The Silent Thunder is a decommissioned Russian submarine of a particular model with which Hannah is familiar and fascinated. Some of the crew's belongings are still on board, and she quickly finds herself immersed in their lives on board, especially the captain. Hannah's job is to advise the museum on renovations to be made before the museum becomes open to the public.  To accomplish this, she and her brother Conner, her partner, must take the inside of the sub apart a piece at a time, inspect it, and then make their reports and recommendations.

Early in the project, Conner discovers three plates inside a wall, marked with strange ("chicken scratch") markings. When Hannah makes a quick trip to their van to bring in a stronger flash, all hell breaks loose.  She is clubbed over the head and thrown into the waters.  When she comes to amidst a frenzy of military and intelligence types, her brother has been brutally assassinated and her world has been thrown into upheaval.

Forced into a partnership with a mysterious Russian known at the moment as Kirov, Hannah embarks on a dangerous journey to find and punish the man responsible for Conner's death. Kirov is a man of many secrets, but he immediately lets Hannah know that he will bend over backwards to keep her near him so he can use her and her photographic memory as bait. Despite his motives, Kirov seems to be reasonably honorable, despite what the CIA and Conner's widow keep telling Hannah. Kirov's other motives, however remain in the shadows, and it's a great many pages into the novel before Hannah develops a clear concept of why Kirov is so involved with the past, present, and future of the Silent Thunder.

If the first sixty-five pages of Silent Thunder had been condensed into, say fifteen or twenty, it would have been a page-turner. It still wouldn't have had good dialogue, but it would have kept the reader involved. I started it three times before I could get engaged, and I still never got very attached to any of the characters. Kirov, probably the most enigmatic of all the characters, is the most endearing, and it was for him that I kept reading. In fact, reading a book that doesn't drown you in the gory details of a characters feelings and history can be refreshing. However, Silent Thunder goes a little too light on the description and keeps its characters far too shallow to balance its somewhat complicated plot. The villain never is brought into the light, and he had a potential that ranked right up their with Kirov's.

The plot does move right along once you get past the mire of the first handful of chapters, but stilted language and lack of chemistry hold up most of the character development. Keep your brain limber, though; Iris and Roy Johansen weren't playing around when they sat down together to right an espionage thriller.

--Sarrah Knight