Next Level Terrorism

The Third Target – Joel C. Rosenberg – (Tyndale House Publishing)

Joel Rosenberg burst on to the fiction scene over a dozen years ago with his book The Last Jihad which combined a startling mix of ripped from today’s headlines with a dash of Nostradamus-like prognostication on the future direction of terrorism in a post-9/11 world.

Since that point Rosenberg has displayed an almost uncanny ability to hang out on the cutting edge of fact-based, real world, fictional tales. When you ponder the average timeline from final edits to the bookshelf, Rosenberg’s latest, The Third Target and its ISIL (or ISIS if you prefer) based storyline, once again proves he has his finger squarely on the pulse of Middle East tensions.

Rosenberg ratchets up the tension when he posits the terror inducing thought that ISIL terrorists in Syria have stumbled upon a cache of chemical weapons and are planning to put them to use; the targets are obvious, the question that remains is where and when.

Fictional, New York Times correspondent J B Collins gets wind of the chemical coup and gets flung headlong into the story as he tries to track down the details from disparate sources and even from the terrorists themselves. Rosenberg’s hallmarks are all in place with solid pacing, plenty of twists and turns and believable characters all around.

No Fortunate Son – A Pike Logan Thriller - Brad Taylor – (Dutton Books)

John Fogerty and Credence Clearwater Revival dropped the term “fortunate son” into the popular lexicon with the anti-war anthem of the same name in 1969; which featured Fogerty growling the line “I ain’t no Senator’s son.” Despite the double negative, the implication is that the offspring of the elites were not the one tapped to serve in the military.

It is those offspring that are the centerpiece of Brad Taylor’s new Pike Logan thriller; No Fortunate Son. The children and relatives of high ranking administration and elected officials are suddenly coming up missing; disappearing from their jobs and taskings at U.S. military outposts at far flung places around the world.

The race and the hunt is on to not only discover who is behind the kidnappings, but also to save lives. False flag fingers are pointed in the direction of Middle Eastern terror types, but are they really behind the plot to bring the U.S. government to its proverbial knees?

This plotline throws Logan and the Task Force team into uncharted waters as they move from hunting down bad guys to take out and move into the world of police investigation and what it takes to hunt down a different kind of bad guy. Taylor’s background as a special forces operator is diametrically opposite of this kind of work, but he handles it all with his usual aplomb and dispatches yet another winning entry in this series.

Rain On The Dead – Jack Higgins (Putnam Books)

Jack Higgins remains a true master when it comes to delivering an international thriller. His latest outing Rain on the Dead, features a cast familiar characters; spies and assorted ruffians, converts to the cause of good triumphing over evil.

It is those usual suspects and the predictable nature of their always in the right place at the right time to deliver forceful action with often stunning speed and agility that may be the downfall of this book. While I am certainly not  prudish about the use of violence in a storyline, the simple fact that many of Higgins characters could easily qualify for government funded retirement benefits that make the speed and accuracy that the force is delivered with a bit hard to believe at times.

The old master may have visited the well of reformed IRA shooter Sean Dillon and friend one too many times. While still an entertaining yarn, you’ve got to wonder how much this gang has left in the tank.

 

The Closing Shots – Wrapping Summer Reads 2014

Bravo – Greg Rucka – (Muhlholland Books)

Author Greg Rucka has quietly built a collection of highly entertaining characters that span a whole pile of great books, that for some reason I can’t quite explain have flown under the radar.

His latest entry, Bravo, featuring tough guy, shooter, Jad Bell runs at a breakneck pace, weaving mysterious players who drive the story while hanging around the edges of the action and the hunt for answers to prevent a terrorist attack on the homefront. This follow up to Rucka’s first shot of the Jad Bell character, Alpha has me re-considering my list of favorite authors to make room for this highly skilled writer.

On Scope – A Sniper Novel – Jack Coughlin, USMC Retired (St. Martins Press)

Spain, like much of the free world, is teetering in the brink of economic collapse, when a group of Islamic bankers offer up a seemingly no strings attached solution. Their hidden agenda is to break off a chunk of the European Union to create a new Islamic stronghold. In an effort to protect their interests and hold off United States sticking their nose into things, these Islamists launch a brazen attack on the U. S. embassy in Madrid.

The plan backfires and brings the group of six Islamic bankers squarely into the sites of Task Force Trident and ace sniper Kyle Swanson. In On Scope from author Jack Coughlin, the latest entry in the ongoing Sniper Novel series, Swanson and company take the fight directly to the terrorists, picking off the bad guys one by one. Given the world economic climate and the terrorist’s desire to find new ways to bring the world to its knees, this story chillingly all to real.   

Days of Rage -Brad Taylor (Dutton Books)

Former Delta Force operator/commander Brad Taylor continues his string of successfully calling the shots when it comes to new terrorist threats in his latest entry in the Pike Logan thriller series, Days of Rage. When you consider the average timeline for writing and publishing novels, Taylor would have had to put words on the page about a year prior to the average person ever even hearing of the terror group Boko Haram, who have been making headlines the past couple of months.

But, that’s exactly what he has done; preemptively offering up an advance warning of this new threat. The fact that Taylor also choose to heat up the cold war, with the Russians using the Boko Haram terrorists as a proxy to launch a weapon of mass destruction attack on the United States and you’ve got to wonder what else Taylor has up his sleeve.

While Logan and the rest of the Taskforce team are used to playing the role of the hunter, this time around not only do they have to put a stop to the attack, but they also find themselves facing a challenge that has them squarely in the sights of a hunter. High entertainment at a blistering pace.

Summer’s Last Gasp – Beach Read Bonus Time

Jeff Abbott – Downfall  (Grand Central)

Brad Taylor – The Widow’s Strike: A Pike Logan Thriller (Dutton)

David Ellis – The Last Alibi (Putnam)

As the pigskin starts to fly and the sun sets a little earlier each day, the fall season looms large and summer wind’s down to its last gasp, there is still a chance to snag some quality beach read time with a set of ongoing, character driven thrillers.

Jeff Abbott roles out the latest in his Sam Capra series, Downfall that finds the former CIA operative turned high end bar owner continuing to try to balance fatherhood, business and working for the mysterious, shadowy group of rich powerbrokers known as the Round Table.

As usual Capra seems to find himself at a crossroads of either being in the wrong place at the wrong time or being in the right place at the right time, depending on your perspective. He ends up in the middle of high stakes action that gets rolling with a high profile PR executive who is a Mom caught squarely between a rock and a hard place. Capra is a great mix of highly trained operative and American Ninja Warrior contestant as he puts his high flying parkour, free running skills to use.

The action is always front and center, but doesn’t dominate the storyline’s steady drumbeat pacing.

Brad Taylor makes no makes no bones about the fact that his stories are character driven, putting his lead Pike Logan front and center in the title of his latest; The Widow’s Strike: A Pike Logan Thriller. Like all good thriller writers, Taylor puts the tinge of ripped from today’s headlines fear in the plot of his story.

With recent chatter about implantable bombs being developed by terrorists in an attempt to get them past screening devices; it certainly makes scary sense that someone might try to develop human bio-weapon bombs. Just imagine walking human delivery systems that could deposit their deadly strike with a simple cough or sneeze on public transport.

Imagine no further…because Taylor has already done the work for us. In the pursuit of a vaccine for a deadly strain of bird flu, a rogue pharmaceutical company discovers that inoculated women can survive the virus, but become carriers for the deadly strain. Despite mothballing the procedure, one deadly sample survived and the race is on to try to prevent a deadly plague from wrecking havoc.

David Ellis is one of a stable of author’s who work with the mega-bestselling machine known as James Patterson and he is back with another installment in the Jason Kolarich legal thriller series, The Last Alibi. Ellis once again display’s the masterful ability to deliver twists and turns in the plot with more than a few unexpected plot threads along the way.

A legal eagle who has worked both sides of the courtroom aisle, this time out Kolarich finds himself in the unexpected location of being in the defendants chair, accused of murder. Sure it’s a setup…the question becomes how does extract himself from this precarious perch. The answer will have you gripping the edge of your chosen seating arrangement for the end of summer.

What Makes a Thriller Great

While often disparaged by those who claim to be of a higher mind as not being great literature (insert your best Downton Abbey accent here) the thriller holds a special place in the hearts of readers everywhere.

There are a handful of prerequisites that separate great thrillers from the average. First a great thriller will drop you into the action right from the very first page; while some think Stephen King writes thrillers, this guy will bury you in 400 pages of background, before he hits you with the action. Get me in the grip of the story right away, or lose me!

Second, while a thriller needs intensity, what really makes it great is tension! It’s the knife edge, the whats around the next corner, the will the hero get caught that drives great thrillers. And last, but certainly not least, a thriller needs to finish strong. You’ve succeeded in dragging me through the twists and turns of a great ride, but then you finish with a slap down or a lame shoot out to end things?! NO! You need to make the action carry right to the last page.

Three recent entries in the thriller sweepstakes hit the mark to varying degrees of success:

Brad Taylor is back with another installment in the Pike Logan series; Enemy of Mine which is chock full of been there done that, insider knowledge. With Pike Logan, Taylor is poised to join the elite class of thriller writers that include Vince Flynn and Brad Thor.

Taylor jumpstarts the action from the get go and ratchets up the intensity as he puts the covert force known as the Taskforce through its paces. The real world believable plot of a terrorist attempt on a U.S. envoy sent to solidify an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord has a ripped from the headlines feel.

While it may not be what is traditionally considered to be a thriller, Lawrence Block’s hit man for hire, Keller is back in Hit Me. While considered a master of mystery, with Keller, Block clearly steps away from the whodunit style with a unique and intriguing character.

Everybody’s favorite philatelist (stamp collector) has retired from the murder for hire game and has migrated from New York City south to New Orleans. Add to the mix a new name, a wife, a new kid and a new career as a home remodeler/flipper in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

But, like seemingly everybody else, Keller’s new life gets impacted by the economic downturn and suddenly he is thrust back into the world he thought he left behind. While comfortable, Keller does want to dip into his cash reserves, so when the phones rings and the ever-present contractor Dot offers up work in his former profession, Keller needless to say takes the job.

Block is a master of tension, mixing Keller benign hobby smoothly with his menacing career. The stakes seem higher for Keller as he walks the fine line between his new life and his old. You may end doing a double take when you realize that Block has caught you up in the web so tightly that you are rooting for a man who commits murder for money.

While comparisons to Dan Brown may be a blessing and a curse, TV personality and critic Linda Stasi’s initial foray into fiction, The Sixth Station has all of the elements and alchemy of thriller gold; terrorism, international intrigue and even the very real possibility that someone has utilized religious artifacts to clone Jesus in an otherworld style Second Coming.

Stasi’s wise-cracking, feisty, reporter Alessandra Russo sets the table quickly, when she is seemingly randomly picked from a crowd gathered for the international U.N. tribunal for alleged  terrorist Demiel ben Yusef, and she is on the receiving end of a kiss from ben Yusef that sets the wheels in motion on a global conspiracy.

Is ben Yusef the cloned Son of the Son or the murderous terrorist, who stands accused of killing tens of thousands. The race is on as Russo fends of villains of every stripe in an end of days chase for answers. Stasi does a nice job of balancing religious history and mystery with a tension filled style. The problem is as the story builds and grows to epic proportions that the ending seems to be a letdown. The whats next ending seems to have set the table for a sequel/ follow up to continue the tale.