Just because you think someone is out to get you, doesn’t
mean you’re paranoid. As Condor lowers himself deeper and deeper into his own
mind, he is convinced that he is a target. The highly trained CIA operative is
now reduced to sorting through discarded books and materials deep in the bowels
of the Library of Congress and in those sorting he sees a pattern emerge.
In Last Days of
the Condor James Grady continues the story he started 40 years ago with Six Days of the Condor, which was pared
down 72 hours for the Robert Redford film Three
Days of the Condor. Condor has been deemed a danger to not only himself,
but possibly the country he fought to protect and now struggles to keep a tenuous
grasp on reality through the haze of a shelf full of psychotropic drugs. When
limboed agent charged with keeping track of the Condor’s day to day activities
is found dead and crucified, his hands nailed to the Condor’s fireplace mantle
with kitchen knives, he becomes a moving target.
Utilizing all the skills his aging body will allow and
mustering together resources and people along the way, Condor struggles with
not only the forces arrayed against him, but also his own inner demons to stay
one step ahead. This thriller features a unique author’s voice matched with a
steady, high velocity pace that will keep the pages moving with blinding speed.
Twelve
Days – A John Wells Novel – Alex Berenson (Putnam Books)
The usual suspects are all present and accounted for;
John Wells the former CIA operative, now freelance, his former CIA bosses Ellis
Shafer and Vinnie Duto (now, oddly a Senator from the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.) The clock is ticking, with a seemingly much more realistic
variation of the TV show 24, stretched
out to 288 hours, hence the title Twelve
Days, for the trio to cut through
the false flag plot, and save the United States. Easy, right?
The difficulty for those who (like me) haven’t read the
set up book, Alex Berenson’s The
Counterfeit Agent, you’ll have to wade through a pretty lengthy first
section of the book to be brought up to speed on what’s going on and how we got
here in the first place. It seems out of place to find Wells getting some sleep
at a Washington, DC hotel before charging back out into to a high speed trot
around the globe to muster new details in the race to save the country.
I am a fan of Berenson and the Wells character, but
this one left me wondering if there wasn’t one truly great story hidden in the
midst of, and unnecessarily stretched out over these two books.
Robert
Ludlum’s The Geneva Strategy – A Covert One Novel – Jamie Freveletti (Grand
Central Publishing)
Robert Ludlum was not only a master thriller writer,
but also remained ahead of the cutting edge with the technology and materiel
that his character used in the course of his novels. So it seems perfectly
natural that the ongoing series that he spawned that have been continued by a
group of carefully selected authors would strive to remain on the leading edge
with the storylines they create.
Rapidly advancing drone technology paired with chemical
weapons is a perfect fit for the latest entry in the Covert One series, The Geneva Strategy, penned by Jamie
Freveletti. Once again Jon Smith has to wade through mysteries and pull
together the pieces in a race to save the world.
In one night a seemingly disparate group of high
profile folks suddenly disappear under mysterious circumstances. Smith leaving
a high profile Georgetown gathering for a Chinese biotech guru, recently
smuggled out of that country, is confronted by a group of thugs he logically confuses
with agents from Beijing. Only later does he connect the dots that he may have
been among the list of kidnapping targets.
Now Smith has to track down who is behind the
abductions and recover one of the victims in particular; Nick Rendell, a high
tech wiz who possesses the passwords to seize control of the U. S. Army drone
fleet that could rain terror on targets all over the globe. A strikingly
ambitious plot, delivered with Ludlum flare.
