This book pushes all the buttons for a modern thriller. Rich corporations and evil men pursue profits by degrading the earth. Poor but scrappy yet with impeccable style environmental lawyers chase them through fire and danger.

Yawn.

“No Return” proves that the Jack Strider novels are getting better and better. Author Rob Sangster has been a dedicated lawyer, an intrepid adventurer and a committed bon vivant for decades now, and all steered with an eye to his unerring moral compass.  That background pays off in spades as his alter ego, Jack Strider, takes us diving 70 feet in the frigid Pacific to save a lost diver, takes a business meeting while shooting class III and IV rapids on the Salmon River, runs through deep-wood wilds with hitmen on his trail and swims with the Great White sharks of Wall Street when billions chum the waters. The reader is taken along for the ride with the attention to detail of a Conde Nast guided tour where Anthony Bourdain suggests food parings for each adventure. There’s even a drop of Teeling to tickle the palate. This smorgasbord of thrills-a-minute has something for every adrenaline junkie — provided they’re equipped with Kevlar underwear and something to deal with a bullet-train-paced heart rate.

Jack Strider is a good character on whom to build a story. This standalone is a great place to meet him.