Alan Lawson is former Special Forces, former CIA special operations. He left the CIA, disillusioned with what he’d seen there, and returned to his home of Arlington Texas. As Julius Taven’s Darker Than Blonde begins, he’s driving for a ride share service, still struggling with PTSD.

One night he gets a big fare, a pick-up out on a remote ranch. But when he arrives, nobody seems to be around. After waiting several minutes, he starts to leave, and then his fare shows up out of the night – a striking blonde woman. The address where he delivers her happens to be an apartment building where he himself used to live.

And when he gets home and cleans his car out, he finds a money clip holding several thousand dollars. The initials on the clip do not match any of his fares that day. He decides to keep it.

Soon after, the police pick him up for questioning. Turns out they found a man murdered in the ranch house where he made the pick-up, and no trace can be found of the woman he says he drove. The murder victim had the same initials as were on the money clip – but fortunately Alan has hidden it.

Alan knows he’s been set up, but he has resources of his own. He calls his friend Derick, who’s both a skilled fighter and a computer expert. They’ll discover a convoluted and ruthless plot, with millions of dollars of gold at stake – when he’s not avoiding his old CIA boss, who’s trying to re-enlist him, by any means necessary, regardless of the monetary or human cost.

It appears that Darker Than Blonde is Julius Taven’s first published novel, and I must say it’s a very impressive performance. The writing was good (except for the fact that he doesn’t know how to spell “sergeant”), the characters were vivid, and I was fascinated by the story. It was taut and suspenseful. The plot was admittedly convoluted, and it was hard to keep it straight at times. Also, there were a whole lot of characters, so many that I forgot about some of them before they reappeared later on.

I bought this book in part because the title seemed to harken back to John D. MacDonald. Darker Than Blonde isn’t much like a MacDonald novel, but it’s very good in its own way. It seems to be the first installment in a series, and I look forward very much to seeing more.

Cautions for language and violence. A few references to prayer are made, and are respectful.