Passenger 19 (Jammer Davis #3)

Passenger 19 (Jammer Davis, #3) by Ward Larsen
Series: Jammer Davis #3
Published by Oceanview Publishing on January 5th 2016
Genres: Action Thriller, Thriller
Pages: 368
Format: eBook, Kindle Book
Source: NetGalley & Oceanview Publishing

Jammer Davis has spent most of his life investigating aircraft accidents. When a small regional jet disappears over the jungles of Colombia, it is a tragedy like dozens of others he has seen…but for one terrible detail—his young daughter, who was enroute to a semester abroad in South America, is listed on the passenger manifest.
A distraught Davis rushes to Bogotá and bulls his way into the inquiry. When the wreckage is located, it becomes clear the crash was unsurvivable. As the investigation gains momentum, the facts go astray. Two pilots had been shot before the crash, along with one passenger. The possibility of a hijacking looms large as the search begins to focus on two passengers who boarded the plane, yet their remains cannot be found.
Davis uncovers an even more sinister plot behind the entire disaster—one that goes to the highest levels of the United States government. But how could it possibly involve his daughter?

**Special thanks to NetGalley & Oceanview Publishing for supplying my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.**

Passenger 19 has been my first read in 2016. I came to this book without reading any previous work for the author. I wanted to discover a book on my own without being led by the bestsellers charts. I even didn’t read the blurb to make sure I got all the suspense. And to tell the truth, it’s quite thrilling to discover a good book on your own. This has been quite an interesting thrill. It caught my interest right from the start.

Jammer Davis, having a great experience in Air Force is now an expert in investigating aircraft accidents. He is assigned by his boss (and good trusted friend) to investigate the disappearance of a regional jet in Colombia. Shocked to know that his daughter was one of the passengers on this jet, he rushes to Bogota to find out what has really happened. With two passengers missing, he is torn between the hope that his daughter might still be alive, and the despair that he won’t see her again.
In a series of events, he realizes that there is something more to this investigation. The Colombian police are interfering and things are not going as they should. More to that he feels he is being monitored.
As the plot unfolds, there is a major twist, a huge secret that someone is willing to do his best to keep it hidden.

From a reader’s perspective: Passenger 19 is a fast paced action thriller with a mystery in its folds. The choice of the location – Colombia – by the author was very successful. It added to the darkness of the situation being alone, desperate and away from his own country in a land where the rules Davis is used to did not apply any more. It’s also well written. I loved Ward’s storytelling style.
Having said that, the thriller still missed a star from my point of view. Some parts had excess use of technical aircraft terms. I guess the reason for this was that the author himself is an expert in this field. He just felt it goes without saying. However, to a nontechnical reader in this field this was a distraction. Luckily it wasn’t a major one. I just managed to go on. Also, though the thriller was really interesting it just had the common building blocks of the usual action thriller: the experienced ex-military, the missing girls, and the hidden secret.

Finally, I recommend this book for readers who are interested in action thrillers. It’s interesting, fast paced and well written.