Solitaire is a political thriller with a strong espionage pulse, and it opens by dropping us straight into a public shooting in Times Square that turns a mayoral campaign into a conspiracy story about surveillance, synthetic identities, and power hiding behind official systems. At the center are Grace Delgado, a relentless New York journalist, and Michael Sloane, a ghostlike operator tied to the Ace of Spades and a trail of old secrets, as they circle the murder of Deputy Mayor Robert Caldwell and the shadow network called KATSAI. What starts as a city corruption story grows into something broader and darker, with fake donors, weaponized tech, and a private apparatus trying to bend politics into obedience.

I really enjoyed the book’s momentum. Author Bill Pepitone writes like someone who knows how institutions sound from the inside, and that gives the novel a kind of hard floor under its feet. The scenes in City Hall, the FBI office, and the street-level New York moments have a lived-in feel that kept me leaning forward. I also liked that the book doesn’t pretend its people are clean heroes. Grace is stubborn, emotional, and smart in a way that gets her into trouble. Sloane is built like myth, but the book keeps trying to press bruises under the myth, especially in the quieter moments when his control slips. The dialogue can sometimes feel like everyone has a comeback in the chamber, but even then, the energy carries it.

I found the author’s choices around KATSAI and the fake donor machinery especially interesting because the book isn’t just chasing thrills for their own sake. It’s clearly interested in what happens when surveillance stops being a tool and starts becoming a nervous system for power. That idea lands. The novel’s best move, for me, is that it keeps tying giant systems back to private fear: Caldwell hiding a drive behind a picture frame, Shaw collapsing under pressure, Grace realizing too late that information itself can act like a flare in the dark. There is a pulp sheen to some of it, sure, and Sloane sometimes feels almost too competent, but that is also part of the book’s genre DNA. This is an espionage thriller fiction that wants to be sleek, tense, and a little larger than life, while still keeping one foot in recognizable political rot.

I came away feeling that Solitaire knows exactly what shelf it wants to sit on. It’s the kind of book I would recommend to readers who like conspiracy-driven thrillers, cat-and-mouse espionage, and stories where modern tech and old-fashioned power games collide in the same room. If you enjoy fast, cinematic fiction with a political edge, a wounded central duo, and a hero who moves through the world like a rumor with a passport, this will be very much your thing.

Pages: 259 | ISBN : 9781105802713