Full Black picks up where Foreign Influence left off. The shadowy Charlton Group, a group that operates way, way under the radar of governmental oversight, has hired Scot Harvath.
Harvath’s team has caught a very high placed Islamic terrorist in Yemen, tucking him into Harvath's trunk. As they clean up, the car is destroyed by an RPG.
The second in command runs his cell out of Uppsala, Sweden. Harvath’s team intercepts a new member of the cell and plant one of their own inside. After learning of the cell’s safe house, the team prepares for the takedown only to hit a snag (I’m minimizing a lot of things here) sending Harvath home to wallow in his own self doubt.
Meanwhile . . .
Larry Solomon, a big time Hollywood producer, and a couple young documentarians are putting together a film that traces the activities of James Standing, the mega billionaire head of a hedge fund that has been handing the investments of the most politically extreme lobbying groups. After a typical Hollywood schmooze-fest, the drunk producer and his friend-bodyguard find the 2 filmmakers dead in Solomon's home with Russian Spetznatz agents looking to finish the job. They hadn’t counted on the friend/bodyguard being ex-SEAL . . .
. . . A senior MI5 agent who arranged the hit is trying to find out what happened in Uppsala because he answers to the Sheik of Qatar who seems to be pulling all the string and the Sheik ain't happy.
The hedge fund boss, Standing, is a committed globalist, bent on bringing down the US in order to remake the world according to his vision. To do so, he uses a Chinese directive he stole called ‘unrestrictive warfare’. The Chinese feel they will have to face down the US, but can’t match US firepower head to head and devise a plan to attack the US across multiple fronts by taking out the power grid, the internet, transportation, the stock market, and more to paralyze the US economy and will at home. Standing decides to start with multiple massed attacks on American safe havens starting with a coordinated attack on dozens and dozens of movie theaters.
Harvath, now aided by The Troll from Foreign Influence whom Harvath got the Charlton Group to hire, track a cell to LA where they are leading a massive attack on US airports. With the aid of Solomon’s SEAL bodyguard, Harvath learns of who hired the Russian killer team who gives up the MI5 agent who in turn gives up the Sheik.
380 pages . . . 24 hours. Think I liked it? Full Black start fast and picks up speed with each chapter. Some readers might not like some of Thor’s pontificating and what might be considered judgmental preaching. For example, justifying Harvath as judge, jury, and executioner (chapter 24), a Cliff’s Notes version of the concept of globalization (actually thought this was informative as I’ve never really thought much about it) vs capitalism (Chapter 32), the US right or wrong (Chapter 35). But even those rip right along without missing a beat.
Make no mistake, this is a right wing, testosterone-laced, political action thriller and one’s personal politics shouldn’t be the reason for picking this up or passing. Action thrillers are about action, politics be damned. Authors stays on my power rotation based on ‘what had you done for me recently.’ Thor has been an appointment read ever since The Lions of Lucerne, and except for one hiccup (Athena Project), remains entrenched in my power rotation.
East Coast Don
see my FB post - good book, but I was not as enthusiastic about it as ECD.
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