A downsized accountant in Minneapolis with an expensive house and lifestyle leveraged to the hilt takes up bank robbing. Fumbling and fearful at first, Carter Tomlin soon gets a taste for it, savoring his new power to terrorize.

Owen Laukkanen's "Criminal Enterprise" brings back the unlikely enforcement duo of FBI special agent Carla Windermere and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Kirk Stevens, first introduced in the author's acclaimed debut, "The Professionals." Windermere, an extremely driven agent in her early 30s, and Stevens, an amiable family man who's a decade older, solved a headline-grabbing case in that novel.

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'Criminal Enterprise'

By Owen Laukkanen.

Putnam, 416 pp., $26.95.

Author appearance

Owen Laukkanen will discuss and sign "Criminal Enterprise," 6:30 p.m. Friday, Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet; 713-524-8597, or toll free 888-424-2842, or murderbooks.com.

While the quasi-sexual/romantic tension between Windermere and Stevens isn't that convincing, the two characters are well-realized figures, more than capable of powering the story forward. Soon Tomlin, who has hooked up with the punkish Tricia and her boyfriend on the bank jobs, begins broadening his targets. Aware of forces tightening around him, he wants to score big and get out of town.

Nipping back and forth between increasingly crazed criminals and frustrated agents, FBI infighting, family life with exasperating teenagers, and a handful of ancillary plots/investigations, Laukkanen keeps the tension high. Although events pile on at the end (multiple near identical armored car robberies? a shootout at the Mall of America?), and Tomlin morphs into a homicidal maniac with a personal grudge against Stevens, this is a suspenseful ride.

P.G. Koch reviews mysteries for the Chronicle.