fallout of Peter’s intervention isn’t at all what the trio expected — turns out the gunman isn’t a mass shooter, and that he had a very particular target in mind. A target with ties to a shadowy government agency Peter and June have already encountered before.

Within hours, a psychotic, axe-wielding hitman is on June’s tail, determined to silence her before she can dig any deeper into the event. At the same time, Peter and Lewis are tracking down the gunman and the target, both dangerous in their own ways, and their hunt leads them into a world of advanced robotics and life-changing technology, old grudges and even older greed.

None of them meant to stumble into this mess, but now the only way out is through. Their lives, Peter’s freedom, and — possibly — the safety of millions is now on the line. The good news: if they’re successful, Peter’s name will be cleared of the false charges…


“Some say honor is an antiquated notion. But our word is all we have in this life. And how we cleave those words to deeds. I believe you understand this. Your actions indicate that you are a man with a profound moral center. You wish to do what is right.”
Peter had to will himself not to pull the trigger then and there. “Asshole, you don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”
Oliver’s eyes were the color of night. “Do you know what a black hole is, Mr. Ash?”
“A collapsed star. A gravity well so powerful that even light can’t escape.”
“Invisible to the naked eye, yet its gravitational field affects everything around it. Like a black hole, Mr. Ash, you reveal yourself through the nature of the events that surround you. And the quality of the people who give you their loyalty.” He glanced at Lewis, then gave Peter a skeletal smile. “I find that loyalty goes both ways, does it not?”
He didn’t need to make the threat explicit. Peter was well aware of the danger his fugitive status posed to June, and to Lewis and Dinah and the boys. The wreck it would make of their lives.
Honor was a sword that cut deep, no matter who swung the blade.


But, as is always the case when Peter does the right thing, there’s going to be an awful lot of blood spilt before the end.

The Breaker is the sixth installment in Nick Petrie’s Peter Ash series, and the PTSD-plagued protagonist continues to impress and delight. Peter may be jaded by his time in Afghanistan, may have plenty of demons thanks to his bad war, but he is not the angsty asshole hero so common to this genre. No, Peter is a solidly decent, quiet, kind man who just happens to be very skilled when it comes to lethal force. He’s good with dogs, he likes to make things with his own hands, he values the small pleasures in life, and he deeply loves June, the woman he met all the way back in book two, Burning Bright; unlike Bond, he has no interest in trading in for a new girlfriend with each adventure.

It’s so dang refreshing to see a hero like Peter — laconic, modest, down-to-earth, lanky and a little plain — in an action-packed setting. He’s plenty manly and capable when the bones start to break, but he’s not the usual testosterone-soaked, wisecracking, muscle-bound lead. And it’s also great to see an ex-military hero struggle realistically with PTSD:


Peter and June went to the market at least once a week. The crowded, noisy environment was a good place for Peter to push the limits of his post-traumatic stress, an acute claustrophobia that was his only souvenir of his many combat deployments overseas. It came from kicking in doors in Fallujah, he figured. All those weeks of fighting house to house, room to room, clearing insurgents one doorway at a time.
He called it the white static, and it didn’t like crowds or enclosed spaces. It began with jangling nerves that sparked up his brainstem like naked electrodes under the skin, calculating firing angles, searching for exits, his fight-or-flight reflex gone into overdrive. When he first mustered out, he could only handle twenty minutes indoors before the static turned into a full-blown panic attack, bad enough to make living outside seem like a good idea. For more than a year, he’d slept alone under the stars or under a rain fly, high above the tree line of one mountain range or another, barely able to manage resupply in small-town grocery stores.
The static had gotten better, until it got much worse, bad enough to make him think seriously about dying. Then it had changed again, and now it lived in his head like a low-grade fever, a heavy hum just below the level of his conscious mind. Until his old combat instincts woke up and the hum revealed itself for what it really was, the deep rumble of a high-performance engine just waiting for someone to step on the gas.


It’s that degree of realism grounding the action that makes the Peter Ash series both believable and so enjoyable. Yes, there are always extremely high stakes — The Breaker is no different, with Peter and Co. racing against a ticking clock to stop dangerous blueprints from spilling onto the internet and a power-hungry millionaire who’s building a metallic army — and often layers of conspiracy at work. But with Peter as our lynchpin, Nick Petrie keeps everything tethered to reality.

Petrie’s solid prose does a lot of heavy lifting, too. He’s a master of unfolding larger-than-life dilemmas in a straightforward fashion, laying out catastrophic possibilities in a truly chilling way, ratcheting the tension up to eleven every time a baddie makes a move. Peter’s capability as a hero is only matched by Petrie’s capability as a writer; you can pick up any one of his novels assured that you’re in for a solid, exciting ride. Six books in, Petrie has yet to disappoint even a little. His plots, his action scenes, and his characters are always deeply satisfying.

Speaking of characters: The Breaker boasts yet another colorful batch of heroes and weirdoes. There’s the 98-year-old nosy neighbor who’s taken a shine to Peter and survives solely on Girl Scout cookies and scotch. Sparks, the technological prodigy whose ideas could reshape the world. A wheelchair bound welder-slash-artist named Kiko. And then there’s Mr. Cheerful, a smiling psychopath with a penchant for blades guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine every time he appears.

Like every installment of the series, The Breaker has a rich cinematic quality to it, with its vivid fight sequences, larger-than-life supporting cast, and likable heroes. Don’t be surprised if a Peter Ash movie or show gets greenlit in the near future; if anyone deserves to be the next Bourne, it’s Ash.

So if you love Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher… If you’re hungry for more action and looking for a solid hero worth rooting for… If you need something to get your blood pumping in all of this cold weather… Look no further. Peter Ash is sure to scratch that itch in a most gratifying way.

The right man in the wrong place—that’s usually the case with Peter Ash. In Nick Petrie’s new book THE BREAKER, we find his lead character lying low in Milwaukee, fixing houses with his friend Lewis, and living with his girlfriend June. But when a trip to the coffee shop ends abruptly when a man armed with a machine gun enters a market, Peter Ash jumps into action. The aftermath impacts his newfound quiet life.

Describing what the book is “about” is an uneasy task for an author who finds inspiration by giving himself assignments.

“For THE BREAKER,” Petrie says, “my assignments were to explore Peter and June’s relationship in more depth, and to explore the modern landscape of technology and the enormous power imbalance that comes with it. The result is a story about ambition and greed, the consequences of unchecked technology, and murder for hire, along with a significant dose of weirdness—I also wanted this book to be pure fun.”

Full article available at the link

Wow.! Non-stop action. This book is every bit as good as his prior books, and they were fantastic. I believe in giving extra credit for creativity, which gave this book more than a five star rating, Good job! Excellent development of subject matter and characters. I will look forward to his next book.

For me, THE BREAKER is the perfect blend of a psychological, military, and techno thriller wrapped into one. On every page the tension is high, the emotions raw, and the action heart pounding.

Peter Ash's unwillingness to be a spectator when he spots a potential mass shooter while on his lunch break sends him hurling down a dangerous path full of bleeding edge tech and national security implications, all with the most perilous threats hitting close to home and to those most important in his life.

NICK PETRIE does a magnificent job of taking a terrifying and realistic look into the future of military tech and the powerful forces looking to control it. Coupled with the sincerity and humor that June and Lewis bring to the mix; die hard fans and those just picking up the Ash series for the first time will be extremely happy.

Like all long standing series, new readers need to be introduced to the main characters, including their idiosyncrasies and unique features. For me personally, it took a little bit of time (only about 10% of the way in) for the main storyline to really get rolling. That being said, once the pieces were all set out on the board... it was lights out the rest of the book.

Definitely go out and preorder this book ASAP!

Reviewed for Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine by Ted Hertel

THE BREAKER by Nick Petrie (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, $27.00, January 2021) Rating: B+

Combat veteran and PTSD sufferer Peter Ash has returned to Milwaukee as a (wrongly accused) fugitive from justice in Iceland. As a result he has been keeping a low profile, along with his lover June Cassidy. But one day, as he, June and their friend Lewis, are sitting in a café, they spot a man with an assault rifle going into the Public Market. The two men follow and are able to chase off the gunman but not before he steals and then discards the phone of another man and shoots up the market’s parking lot. The shooter escapes on a high-powered electric bicycle and the victim also takes off before the cops arrive. June, now working at a local newspaper, writes up the story, leaving Lewis and Peter’s involvement anonymous. But when June is attacked, Peter steps in to protect her (though, frankly, she is pretty good at protecting herself!). Their search for the attacker and the shooter leads them into the high-tech world of corporate espionage, along with a dose of brutal murder, as Peter’s low-profile life blows wide open.

This is the sixth novel in Nick Petrie’s consistently entertaining Peter Ash series. Petrie is an author who avoids writing the same book twice. Where past novels have generally concentrated primarily on Peter and his personal relationships, here Petrie tells the story from many different points of view. While this works well in the context of the tale, it also shifts the spotlight from those personal relationships. Still, the “Gang of Three” comes together at the end to right a variety of wrongs.

Peter’s sense of claustrophobia seems to be diminishing and is not the hindrance it has been earlier. This allows him more freedom of movement indoors. However, it is being replaced to some extent by a sense of fear and concern for June as she is stalked by the killer while Peter is not always able to be with her. But they are not alone. As an added plus for all you fans of Mingus, the one-hundred-fifty pound mutt from The Drifter, he appears here again since Ash is back in Milwaukee. As Peter discovers, he comes in very handy, as well.

The tech industry plays a huge part in the novel. A bit of suspension of disbelief may be required, since some of the technology is borderline speculative, although Petrie does defend this aspect in his Acknowledgements section at the very end of the book. Of course things like this (I can’t comment on what it is without spoiling the story) do become less speculative – and more frightening – every day.

Suffice it to say that the book moves quickly, with lots of the sort of action the reader of the series has come to expect, including a wild ride through the streets of Milwaukee, a cheerful but vicious killer on the loose, plenty of suspense and danger, man (and woman) against machine, a young tech genius (is there any other kind?), and our old friends Peter, June, and Lewis, not to mention Mingus. Who could ask for more?

Petrie is at the top of his game. The thrills in this book will curl your hair! Highly recommended. Super addictive and very well written

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Nick Petrie has has created a very different for series regular Peter Ash in the novel, The Breaker. Unlike the previous stories, this has more of a William Gibson feel with a higher emphasis on future technology and computer crimes and solutions, which Petrie addresses this in his afterward. As a fan of the The Drifter I found it interesting that an author of a popular series chooses to go a different way in both plotting and narrative style, removing the "hero" from the book for chapters at a time. A very good entry in a series I've really enjoyed

Peter Ash and his lady, June, are living in Minneapolis now. June is working at a desk at the local newspaper while she writes a book. They rent a house from Peter's friend, Lewis, who lives down the street with Dinah and her two boys. Peter and Lewis are caught up in a situation at a local crowded public market when a heavily-armed person runs into the market. They follow the UNSUB and see this person take a phone away from another person and then escape on a super-charged electric bike. June recognizes the robbery victim as a former hotshot in Silicon Valley, who sold out and disappeared. Peter is wanted now, both in the US and in Iceland, where he killed some police officers in the course of another crime. June is contacted by her mysterious "friend," Oliver, who promises to get Peter's face off the FBI's most wanted list, if they will work with him to take down Vincent Holloway, who is building some technology that might destroy the world. Turns out this technology was actually stolen from the gunman who tried to kill him earlier. Lots of twists and turns with some interesting technology to ponder. Peter Ash ranks up there with Lucas Davenport and Jack Reacher; these are men who have seen the worst and still want to believe in the best of mankind. Always recommended.

I have loved the Peter Ash series from the beginning but the books individually are inconsistent; they run the gamut from predictable plots to taut, thrilling tales. Frankly, it’s hard to know in advance what is in store when I start a new book from author Nick Petrie. THE BREAKER falls into the predictable plot category mostly because the action revolves too heavily around some stock characters rather than the series’ characters that are far more interesting and engaging. Bad guys that never seem to sustain permanent damage, unbelievably brilliant self-schooled tech wizards that also know weaponry and paranoid schizy billionaires aren’t that interesting any more. The three main characters are, however, very engaging, and in the good series’ books, they hold center stage. I only wish they did in this book as well. For series lovers, this will be one more to add to the collection. I look forward to the next and hope we read more about Peter Ash next time. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.