Responsibility for others awaits us outside of Eden.

"Eden in Winter" is the final book in the trilogy of the Blaine family, written by Richard North Patterson. It's a fast moving novel with lots of action. The story begins as the family attends an inquest about the cause of death of novelist, Ben Blaine.

Ben's body was found at the bottom of a cliff. The question is if he fell or committed suicide since he was terminally ill with cancer, or, was he murdered since he had recently rewritten his will leaving the bulk of his estate to his mistress, Carla, and leaving his wife, Clarice and his sons with nothing.

Adam Blaine is the central character. He's an undercover agent with the CIA.  Officials want his help with the inquiry but his first loyalty is to his family.

He's a strongly moral character and this is demonstrated in the compassion he shows with his translator and other men on a mission in Afghanistan. It is also seen with his relationship with Carla. His relationship with Carla becomes closer during the course of the story. He realizes that Carla is defenseless like a deer in the forest.

Carla is another character whose development is finely tuned. She's more than just Adam's father's mistress. She tells Adam about her troubled childhood with her father's abuse to her mother. She would try to defend her mother but it didn't help. Acting was how she escaped this life but she did fall into dependency on alcohol and drugs.

It seemed that Adam became a father figure and substitute emotional giver to Carla. The reader witnesses this development in their emails back and forth from Afghanistan to Martha's Vineyard.

The relationship between Adam and Carla carry the story. He wants to protect her and asks his brother to look after her when he (Adam) goes overseas to Afghanistan.

I enjoyed the action and the flow of the story from war torned Afghanistan to vacation land Martha's Vineyard.

I received this book in return for my honest review.