No One Sleeps

This review is copied in total from Kirkus Review, and it precisely captures my own opinion of this novel - a good read, but not a great read because of the looseness of the character development which is often unrelated to the excellent main plot:

A terrorist plot threatens a high-profile event in the latest installment of a Milan-based thriller series.

When a hapless customs official accepts several bribes to overlook particular shipments coming through the Italian port of La Spezia, his guilt and suspicion compel him to confess the transgression to his brother-in-law, Gianni D’Imporzano, an agent with the Milanese Questura. What the subsequent probe turns up is frightening: someone has been transporting into Italy chemicals used to make the deadly gas sarin. The Questura assembles a team to foil the suspected terrorist scheme. The story proceeds to plumb painstaking investigative minutiae as inspectors track phone records, stake out suspects, and navigate agency politics, all while trying to lead normal lives. A parallel narrative describes how the villain, at first a normal Muslim-Italian man with Pakistani heritage, came to be radicalized, a slow build of humiliation, resentment, and cultural intolerance that culminates in his plan to commit mass murder. The mundane element of the tale is notable: would-be jihadis struggle with their sexual drives and the jobs they hate while detectives gush about meeting celebrities and bicker like siblings. Nobody is ideologically pure; everyone is merely human. Unfortunately, Erickson’s (Weekend Guest, 2016, etc.) attention to quotidian concerns tends to trip up the pace of his slick procedural. Every character, no matter how peripheral, is given a bio at the moment of introduction, and with the exception of the villain, whose past traces effectively to his harrowing present, the broader back stories of the main players have no bearing on the tale’s primary action. The result is that histories intended to round out characters read as mere devices for making them sympathetic instead of contributing to a textured fictional reality in which their participation in the plot leads to growth that they wouldn’t otherwise have achieved. This disjointedness drains the story of its urgency, leaving the reader to root for the foiling of terrorism for its own sake, without much concern for the agents trying to get the job done.

A thoroughly researched and soberly told tale of one of today’s most pressing global issues, weakened by clumsy characterization.

A Conspiracy of Ravens

The third book in Terrence McCauley’s international espionage trilogy was titled, A Conspiracy of Ravens. The first two books, Sympathy for the Devil and A Murder of Crows have been previously reviewed in this blog. The reader finally learns that the name of the other network, the evil network which is working to eliminate the University, is the Vanguard. The Vanguard is a non-government agency whose purpose seems to be only to enrich itself and is willing to use whatever brutality is necessary to achieve that. They were being staffed by ex-Russian and ex-Chinese intelligence officers, and their resources were far greater than those available to the University. For the first time, the University agreed to partner with the CIA in order to assault the Vanguard. There continues to be conflict between the loyalties for Tali, Hicks’ pregnant lover and Israeli spy. McCauley did give Tali a great line when, in reference to the ugly hotel in Berlin where she was staying. She quoted some old movie: “Ugly buildings, politicians, and whores all become respectable if they’re around long enough.” While she never thought of herself as a prostitute, she wondered if would survive the danger she was about to face. Roger Cobb, the psychopath who was working for the good guys, was the author’s second protagonist – woven tightly into the story line.

Hick’s problems, of which he thought as his Carousel of Concern now included Tali and the baby, the Vanguard and it’s director Tessmer, Demerest of the CIA, “every intelligence agency in Washingon’s alphaget soup,” the future of the University, and more. McCauley writes about a big international conspiracy about which most humans would never know about. The action shifted all around the world, finally ending in China, near the Mongolian border. If a fantasy about international espionage is your genre, then this is a must read.

A Murder of Crows

A Murder of Crows is the second book in Terrence McCauley’s trilogy of international espionage. The first, Sympathy for the Devil, has already been reviewed in this blog. This books starts just after a bio-attack had occurred in New York, but protagonist James Hicks caught the terrorist responsible, know as The Moroccan. Hicks contained the damage, but he also realized that the scientists who created the viral strain had done too good a job. It burned through the immune systems of those infected much too fast, so they died before the could become effective carriers. Hicks knew that error could be fixed. Because he had captured the Moroccan, Bajjah, who the CIA and DIA definitely wanted to question, they were now after Hicks, as was the Mossad. The DIA pursuant of Hicks was Mark Stephens. But Hicks and The Moroccan were not the biggest prizes. That was Jabbar, the most wanted man alive. Hicks also had Jabbar to worry about

There are other characters. Hicks’ lover was a Massad Spy, Tali Saddon, but her loyalties were divided between Hicks and the Massad. At a critical moment near the end of the book, Tali revealed to Hicks that she was pregnant with his child. In this book, the Dean announced his sudden and unexpected retirement from running the University. He was suffering from incurable metastatic cancer, and he chose Hicks as his replacement. Hicks got a short lecture on his new duties, but the Dean was dead within 24 hours of announcing Hicks as his replacement. In reference to the overwhelming set of problems with which he was confronted, McCauley referred to Hick’s “Carousel of Concern”: the University, Tali and the baby, Charles Demerest (head of Clandestine Services for the CIA); Stephens and the DIA, the Mossad, Jabbbar, and more. This is an action-packed and fast-paced novel and one must wonder whether Hicks is really up to the multiple tasks that he faces as the new Dean. After book two, there was no way not to jump into the third novel, the conclusion of McCauley’s trilogy.

Sympathy for the Devil

Sympathy for the Devil is the first book of a trilogy by Terrence McCauley. I was given a chance to just read the third book, but choose to work my way through the trilogy to see how McCauley handled the plot and character development. This is a trilogy of international espionage and the protagonist is James Hicks, or at least that’s his “professional name” and not the one he was given at birth. Hicks was the head of the New York office for an off-the-books clandestine service known as the University. His boss is the Dean, and the University’s agents are known as faculty members. The edge that the University has over the FBI, CIA (known to those in the trade as The Barnyard), NSA, DIA, etc., is it’s OMNI system, the Optimized Mechanical and Network Integration System, which was one of the most advanced computer networks in the world. OMNI was able to tap into the systems of all Western intelligence agencies, but the University’s existence was unknown to all but a few. 

At least in this first book, there were not many characters that I could like or identify with. Hicks was a single guy and brutal in his own right. He had authority issues but was impressed with the Dean who could tolerate his independent ways. Hicks was astute at manipulating bad guys to provide money to run his New York organization. He was having an affair with Tali Saddon, an operative for the Israeli Military Intelligence, but Tali’s loyalties were divided between Hicks and Israel. One of the most interesting characters was the psychopathic and brilliant Roger Cobb, a sexual deviant who was also the chief interrogator for the University. At least he was working on behalf of the good guys.

Mostly, Sympathy for the Devil was an introduction book – an introduction to the main characters and the organizations. It was at the end of this first book that Hicks figured out there had to be another network that had never been discovered. The Dean ordered him to find those people, learned everything about them that he could, and then kill them all. One must read on to follow the action. I think if this was the only McCauley book that I saw, and it was meant to be a stand-alone novel, I would not have continued with the author, but having read the next two books, I can tell you it gets a whole lot better.

The Room of White Fire by T. Jefferson Parker

Roland Ford is an ex-cop, ex-Marine, and now PI who specializes in finding people.  He still mourns the loss of his wife, who died when the plane she was piloting crashed into the Pacific Ocean.  Roland now lives on a ranch/ retreat near San Diego, landlord to a group of well-meaning and loyal misfits.

Roland latest assignment is to find Clay Hickman, an air force veteran who has escaped from a private mental hospital.  Clay suffers from PTSD and also carries the burdens of guilt and shame from the role he played in the torture of Al Qaeda prisoners.  Roland soon learns that his client, Briggs Spencer, the owner of the mental hospital from which Clay had escaped, is also Clay’s former commander in the air force… in charge of the secret torture camp in Romania where Clay had served.  Was Clay institutionalized for his mental health or to cover up some insidious behavior by his captor?

Roland soon learns that a young woman, Sequoia Baine helped Clay escape and has fallen in love with him.  She escorts Clay in his quest to retrieve information that would expose Spencer.  Yet, most allies that Clay and Sequoia locate are being watched and some end up dead.  At one point Roland views video of water boarding and other horrendous methods of torture that Spencer administered while in charge of the Romanian black ops site.  By making this video public, Clay intends to ruin Spencer. Clay decrees, ‘My mission is to bring white fire to Deimos’… Deimos being the Greek god of terror and Spencer’s nickname in Romania.  The more Roland learns the more hesitant he becomes to turn Clay over to Spencer… even if he can find Clay alive.

T. Jefferson Parker has developed an excellent protagonist in Roland Ford.  His grieving for his wife and serving as landlord for a group of misfits exemplifies his compassion.  However, I do not appreciate Parker’s flare for the gruesome (too much description of torture for my taste), but the story is well told and the characters are believable.

Zero Day by Ezekiel Boone

It was bad enough when the prehistoric spider line suddenly hatched and started devouring human flesh (The Hatching). Worse still when modern travel sent them worldwide with China delivering the first nuclear shot and the US followed suit (Skitter). Now, it’s do or die time. Their spread must be stopped or humanity is all but lost.

As the spiders mutate to the point of even growing teeth, the scientists remain stumped on several levels. How they kill, how they digest flesh so quickly, why are some people ignored by the spiders, how do so many millions of spiders seem to follow some direction and not just scatter randomly.

Then there is a couple of bright inventors who fix up a device that tracks some sort of signal guiding the spider’s actions. When this contraption is turned on to effectively jam any communication, the spiders become, for lack of a better word, confused. President Pilgrim is being squeezed hard by the military to unleash the full nuclear arsenal of the US to fry the spiders wherever they are, but she is hesitant to do so. The head of the Joint Chiefs then initiates a coup and tries to get hack through all the nuclear safeguards to do what he thinks must be done.

Our inventor friends continue to modify their device so that they can now track the signal back to its origin. Make that origins. They identify upwards of a dozen locations for what can only be the spider queens. Their first target is in an Atlantic City casino. With a small band of soldiers, they track the signal's source and find the mutant queen. Some quick work with flamethrowers and .50 cal settles the score.

More queens are found, but in one confrontation, it’s learned that the queen is also receiving signals. From the uber Queen. And she’s in Peru, back where the first hatching occurred.

Book 3 in Boone’s spider trilogy. As before, Boone takes global hops as he develops the story. Once the concept of 1-way communication is learned, Boone presses the accelerator to the floor to rid the planet of the spiders.

A ripping good yarn, especially the last 100 or so pages, that is one part sci-fi and one part scientific mystery. Be warned that the descriptions of when the spiders attack humans can be quite disturbing. Also, some trilogies don’t necessarily need to be started at book 1 because each successive book relives important details from the earlier books. I’d advise against that. Start with The Hatching and read in order as Boone doesn’t waste much time reviewing old news – you’d be lost.

And you don’t want to get lost when these creatures are on the loose.

ECD