After the Rain (Logan)

Sometimes when I read a book that’s part of a series, I get the feeling that I’m dropping into a long-running relationship between the author and his previous readers. For example, I don’t think many people who pick up Reynolds’ Absolution Gap will find that it’s a satisfying read absent the knowledge of what happened in the first two books in that series.
Fortunately, Chuck Logan doesn’t have that problem. In After the Rain, he continues the relationship between his two primary characters from other books. Nina Pryce is a US Army officer and a member of SFOD-Delta (that’s just “Delta” to civilians), and her sometimes-estranged husband, Phil Broker, is an undercover cop. There’s a lot of history between them, or so we understand from their interplay in this book (I haven’t read any of Logan’s earlier books). Pryce is trying to penetrate what appears to be a terrorist plot in– get ready– North Dakota, and when she uses their 7-year-old daughter as an actress, Broker comes to town to pick her up. Of course, Broker ends up involved in the plot, which is reasonably twisty and turny. In the end, the bad guys fail, although not without cost to the good guys.
Logan’s strength in this book is its characterizations. Both Nina and Phil come off as real, multi-dimensional people: parents, lovers, and sheepdogs. Both of them have strengths and flaws in about equal measure, and the tumultuous nature of their relationships makes for some interesting interplay between them. I didn’t think the primary villain was nearly as well-defined, though– he was much more a cardboard bad guy from the psycho-killer bin at Characters-R-Us. The descriptions of the weather and terrain of a North Dakota summer are quite good, too, although not quite on a par with the lyricism of James Lee Burke or the noir of Barry Eisler.
Put it this way: I’ve already reserved Logan’s earlier Nina-and-Phil books from the library. I may or may not read them all, but I’m willing to give them a try.