False Little Idol
The contract was Dev Mehra, Mumbai’s untouchable broker of flesh and terror. I wanted a clean in-and-out. Instead, my employers demanded a spectacle - a brutal, visceral warning delivered to half the world's power players. So here I am, swallowed by the noise and sweat of the festival crowds, leaving a massacre in my wake and wondering if this nightmare was just an entrance exam for a job I should have declined.
- Marin - Professional assassin
- Jane - Marin’s agent
- Dev Mehra - Bollywood producer
- Rebecca Walker - Friend of Aashvi, Marin’s contact
- Aashvi - Runs an Underground Railroad for sex trafficked women
- Eesha - Aashvi’s daughter
- Divya - Eesha’s daughter
- Aanya - One of Dev’s actresses
- Marin is hired to kill Dev Mehra, the head of a sex trafficking ring.
- Eesha was dumped on the street after sex traffickers were done with her.
- The sex traffickers find out about Divya and threaten to kill Aashvi and Eesha if they don’t hand her over.
- Marin and Rebecca arrive at Dev’s Ganesh Chaturthi party.
- Marin, Rebecca, and Aanya lure Dev up to his bedroom.
- They force him to open his safe, then Marin strangles him to death with a garrote.
- The women put Dev in his bathtub and tie a tie around his neck to make it look like erotic asphyxiation gone wrong.
- Rebecca grabs a hard drive from the safe containing dirt on powerful men.
- Back downstairs, all the party guests are dead after being poisoned with ricin by Aanya’s colleagues.
- The women leave and Marin gets orders to travel to Shanghai.
A deadly target is only as interesting as the secrets surrounding them, and Dev Mehra is Marin’s most despicable mark so far. I enjoyed seeing this mission unfold as Marin and her new allies took on someone who had done truly horrible things, and I found his downfall to be very satisfying.
This installment doesn’t add much to Marin’s personal journey, but it delivers another dark and entertaining assignment with the same fast pace and dangerous atmosphere I’ve come to expect from the series. Joan De La Haye keeps the story focused on the mission, the stakes, and the consequences of crossing the wrong people.
If you like assassin thrillers, revenge stories, and dark crime mysteries, then you will enjoy this book.
- Sex trafficking
- Murder
ASIN: B0DGXT64HN
Publication Date: August 13, 2025
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
