The Terminal List by Jack Carr

This capital investment company has come across a startup pharma company that is working on a drug that is designed to prevent PTSD. Seeing an opportunity, the CEO, Steve Horn, reaches out to a small group of folks with the wherewithal to profit handsomely when the drug gets FDA approval. Along with the typical lawyer, accountant, and his personal assistant, Horn has a connection with a former congressman (and failed Presidential candidate) now government consultant who, most importantly, is married to the current SECDEF and leading candidate for President in the next election. Not to mention an ambitious Admiral with designs on becoming the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Get this woman elected, she can push the FDA for approval. Providing the drug to all those who serve means billions in profits.

Problem is an adverse event associated with the drug. Mice develop brain tumors. While the drug developers think they have the solution, a brief safety trial on humans is needed. This admiral arranges for a SEAL squadron to be non-consented subjects.

And now the fun begins.

Commander James Reece is a career SEAL. Pushing 15yr as a commander in the field. No desk for him - he belongs in the field. His team’s current deployment is Afghanistan and have received an unusual assignment that has come down not via the usual intelligence networks. No, this one came from the home-based brass. They are told that a high valued target is in some nearby no name village. That’s about all Reece gets. Go in, kill the target and anyone nearby.

The assignment gnaws at Reece’s gut, but he follows orders. As they make their final approach on the house, the entire area blows up. His team is dead. He and his #2 (Boozer) are all that remain. A bunch of helo’s full of Army Rangers descend to get the two survivors and the dead out and they, too are attacked. 60 Rangers, their support, and flight crews are dead. The largest death toll from a single task. As the leader and survivor, Reece’s knows this catastrophic failure will rest on his shoulders.

In the Bagram hospital, this one doc trying to save anyone he can tells Reece that CT scans on a bunch of the dead or dying SEALs show a brain tumor. So does Reece’s CT. Given the rarity of brain tumors, it’s highly unusual to see such a high concentration of tumors in a small group of men.

Reece and Boozer are sent back to San Diego to face the music from the military, civilian government, and the media. After checking in at headquarters and before heading home to his wife and young daughter, he stops in at Boozer’s apartment only to find him dead of an apparent suicide. He collects his senses and heads home where he finds his house encircled with dozens of police and EMTs. The cops say it looks like a random gangbanger assault. Given what happened in Afghanistan and the pressure soon to come, the press and others start to think that Reece has lost his mind. 

In his daze, Reece makes contact with some former SEALs and others who know him and respect his skills and abilities. They know he couldn’t be behind any of this. With the help of his friends, he comes to realize that this is all connected to the tumors. And, that a small core of people stand to become exceedingly rich once the drug is approved.

So I ask you now: What would be your worst nightmare? How about a pissed off SEAL with nothing to live for and nothing to lose.

So he makes a list of those behind the loss of his men, friends, and family, going after them one by one.

Many thanks to the good folks at Atria and at Emily Bestler Books for the advance copy. This is the initial effort of Jack Carr, himself a former SEAL. For regular readers of MRB, you may recall that I've praised Emily Bestler Books for the quality of titles in their catalogue. A book from Emily Bestler Books is going to be good, very good.

Now I’ve read a number of debut books. If this isn’t the very best debut I’ve read, it certainly is in my Top 5. If we at MRB graded books on a 1-5 star rating, I’d be tempted to give this a 6. Sum it up in one word: WOW! Had life not encroached, this would’ve been a single sitting read. No down points. None. It starts fast, stays fast, and finishes even faster. If you like Scot Harvath (Brad Thor), Jack Reacher (Lee Child), John Wells (Alex Berenson), Bob Lee Swagger (Stephen Hunter), et al., you are gonna add James Reece to your list of favs. I have a hard time believing that this won’t be on numerous best seller lists this year. Trust me, folks. This is a certifiable winner.

East Coast Don

-->

The Third Victim by Phillip Margolin

Meredith Fenner is found injured but alive on a dark stretch of road in rural Oregon with a tale of being kidnapped, tortured, and beaten.  She had escaped from a nearby cabin.  Her injuries are similar to two earlier victims in Portland who both ended up dead… their murders as yet unsolved.  Meredith recovers and leads the police to the cabin where she was held captive.  It is owned by a successful lawyer, Alex Mason.  Mason has recently married his second wife who tells the police he’s a control freak and likes his sex kinky and sometimes violent.  She says he enjoys bondage and burning her with a cigarette much the same torture used on the two dead victims as well as on Fenner. The police arrest Mason and he hires the best criminal defense lawyer he knows, Regina Barrister.

Regina is a legendary criminal defense lawyer but she has a secret that could end her career… she’s experiencing early signs of Alzheimer’s.  She frequently forgets details and occasionally forgets where she is or where she parked her car.  Her young assistant, Robin Lockwood has noticed her boss’s memory loss but is too intimidated to challenge Regina’s authority.

During the discovery phase of Alex Mason’s trial, Robin and her investigator develop a conviction that Mason is innocent but have no real physical evidence to support their theory.  Mason claims his wife initiated their kinky sexual encounters and he was an unwilling participant.  But it’s his word against hers and the jury finds him guilty.  After the trial Robin finds a witness who knew both Meredith Fenner and Mason’s wife years earlier in Florida and will testify the two women know each other.  But the trial is over.  What can Regina and Robin do at this point to save their client, their professional reputations, and their careers?

The Third Victim is in keeping with Phillip Margolin’s work from his early years as a legal thriller author.  Gone But Not Forgotten is one of a plethora of his hits from the 1990’s and early 2000’s that I enjoyed reading. The Third Victim is a return to that genre and is truly Margolin’s strength.  The ending, however, is a bit too predictable but the journey to get there is an amazing ride.

Thanks for the advance copy from Netgalley.

Night Moves by Jonathan Kellerman

Chet Corvin, his wife, and two teenage kids live on a cul-de-sac in an upscale neighborhood in Beverly Hills.  Chet is a reinsurance executive who travels a lot and by all outward appearances looks to be normal.  Then one Sunday evening, the family goes out to dinner and returns to find a corpse in Chet’s home office.  The victim has suffered a violent death and is unidentifiable because his face is severely disfigured and his hands are missing… cut off above the wrists.  LAPD Lt. Milo Sturgis is assigned the case and immediately calls Dr. Alex Delaware to assist.  After interviewing the family and canvasing the cul-de-sac, no motives or leads as to the corpse’s identity are evident.  An eccentric next door neighbor, Trevor Britt, however, does tweak their antennae.  Britt is an artist of limited fame for a gruesome comic book series from years earlier.  He still freelances as an artist but has toned down the gore.  He is reclusive and unfriendly and refuses to be interviewed… but is he a murderer?  The cops don’t even have probable cause to search his property.

Seemingly at a dead end, the sleuths focus more energy on the Corvin family.  They discover some interesting behaviors not necessarily relevant to the case.  The teenage daughter has a learning disability and is often observed wondering outside late at night and her mother is overly protective of her.  Chet spends little time with the family and credit card billings suggest several infidelities.

 

Following a couple long shot hunches, Milo and Alex are able to identify the body but struggle to connect the dead man to the Corvins.  Then Chet turns up dead in a cheap no-tell motel in Hollywood.  Something is not normal with this suburban family but finding that something will be Milo’s and Alex’s greatest challenge yet.

To Jonathan Kellerman fans, Night Moves is just another winner in his Delaware/ Sturgis series.  A complex plot, that cleverly misdirects the reader down blind alleys as the truth is slowly and methodically unearthed, proves engaging.  Further the tenacity of the two lead characters with an admirable dose of compassion and tolerance rounds out an outstanding and sustainable series… great entertainment.

Presidential Conclusions

Presidential Conclusions, by Douglas J. Wood, is the third novel in a trilogy about Samantha Harrison who has become the second woman President following Hillary Clinton’s one-term administration. I found this to be a difficult read for two reasons. First, Harrison is forced to deal with multiple coordinated terrorist attacks in the U.S. Thousands of people are killed. The terrorist plots are believable and therefore quite frightening – all probably possible. Second, the author clearly hates Obama who he only mentions in derogatory terms. He refers to Obama’s failed foreign policy, failed heath care bills, failed immigration policies, etc.

In order to get good advice about how to deal with the terrorists, Harrison created a Presidents’ Council which consisted of all living Presidents meeting with her in the White House. However, Wood wrote that Harrison had only reluctantly issued an invitation to Obama for whom she had total disregard. Then, out of his alleged bitterness about the way he was perceived and his incredibly low popularity ratings, Obama did not even respond to the invitation. I have a far different appreciation of our immediate past President than does the author.

Clearly, this trilogy was written from a far right-wing perspective, including a strong pro-life belief. Without the political agenda of the author, this might have been a good book. Perhaps if the trilogy was reviewed by my fellow blogger East Coast Don, who has much more of a right-leaning philosophy than I do, the recommendation to skip this one would be different.

Should The Tent Be Burning Like That? by Bill Heavey

‘The Professional Amateur’s Guide to the Outdoors’ is a compilation of Heavey’s columns for Field and Stream magazine. And if the title sounds curious, his previous books are “If you didn’t bring jerky, what did I just eat?” then “It’s only slow food until you try to eat it” followed up by “You’re not lost if you can still see the truck.” 

In the book’s introduction, he acknowledges that ‘these pieces have been known to make people laugh, cry, or curse, often in their bathrooms, since that is where many people prefer to read my stuff.” Reminds me of that line from The Big Chill where People magazine writer Jeff Goldblum tells his friends that his writing has length limits – only long enough for one to finish within the length of the typical American crap. 

Translated: short stories most anyone who has ventured beyond their fescue moat can relate.

As with other similar compilations, this is non-fiction. Heavey tells us that in the world of outdoor writing, the high end (the experienced, the knowledgeable, the successful) is heavily populated.

But the other end of the spectrum (the rookie, the downright dumb, the failure who keeps trying bless his heart) is largely ignored. 

This book is for and about 'that guy' . . . 

. . . who has a ‘case of athlete’s foot that would be at home in a leper colony’ whose only saving grace is his ‘deranged perserverance’ in search of ‘a beast with a cow-catcher on its head forever to be known as the Heavey buck’.

. . . who is such a gear head that he lives in a suburban Virginia house ‘with as much of the Cabela’s catalog crammed into his house as possible’ because he knows that ‘new gear solemnly swears to change your life’.

. . . who realizes that, while waiting for the Valium to kick in for his colonoscopy, he needs to inventory his flashlights and head lamps.

. . . whose head shot for his column presents ‘someone who aspires to be a sex offender, but doesn’t have the nerve.’

. . . with sufficient wisdom and understanding to recognize that with age comes a neck that would do a snapping turtle proud.

. . . who, when dressed out for a hunt resembles an ‘outdoorsy transvestite that would be proud to be introduced to parents’

. . . who isn’t the slightest bit concerned about wearing pink lipstick when forgetting the Chap Stick or wearing pantyhose for a 5-day horseback trek to avoid chafing (XL, taupe, opaque, regular not control top; and don’t let the salesperson jerk you around).

. . . who ventures into unpopulated areas of the planet to hunt caribou with a bow, realizing that he is headed into ‘a violent feeding ground for the strongest predators, a trap for the week, a graveyard for the unlucky.” No problem for a DC area resident, because that ‘sounds a little like the Beltway.’

. . . who enters a team event for hunting skills with three other similar guys who know they have no chance of winning. So, they plan to try mightily, but strive to come in last and realize “We failed to fail. Tell me, grasshopper, what more complete failure can a man attain.’

But this book just isn’t about ‘that guy’. It’s also about the steelhead freak who sleeps in his pickup truck cab because the bed is too loaded with gear. The world’s shotgun expert trying to teach the unlearned how to shoot birds. The PharmD who is also the mountain trout guru. Those guides who take the foolhardy into pristine places not to be revealed and opens beer bottles with a Bic lighter.

In short, this book is for all those nerds and rookies who greatly outnumber the cool guys and experts. That’s who this book is for.

In other words, it’s for you.

ECD

-->

Presidential Declarations

Presidential Declarations is the second in a trilogy of novels by Douglas J. Wood in which Samantha Harrison, a conservative Republican and former governor of Virginia, is planning a run for the presidency. As previously reviewed in the blog, the initial novel Presidential Intentions, is used for character introduction and development. It establishes Harrison’s considerable credentials as a bright and passionate candidate who espouses a very conservative agenda. Wood wrote the first novel in 2014.

The second novel published in 2015, Presidential Declarations begins with Harrison having lost the 2016 Presidential election to Hillary Clinton and the 2018 Senate race to Tim Kaine. Harrison was ready to leave public life until she was nominated to fill the seat of a retiring longtime Congressman. Almost immediately, Harrison was summoned by Clinton to the White House for reasons that were not apparent. Sam was totally stunned when Clinton offered her the job of Secretary of State. The job offer came over Bill Clinton’s objections, and both Harrison’s daughter Amanda and longtime confident Zachary Watts advised her to turn down the offer. Hillary claimed that while she and Sam had many differences on domestic issues, that they saw eye-to-eye on most foreign policy and that Sam was simply the best person for the job. Despite being from opposite parties and despite their differences on domestic policy, Sam accepted Hillary’s offer.

Simultaneous with the evolution of his audacious presidential plot, Wood penned a terrorist plot on Washington by Hamas who had control of the Gaza Strip. It was in the capacity of Secretary of State that Sam landed in Israel to make one more attempt to negotiate a Middle East peace pact. At the suggestion of Hillary, Sam also agreed to meet with the leader of Hamas in Gaza, a decision that turned out to be unwise. At the same time dirty bombs were exploded around Washington, Sam’s security detail was killed and she was taken prisoner in Gaza. Held captive with her were her daughter and another American. In the explosions around DC, both the Vice President and Speaker of the House were killed. The President had been having lunch with friends and the restaurant was nearly totally destroyed. Clinton’s body was not initially found, but she was presumed dead. That meant that the fourth person in line for the Presidency, the Secretary of State, was a captive of Hamas.

Clinton’s nearly lifeless body was found, and she recovered while Sam served as the acting President until Clinton c return to the office. They had a cooperative relationship until Sam chose to decline Hillary’s offer to fill the vacant Vice President position. Sam was unwilling to play second fiddle to anyone. Then the competition began in earnest for the Presidential Election in 2020.

Wood’s use of current day politicians is intriguing. He repeatedly used Harrison to attack Obama’s policies on both domestic and foreign matters. Given the timing of the writing of the novel and the evolution of Trump’s surprisingly successful candidacy, Trump was only mentioned once in the book, as someone whose candidacy wilted in the face of Harrison steamrolling toward the 2020 Republican nomination. Interestingly, Sam’s choice of Ben Carson as her running mate was viewed as a brilliant decision. After reading the first novel in this trilogy, I wondered if Harrison’s right wing positions might be softened as the result of the realities of her time in office, but in fact, this was not the tact that Wood chose. The speeches he wrote for Harrison were far better than the kind of tripe I heard on Fox News. Perhaps the eloquence of Harrison’s words did not quite match the eloquence that Aaron Sorkin gives his leftwing candidates, but the speeches and debates were good. I’m curious to see what the author does with his characters now that Harrison has arrived in the Oval Office. He ends the second book on Harrison’s first day in office when Iran’s Grand Ayatollah declared jihad against both the United States and Great Britain. Right now, I’ll start reading book three in the trilogy, Presidential Conclusions.

A Line Intersected

A Line Intersected by David Grant Urban:

Michael Collwood was a young professional, an architect with a great firm in San Diego. He was in love with and married to a wonderful woman. On a warm night, they were enjoying an outing in downtown’s Gaslamp District when disaster struck. They were grabbed at gunpoint and pushed into a dark building where Michael was drugged and his wife was assaulted, raped, and murdered. When Michael unexpectedly recovered from a coma three months later, he learned that he was the prime suspect in his wife’s murder. He was fired from his job and lost his home when he could not pay the mortgage. After two more years of struggling, Michael decided it was time to end his life and he hiked into a remote canyon near Borrego Springs with enough pills and booze to do the job. When a small plane crashed near Michael’s remote campsite, that’s when things changed.

A Line Intersected is a well-told story with strong subplots. Michael thought an old homeless man might have witnessed their kidnapping and could support what no one else believed. The author took us on a deep dive into the homeless population of San Diego to find “Books” who had seen them being taken at gunpoint. In the search, one learns about the size of the homeless population, where and how they live, and the variety of people who have ended up on the streets. Urban humanized a part of our society that often seem to stay invisible. The story also takes the reader into city corruption, the movement of drugs across the border, the gangs that distribute this product, intrigues with law enforcement, friendship, and romance. And, you’ll get an excellent tour of the entire San Diego area.

Great plot, great character development, skilled writing – this book has all of that.

This book was given to me by an author, Aida Afaf (The Shadow of the Profit, previously reviewed in this blog), and she said David Grant Urban is in her writers group. This is his first book, and I’m ready to nominate this one for an Edgar Award. As for the homeless in San Diego, this blog continues to look for book donations (novels, not texts and encyclopedias) that are taken to the homeless via a charity known as “The Burrito Boyz.” When I hand out books, along with breakfast burritos, to the homeless, I’ve been amazed at the knowledge of contemporary authors by the people I’ve encountered, people who are always grateful for the food and books that we provide.

Yesterday's News

-->

All three reviewers at Men Reading Books have favorably reviewed Belsky’s novels. I was particularly enamored with The Kennedy Connection. And, Belsky has done it again with Yesterday’s News. This is a prepublication review, and the book will be released on May 1, 2018. I read this book in a day, could not put it down. I’m only concerned that this brief review won’t do justice to the quality of this story.

My heart sank in the two-page prologue when it was clear the story would be about a missing schoolgirl, 11-year-old Lucy Devlin. But, as the story begins, Lucy has been gone for 15 years. A newspaper reporter, Clare Carlson, had won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the story. At the time of Lucy’s disappearance, it was a story that captured the nations attention. Since then, Clare had moved on from her newspaper reporting gig and had moved up from being a TV reporter to a TV executive. But she had promised Lucy’s mother that she would never let people forget about Lucy. Lucy’s parents, Anne and Patrick had long since divorced, the marriage couldn’t survive the disappearance of their child. Patrick had moved on, to another town, remarried, and had a new family. But Anne continued to hunt for clues and to bother law enforcement about her ideas, some of which were really crazy. It seemed everyone wanted Anne to come to terms with the certain death of Lucy, but she would not, and Clare had given her a promise.

When Anne had a new lead, she contacted Clare who had to get permission from her executives to pursue the story, not on the basis of a new lead, but on the basis of the 15^th anniversary of Lucy’s still unsolved disappearance. Through the first half of the book, Belsky did character development as one would expect, but then the plot really got going. There were a series of twists that I did not see coming and the end was both excellent and realistic. Belsky provides an excellent character study of aspects of the dark side of life that we hope does not ever touch us.