Memorial Day is traditionally a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service, but in Vince Flynn’s newest Mitch Rapp novel (Transfer of Power, The Third Option, Separation of Power, etc.), the peaceful May holiday will include much more than morning parades and afternoon barbecues. Memorial Day is the target date for undercover al-Qaeda operatives in the States to detonate a nuclear bomb in the nation’s capital during a dedication ceremony for the new WWII memorial. Their target: the president, leaders of Great Britain and Russia, and a few hundred thousand ill-fated infidels.

Counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp has one helluva score to settle. A Syracuse University All-American lacrosse player who lost the love of his life in the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack in 1988, Rapp’s thirst for vengeance led him to dedicate his life to fighting terrorism by any means necessary.

Now decades later, Rapp (an amalgam of John Wayne, General George Patton and Dirty Harry) has a potential disaster on his hands. After a clandestine raid on a village on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border nets Rapp some high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders, he learns of a plot to transport a nuclear weapon into the States. But after Rapp takes his shocking findings to his boss, CIA director Irene Kennedy, and later, the president, he finds himself quickly embroiled in political claptrap. As precious hours tick away, self-righteous politicians bicker about how to handle the imminent disaster. Meanwhile, sleeper cells are becoming active and terrorists are converging on Washington, D.C., with a bomb that could turn the nation’s capital into a radioactive wasteland. In usual Mitch Rapp fashion, he takes matters into his own hands.

Flynn’s protagonist is reminiscent of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and Dale Brown’s Patrick McLanahan: all are extremely intelligent, incredibly focused, unwaveringly patriotic loose cannons that readers can’t help but root for. And that essentially describes Memorial Day: a highly intelligent read that is virtually impossible to put down. Paul Goat Allen is a writer in Syracuse, New York.

In the elaborate thriller Labyrinth, two women mysteriously linked across eight centuries take up the quest to find the legendary Holy Grail and guard its secrets against those who would use its power for evil ends. Author Kate Mosse spins an exciting tale of intrigue and peril, with female characters who don’t wait for men to lead. With valor and cunning, they plunge headlong into the eternal search for truth.

First up is Alice Tanner, who makes a surprise find while helping with an archeological dig in the mountains of southwest France near the historic city of Carcassonne. Drawn by an odd sense of familiarity, she discovers a cave with startling contents: two battered skeletons and a ring bearing an arcane design of a labyrinth that matches a larger carving on the cave wall. Next the action moves to Carcassonne in the year 1209, where Ala•s fears for her people as crusaders from northern France approach, ready to wipe out the supposed heresy of the Cathar Christians prevalent in the region. When her father faces service in their defense, he asks her to help protect an ancient grail secret he has sworn to guard. Mosse deftly weaves the two women’s stories together like a medieval tapestry, developing suspense as she moves from one era to the other with exquisitely devised parallels, the well-researched background providing depth and color. She deserves special kudos for her imaginative take on the grail itself. Mosse touches on themes made popular by Dan Brown’s Da Vince Code the grail, the history and legends of France. While Brown bows to history, Mosse immerses her story in it. She has a home in Carcassonne, and her novel shows her intimate familiarity with the ghosts and landscapes of the area. A bestseller in Britain, Labyrinth is Mosse’s third novel, and her first to be published in the U.S. It’s an exciting read, especially for those who love strong female protagonists, history and epic adventure. Janet Fisher writes from southwest Oregon.

Joshua Spanogle’s debut novel will have readers compulsively washing their hands for months. A medical student at Stanford, Spanogle knows his subject, and the result is a chillingly realistic medical thriller with real urgency.

Isolation Ward opens as a mysterious outbreak of hemorrhagic fever strikes a run-down hospital in a decaying Baltimore neighborhood. The early symptoms of the viral infection resemble a bad case of the flu but quickly escalate to something much more horrific and an alarming percentage of those infected are dead within weeks. Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, a hard-charging medical detective from the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control, is called in to investigate. What he uncovers is shocking: all those inflicted with the sickness are mentally handicapped residents from group homes in the area, and all have sexual links with another group home resident, an alleged rapist named Douglas Buchanan. McCormick’s investigatory style, which can best be described as antagonistic, leads him to some surprising clues, but his complete lack of couth gets him pulled from the front lines just as possible leads start surfacing. After being shipped off to California to follow up on a minor loose end, McCormick finds himself right in the middle of a jaw-dropping plot that could save millions of lives and destroy even more.

Readers will have a hard time putting down this incredibly fast-paced novel and will be disturbed by its far-reaching implications, but a minor flaw can be found in its protagonist, the ill-tempered and overly sarcastic McCormick. An unpleasant blend of loud-mouthed brat and insensitive know-it-all, the headstrong character is not always an easy one for readers to identify with. That small criticism aside, Isolation Ward is definitely a medical thriller worth reading. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Camillus, New York.