One Rough Man: A Pike Logan Thriller Review

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(More customer reviews)I am always intimidated to write book reviews simply because others before me sound like they are writing their thesis but One Rough Man deserves my time and energy on a review. I am more of an Emily Giffin kind of girl so this is my first fiction thriller novel. I heard Brad Taylor on a radio interview in Chicago and found him not only incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable about his content but I could also tell that he has a keen sense of humor. He was light hearted in a professional sort of way. That being said, I saw his book at the airport, bought it and then couldn't put it down. It's just really a good read. I don't have a thesaurus on hand to embellish my thoughts so just go with the fact that it's a darn good story that moves fast and keeps you entrenched with a lot of good details. Brad really has a knack with the details, especially when describing the bad guys which, as Americans, we all want a better idea about. Since he knows a thing or two about real bad guys, this makes the book all the more enjoyable. As I read it I pictured the author experiencing similar situations with similar people because, well, he actually has. Oh, and I also found little pieces of his humor in the book as well (something tells me that Brad once threw eggs at the principal's house too). I would really enjoy attending a lecture hosted by Mr. Taylor. I bet he is really, really captivating in person. This girlie girl is now a full fledged thriller fan. Thanks for the read Brad! When does book II come out? I am DYING for Pike and Jennifer to hook up!

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Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, move over: introducing a pulse-pounding new international thriller series by a former Delta Force commander. They call it the Taskforce. Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability. Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. And Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

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Metzger's Dog: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Metger's Dog is one of the finest novels I have read in quite a while -- and working in publishing (don't hold it against me) I see hundreds a year. There are moments in this narrative, many moments, when the reader realizes he has placed his or her attention in expert hands. Humor and seriousness are expertly blended. Perry is a subtle observer of people and of life. The character of Chinese Gordon is revealed only on the very last pages of the book ( and never fully), and rarely have I seen such judicious treatment of a CIA type as with Perry's creation of the character Porterfield. Good and evil are carefully intertwined in this text -- all of the characters trouble these moral boundaries. Even Gravirjas (sp?), a drug boss, is admirable in his assessment of circumstances, in his reasoning and objectivity given the life he leads, the hand he holds. His fatal mistake would have been impossible for him to grasp ahead of time -- circumstances just got way beyond what he knew.
In fact, only Poterfield and Chinese Gordon, the two main characters, are up to the chess board in this plot. And like two generals from opposing armies, they walk away respecting each other, though perhaps not equally.
The name "Metzger's Dog" is a metaphor -- the dog in the novel, a vicious animal, has been salvaged from a junkyard and tamed. At the end of the novel, this dog is given the name Porterfield.
In this story it is ultimately the CIA that has been tamed. The details of how this is achieved hold up to any test for authenticity.

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The much-loved comic thriller by the author of the Edgar Award–winning The Butcher's Boy is now, by popular demand, back in print, featuring a new Introduction by bestselling author Carl Hiaasen.When Leroy "Chinese" Gordon breaks into a professor's lab at the University of Los Angeles, he's after some pharmaceutical cocaine, worth plenty of money. Instead, he finds the papers the professor has compiled for the CIA, which include a blueprint for throwing a large city into chaos. But how is the CIA to be persuaded to pay a suitable ransom, unless of course someone actually uses the plan to throw a large city into chaos—Los Angeles, for instance? Assigned to cope with the crisis and restore the peace, veteran agent Ben Porterfield steps onto the scene to remind us that the CIA's middle name is, after all, Intelligence. Enlivening the mix are Gordon's beautiful girlfriend, Margaret, his temperamental cat, Dr. Henry Metzger, and Metzger's friend, an enormous half-wild dog with huge teeth.

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Live Free or Die (Troy Rising) Review

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(More customer reviews)Live Free or Die starts as a First Contact story. An alien race visits our solar system and "builds" a Gate for interstellar travel to and from our system to other Gates in the galaxy. The captain of the ship informs us that alien races, both friendly and hostile, can now travel to and from Earth using the Gate. The action starts during the subsequent five years when first a "friendly" race (the Glatun), engaged in interstellar commerce, arrives using the Gate. They are followed a few years later by a more predatory race, the Horvath, who use trade the same way the Mafia uses a protection racket. They destroy three cities, Mexico City, Shanghai and Cairo, to demonstrate how mean they are and then demand all of the stocks of Earth's heavy precious metals, mainly gold and platinum, as payment for the Horvath "protecting" Earth from hostile aliens.
Enter our hero, Tyler Vernon, who is struggling to survive in New Hampshire amidst the worldwide depression caused by the Horvath stealing Earth's precious metals. Tyler is an entrepreneur and seizes the opportunity when he meets a Glatun free trader at an SF convention. Just asking the question, "What could he sell the Glatun that would be valuable to an advanced alien race?" starts something big for him. How big was determined by a second question, "How could he become the indispensable source for that export item?"
As anyone who has traveled to New Hampshire knows, the motto for the State is "Live Free or Die." It's on every license plate. Tyler and a bunch of his neighbors take that philosophy seriously. What starts out as a commercial venture eventually turns into the war for Terran independence from the Horvath and Tyler Vernon leads the fight as the richest man on Earth from trade with the Glatun. How he manages to drive the Horvath from our solar system while saving Earth is a great start to multi-volume epic story. Don't worry, there is no cliff-hanger at the end to ruin the pleasure of an uplifting novel of human courage and ingenuity.
Ringo is writing SF the old fashioned way on a grand scale. The book harkens back to the best science fiction of the 1950's and 1960's. There is no ambiguity about who are the good guys in this story.
Live Free or Die cannot be pigeon-holed as a space opera. First, the book is about the importance of one indispensable man. Tyler Veron solves the practical economics of humans leap-frogging from NASA era technology to star-travel. If I tell you how it would be a plot spoiler, but it's great. The emphasis on the indomitable human spirit give a realism to this novel. Some things we must do or die trying. Second, Ringo cares about getting the science right, especially in how humans would exploit the raw materials of the inner solar system to build a space-faring civilization.
Historians in academia these days treat the great man theory of history with great distaste. So the fact that Charles Martel led the Frankish forces to victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 to stop the Islamic conquest of Europe is not supposed to be important for today's history students. Similarly, a student should not hold his breath waiting for a lecture on King John III of Poland ("John Sobieski") breaking the Siege of Vienna on September 12,1683 against a huge Turkish army. Sobieski was the acknowledged military genius of his age. He had a career of military victories that were the impetus for his being elected King of Poland. His leadership ended the threat of a Turkish military conquest of Europe.
The lessons we used to obtain from history are now being taught in the pages of science fiction novels.

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The Templar Cross Review

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(More customer reviews)In this excellent sequel to The Sword of the Templars, Paul Christopher weaves past and present into a seamless whole. West Point professor John Holliday finds that he can't let his military skills go into retirement. When Holliday's only surviving relative and niece is kidnapped on an archaeological dig, the retired Army Ranger and her fiance are determined to find her. And people end up dying all around them. The chase takes this intrepid duo from North America to Europe to Africa and they travel in the rough on a buckboard of a desert vehicle, as well as in style - the Orient Express. Christopher's sense of pacing, exciting plots, and character development are exceptional.
Paul Christopher is well worth the read. You won't regret picking up this book. It makes the sky miles go by very quickly!

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From the USA Today Bestselling author of The Sword of the Templars and The Aztec Heresy Some secrets are too great to bear... Retired Army Ranger Lt. Col. John Holliday has reluctantly settled into his teaching position at West Point when young Israeli archaeologist Rafi Wanounou comes to him with desperate news. Holliday's niece-and Rafi's fiancé-Peggy has been kidnapped. Holliday sets out with Rafi to find the only family he has left. But their search for Peggy will lead them to a trail of clues that spans across the globe, and into the heart of a conspiracy involving an ancient Egyptian legend and the darkest secrets of the Order of Templar Knights. Secrets that, once known, cannot be survived...

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Ghost Country Review

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(More customer reviews)Warning: Ghost country is among a handful of the most addictive, page-turning thrillers I've ever encountered. If you have any plans for the next day or so, you should seriously reconsider whether you want to lift the cover of this thing.
Patrick Lee hooks you from the get-go with a gut-wrenching action sequence in which a motorcade exiting Washington, D.C. is ambushed with deadly force for the purpose of seizing a mysterious artifact that had just been demonstrated to the U.S President. For those of you who (unlike me) have read Patrick Lee's first novel, The Breach, you will soon be re-introduced to the artifact's guardian, Paige Campbell, and realize that it's one of many mind-blowingly high-tech objects called entities that a highly-classified organization known as Tangent has recovered from the Breach -- a mysterious portal to another time or world. But even if you are coming into Ghost Country cold, you'll quickly get the gist of the dilemma Paige faces as her assailants close in on her and the entity: How, in a one minute phone message, can she leave instructions to someone whom she can trust to locate a companion copy of the entity, figure out how to use it, and save Paige and the world from the doomsday scenario that the sitting U.S. President and other high ranking officials are trying to perpetrate?
Enter Travis Chase, Paige's former lover who has renounced his affiliation with Tangent and Paige for a life of quiet obscurity. After locating the companion copy of the entity and figuring out that it has the power to punch open a window 73 years into the future, Travis sets off to rescue Paige and thwart the Government's frightening plot to create a future of unimaginable horror.
As I flew through this novel, I felt the same rush I get from a well-made blockbuster movie. Scenes leap off the page, cat-and-mouse action sequences propel the plot forward with urgency, and the stakes for Travis and Paige become every bit as dire as those for our civilization at large. And somehow, Lee manages all this without resorting to cardboard characters, unrealistic plot turns, or implausibility not otherwise explained by the high technology and time travel at work. Even the villains are portrayed as complex individuals who believe they are acting in humankind's best interests, all the while plotting the destruction of civilization as we know it.
After finally catching my breath from the final sequence, I was curious what sort of author could have pulled together the best elements of sci-fi classics like the Terminator and the X-Files, with the insider knowledge of Washington, D.C. you expect to see in a David Baldacci novel. According to Patrick Lee's Website, he began his writing career as a Hollywood screenwriter. If making action movies is still his dream, Ghost Country may be his ticket.
-Kevin Joseph, author of The Champion Maker


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The Jungle (The Oregon Files) Review

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(More customer reviews)We last saw Chairman of the Board Juan Cabrillo in "The Silent Sea" (3/10), as he was trekking across the frozen wastes of the antarctic. He had become separated from the crew of the "Oregon" and believed dead. The Chairman and his motley crew are all together again in the latest collaboration from Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul.
"The Jungle" begins with one of the better Prologues of a Cussler novel in some time. Set in Eastern China, 1281 A.D. We are eyewitnesses to the battle tactics of General Khenbish, who is in the employ of the great Khan. We learn the history of the three tents that precede each battle; and the first known uses of lasers and dynamite on the battlefield. A walled village is obliterated because its leader dared to provoke the wrath of Khan. It is the independent observer who accompanies Khenbish that is the real surprise at the end of the opening chapter.
The story leaps from the past into the present, just four months ago. The tendrils that connect the two begin to reveal themselves; and the adventure begins.
The summary of "The Jungle" alludes to their many types: real, imagined, physical, and politcal. Readers will enjoy finding their way through all of them. It's easy to see why the "Oregon" files have eclipsed the Dirk Pitt series. The writing here is far superior to what the two Cusslers are generating together. A hat tip to Upton Sinclair, whose book inspired the title.

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The Other Daughter Review

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(More customer reviews)Well, it's not a horror story written in the Stephen King or Dean Koontz genre, but it's horrorifying enough to keep you up at night!
Melanie Stokes was adopted by the Stokes family at the age of nine, when she was discovered in the emergency room abandoned by her parents and suffering amnesia. She grows up in the family loved by her parents and brother ~~ till a Texan reporter contacts her to share with her the mystery of her past. And that's when Lisa Gardner grabs you by the hand and takes you down a lane filled with secrets that will explode when Melanie stumbles on secrets her family has been keeping from her for 20 years.
Lisa writes such a riveting suspenseful book!! Just when you think you got the murderer figured out, she takes you out for another spin on the theory idea and you're lost again. Then she takes you down other possibilities and you're on the run again. She writes with such twists and turns that you cannot put the book down.
If you're in the mood for mind games, this book is it. It is much more of a psychological thriller with a couple of murders thrown in it to keep the suspense alive. And the ending is totally unpredictable. It's such a fun book to read!!

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The Gray Man (A Gray Man Novel) Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone looking for an action thriller hero need look no further than here, to Court Gentry. After running afoul of his bosses in the CIA and being put on that agency's shoot-on-sight-list, Gentry has been earning his living doing what he has been trained to do, he takes out targets he is paid to terminate. Anyone associated with hired assassins knows about The Gray Man. This man has the uncanny ability to simply fade into the background. His targets never see him coming and the investigations afterward never find any connection to anyone. The reputation of this man grows to legendary proportions because of his complete anonymity, nobody is ever completely sure of who he actually is. There is only one man who positively knows the identity of this operative, his handler Sir Donald Fitzroy of Cheltenham Security Services. At least that's what Sir Donald thought. Someone literally wants The Gray Man's head delivered on a platter and there is no limit to the amount of money they are willing to spend to achieve that goal. What follows is an incredibly exciting journey from Iraq to a chateau in Normandy with danger, destruction, and death all along the route. A bounty has been put on The Gray Man's head and paid assassins have been invited to join in the hunt to see who can deliver him, dead or alive, to the chateau before the time limit runs out.
I had to keep reminding myself that this is a debut novel for author Mark Greaney. The plotting for this book is outstanding. The pace started out with an exciting episode and just never let up. The man behind the legend was very slowly revealed so that he did seem to be a shadowy figure, a ghostly figure, someone who could fade in and out simply because there was no substance to him. Over time this very talented author lets the reader come closer and closer to the main character to glimpse his intelligence, his efficiency in doing his work, and his moral code. It may sound unusual to consider that a person who kills for a living would have a moral compass but Court Gentry does. And it is believable. Characters are well defined and clear, the dialogue is crisp and clean and well suited to each character. This author did a wonderful job of describing both locations and weaponry used in the story and it is very obvious that he is familiar with both subjects. While there are a large number of professional killers involved in tracking Gentry down, I think this was necessary to represent the "contest" nature of the hunt. I really like that Greaney finished off the story by tying up loose ends, nothing was left unresolved. And yet, could it possibly be that The Gray Man isn't finished yet? I certainly hope not.
I do not assign 5 star ratings to books lightly. They have to earn that designation from me. This book would probably get an even higher rating from me if the Amazon system would allow it. I found the book to be well written, well plotted, and very, very exciting.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

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Full Black: A Thriller (Scot Harvath) Review

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(More customer reviews)With "Full Black", Thor pays off the promises found in "Foreign Influence" and delivers a thinking man's thriller. There's plenty of action, military insight, and even more action - but there's also a cogent political, social, and economic story woven into the fabric of the book. Taking a step back and looking to the horizon, we find that while still dangerous, radical Islam is not the only enemy we face. At times nuanced and at other times blunt, Thor pulls no punches in deconstructing the broader adversaries aligned against us in the world today. It's a story about layers, and serves to lay the foundation for the continued evolution of both Thor as a storyteller and Scot Harvath as a character.
When last we saw Harvath (aside from a brief cameo in "The Athena Project"), he was beginning to pull at the strings of a larger conspiracy behind recent terrorist attacks in the United States. Betrayed by someone within the intelligence community, Harvath has nonetheless continued to track down and disrupt terror cells. As he works his way down the rabbit hole, he makes a stunning revelation about the driving force behind further planned attacks.
Where the book really shines is in its exploration of current geopolitical realities as seen through the lens of fiction. Thor has said all good thrillers are rooted in reality and this is no exception. From the threat of radical Islam, to the institutional shortcomings of our intelligence apparatus, to the asymmetrical warfare being waged on us by the Chinese and others, to the frightening reach of our own government, to the elements in our society who want to see us fail as a nation - it's all here.
There's a good reason this book is called "Full Black". Not only does it deal with a black op conducted completely off the books - it also takes an unflinching look at the dangers we face in this country, with a populace still stuck in the soft slumber of willful ignorance. Sure, the bad guys get brought to justice at the end of the story and the extant threat is addressed - but the underlying issues remain. There are still enemies out there, and they are patient:
"You still have your name. You still have your flag. You still believe you have your freedoms, though in reality they have been slowly siphoned away. You still believe you have a Republic when, day-by-day, what you have been left with is merely an illusion of a Republic. Your entire house, as it were, has been rebuilt one brick at a time and no one has even noticed. No one has done a single thing about it."
Not a simple "stop the plot, save the world" story, "Full Black" is instead an intelligent examination of current events and a wake-up call for free thinking people everywhere. It shines the light on a world order I don't want to live in. The America described above is not the America I want to leave for my kids. In this book we are given a glimpse of what real danger looks like. It may only be fiction, but it's a book you should read. Consider it an alarm clock. We've hit the snooze button one too many times already. It's time to wake up.


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#1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor brings readers his darkest and most intriguing thriller yet—a terrifying story of espionage and betrayal—brilliantly paced with superb nonstop action.
Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, there are some missions so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don't exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, a wave of dramatic terrorist attacks is set in motion. Their goal: the complete and total collapse of the United States.

With the CIA's intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists' network and prevent one of the biggest threats the United States has ever faced.

Simultaneously, a foreign wet work team has been sent to California. Their target: one of Hollywood's most famous filmmakers. While working on a secret documentary project, movie producer Larry Salomon has unknowingly exposed one of the world's wealthiest and most politically connected powerbrokers—a man with a radical anti-American agenda poised to plunge the nation into deadly, irreversible chaos.

As the plots rocket to their pulse-pounding conclusion and the identities of the perpetrators are laid stunningly bare, Harvath will be left with only one means to save America. Unable to trust anyone, he will be forced to go Full Black.

Intense and frighteningly realistic, Full Black is, hands down, Brad Thor's most riveting thriller to date.

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