Swift Vengeance by T. Jefferson Parker

Roland Ford is a P.I. living on a small ranch just outside San Diego.  He is still mourning the death of his wife when a friend, Lindsay Rakes hires him to protect her from a death threat.  Lindsay is a former Air Force drone operator who was stationed near Las Vegas.  Even though her attacks on ISIS took place thousands of miles from the battlefield, her PTSD symptoms are just as real as the soldiers who fought hand-to-hand combat on foreign soil.  

Roland puts her up in one of his guest cottages at the ranch and enlists the aid of FBI agent Joan Taucher.  Joan specializes in domestic terrorism and respects Roland enough to allow him to participate in the hunt.  While searching for the perpetrator, two of Lindsay’s former crew members are brutally beheaded.  Roland thinks he has identified the suspect but now is facing the challenge of his life.  How can he bring the bad guy out in the open, keep the FBI on his team and protect Lindsay, all at the same time?

T. Jefferson Parker has developed a great new protagonist in Roland Ford.  A tough guy with as many vulnerabilities as investigative skills, Roland maintains his high moral code in hunting down the bad guys… great entertainment.  T. Jefferson Parker may be working his way back onto my list of top ten authors.

Law and Addiction

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Law and Addiction is my third Papantonio novel. I raved about the first two, and this one is both compelling and timely. It’s a story about the ravages of the opioid epidemic. Normally, I dislike stories about twins, but this is not a typical story about twins being mistaken for one another. Rather, it’s a story about two men who have grown up as best friends. When Jake leaves to go to college and law school, his twin brother Blake stayed behind, and then got swept up by the evil of Oxy. Given the pervasive nature of the opioid problem, their hometown of Oakley, West Virginia has become known as “Zombieland.” As a rookie lawyer who really has no hope of a good job in a big firm, Jake opens his own office in Oakley and then naively takes on Big Pharma in an attempt to avenge his brother’s death. He knows he cannot possible take on Big Pharma on his own, so he enlists the help of the super successful Deke Deketonis, the hero of Papantonio’s second novel. The fight is on. Once again the author makes great use of character development to flesh out his story. This is a very real human drama.

From the standpoint of suspense, this book did not quite measure up to the first two novels, but the storyline is compelling and incredibly timely. I am a doctor who treats patients who are trying to deal with their addictions, and the author’s descriptions of such battles are very real. It’s clear that he has done his homework and that he has written an important story. It was only the week before I wrote this review that Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and their principal owners, the Sackler family, settled a related lawsuit for $270 million. I remain a fan of Mike Papantonio and look forward to his next novel. Law and Addiction is scheduled for release on 5/7/19.

Deep Water Blues

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Deep Water Blues by Fred Waitzkin is a quick, eventful, and delightful read about Rum Cay, a Bahamian island found about halfway between Nassau and The Turks and Caicos Islands. Over the course of many years, Waitzkin’s protagonist visited there for fishing trips on his boat, the Ebb Tide. Waitzkin wrote about the characters he encountered over the years including the owner of the marina, Bobby Little, Mike who lived in a relic of a boat, Rasta who manned the kitchen, Flo who sang out of happiness on her pig farm, and Dennis, the rich guy who drove Bobby off the island (and others). The story alternated from happiness and satisfaction, to greed and the trauma that comes with it.

The author is probably better known for an early novel that was turned into a 1993 movie, Searching for Bobby Fisher starring Ben Kingsley. Waitzkin’s writing is beautiful and descriptive, and it transfers the mood of being on the island. I read this one in an afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed the time it took to complete it.

Rules of Engagement by David Bruns and J.R. Olson

The most wanted man in the world isn’t a religious zealot or a some 3^rd world megalomaniac. He’s a man driven by revenge. To avenge the loss of his wife that forced him underground and his children to live in exile. Rafiq Roshed.

He has trained himself to see and execute small and extensive cyber-attacks on the people responsible. That would be the west in general and the USA in particular. But he can’t do this on his own. He needs a sponsor. Pak Myung-rok is Kim Jong-un’s go-to guy when the Supreme Leader wants something done that can’t be traced back.

Roshed’s latest attack was directed at the power hubs up and down the East Coast. 36 million people were affected. Effective, but it wasn’t crippling. The leash on Pak has some flexibility and some representatives of the various Russian mobs have asked Pak to help them with some business. A lack of sustained hostilities in the far east means that the sale of weapons has dropped off considerably. In their infinite wisdom, the mob figures that a little nudge might touch off a raised level of suspicion between China and Japan.

The plan developed by Roshed involves a deep hack into the Chinese and Japanese military networks. A hack so deep that Roshed can in near complete charge of the command and control for each country. And the hack is a learning system. Touch one part of the code and another activates that tells other routines to turn on or shut off.

A higher up in US cyber security is Don Riley. When times are quasi-quiet, he teaches a seminar at Annapolis. Mostly for upper classmen, he has managed to get permission for a talented plebe (freshman) to enroll. Three students have demonstrated exceptional skills. Midshipman 2^nd class (college Jr.) Andrea Ramirez is about the fastest coder he’s ever seen. Don Goodwin, the plebe, has an extraordinary ability to see patterns in code. Sort of like seeing a couple jigsaw puzzles mixed and spread out and be able to assemble both in seconds. And Midshipman 1^st class (college Sr.) Janet Everett takes what Goodwin sees and Ramirez codes and from her 10,000 ft view, sees what, when, and where outcomes should happen. The leader of the pack of students.

Riley’s no fool. He persuades his bosses to get this trio read in on progressively higher and higher levels of security that goes along with increasingly intensive levels of responsibility and danger.

Roshed tunnels his way into the Chinese and Japanese networks. His own team rivals Riley’s team. But Roshed has gone one step further. A step expressly forbidden by the Supreme Leader. He’s also hacked into the increasingly complex US system. And it’s here that Roshed’s plans could potentially lead to WWIII.

Flyovers that skirt sovereign airspace. Ships that may or may not be in territorial waters. Responses that used to be just a supersonic fly-by are now ordered to fire. Planes are downed. Ships get sunk. Submarines are being ordered to attack a US carrier. Crap is getting out of hand.

To stay out of WWIII, the hack of the US system has to be halted, be it killed or just distracted. Not to mention that the source of these actions have to be tracked down. Coders and hackers on both sides become unwilling participants in a shooting war.

Early reviews of this book say it pays homage to early Tom Clancy techno-thrillers. Hard to argue with that. Clancy’s early books jumped up and down the chain of command on both sides of any conflict in glamorous and shithole locations around the world. That formula worked for Clancy and boy does it works for Bruns/Olson.

It's a bit of serendipity that I read this right after reading Sting of the Wasp. Both have the same theme: a chase to find a most wanted terrorist with one main difference. Wasp followed a small team with a mostly silent back-up team and this book involves an all hands on deck hunt by the US military cyber force.

The authors are USNA grads and the requisite post-Annapolis naval careers. Always great when insider experiences are the foundation of a book’s details. They always say, ‘write about what you know’ and that is on full display. Now I’ve never been a fan of co-authored novels because the final product almost seems like a watered down compromise of writing styles. Not here. This collaboration is seamless. Bruns and Olson have done a few self-financed and self-published books so they’ve cut their teeth admirably in this co-author business. This is the first of a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press. If you’ve missed the authenticity of Clancy’s techno-thriller genre and continue to look for similar books, look no more. You won’t be disappointed.

Available June 25, 2019

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Neon Prey by John Sanford

Lucas Davenport keeps doing what he does best, chasing the bad guy, in John Sandford’s latest installment in the series.  The bad guy this time is Clayton Deese, a hired killer thought to cannibalize some of his victims.  As Clayton moves west to join his brother’s home invasion outlaw gang in L.A., the FBI investigates Clayton’s Louisiana home and finds several bodies buried in the swap behind his house.  Lucas now a U.S. marshal and his posse, Rae Givens and Bob Matees join him in pursuit of Deese.  They find Deese, his brother and their gang but upon closing in, Lucas is shot and the gang (less two dead members) moves on to Las Vegas.  After a couple months of convalescence, Lucas is back on the trail.  As the gang again feels the marshals closing in, they begin looking for one last big score.  But desperation leads to bigger chances and a climbing body count.

If you are a fan of John Sanford’s prey series, there’s nothing here not to like.  The same old Lucas Davenport, rich in lifestyle, clever in politics, and persistent in pursuit make for great entertainment.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone

The Paris Diversion is a sequel to Chris Pavone’s first novel, The Expats which was favorably reviewed twice on MRB.  Protagonist Kate Moore is a clandestine CIA operative who lives in Paris with her day trader husband, Dexter and her two children.  One fall morning in Paris sirens begin to blare as a suspected terrorist enters a public square outside the Louvre Palace wearing a vest packed with explosives and carrying a suitcase presumed to contain a dirty bomb.

Simultaneously, the CEO of a major tech company, Hunter Forsyth is escorted to a safe house by body guards he mistakenly believes are loyal to him.  Instead he is being unwittingly detained on a day he is expected to announce a major acquisition by his company, 4Syte.  Coincidently, Dexter has a personal grudge against Forsyth and has sold a massive amount of 4Syte stock short with expectations of a plummet in the company’s value.  So Kate’s job is to figure out what is actually happening in Paris and who is truly responsible, all the while hoping the incident does not involve her husband.

Chris Pavone is on the fast track.  This Edgar and Anthony awards winner has already written three best sellers and this one due to be released next month will surely follow.  His complexity of plot, his scrambling of seemingly unrelated events, and his ability to tie it all together very late in the story, all adds to the anticipation and ultimate thrill ride.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

Tom Clancy’s Op Center: Sting of the Wasp by Jeff Rovin

The USS Intrepid sits at anchor at a NYC harbor. A significant tourist stop. On any given day, the flight deck has scores of people wandering around. For those of a certain age, they remember the Intrepid picking up Scott Carpenter, the 4^th American in space. A piece of American history.

 

To Captain Ahmed Salehi, the Intrepid is a target.

On a delightful spring morning, he, and a hired Iranian chemical engineer, put a figurative match to an incendiary device that spews flammable chemicals across the deck and incinerates hundreds of tourists. And in one final ‘fuck you’ to the American intelligence network, he looks directly into a surveillance camera as he leaves the ship.

It’s not like the US didn’t know about Salehi. His plan to set off a small nuke in Minneapolis was stopped and the ship under his command had been sunk. He was a known commodity. But somehow, he’d slipped under the radar. In particular, the radar of the center devoted to keeping track of people like him.

Op Center dropped the ball.

POTUS calls the heads of every 3-letter agency set up to protect the US. In the White House situation room, Op Center director Chase Williams is given a tongue lashing by every political opponent of the Center. At the end, POTUS shoves Williams out the door and the Center is ordered to be summarily disbanded. Today.

Williams’ entire team is out of a job. And he has to figure out his own future while mourning the loss of life in New York. Once he gets home, Matt Berry, an old friend and now the Deputy Chief of Staff to POTUS, contacts him to meet. Now.

With the full support of POTUS, Berry offers Chase a job. Head up a new covert team. Small. Out of the Defense Logistics Agency. Unlimited cash, supplies, support. Flexible. Forget about endless planning and getting approvals. Just go and get the job done. And this job is to get Salehi. Alive or dead. Just get him. An encrypted text is sent to three specific individuals:

“Black Wasp”

Lance Corporal Jaz Rivette. Sniper and an expert with any type of sidearm or rifle. Logged his first kill as a 10yo when he stopped a store robbery. Lt. Grace Lee. Hand to hand combat instructor at Ft Bragg. Doesn’t carry a gun. All she needs are her martial arts skills and a few knives. Commander Hamilton Breen. With the Navy JAG office. Yeah, he’s a lawyer. Sort of the team’s soul. But he is still a soldier, and a damn good one.  They drop everything to meet in ASAP in DC.

They don’t know Williams. Just that he’s been assigned to lead this team. With intel from every overt and covert agency passed to them, they start tracking Salehi’s movements. The chemical engineer fled to Toronto. Salehi heads to the Caribbean via Hartford, CT. Rumors of Salehi’s whereabouts run rampant. The engineer is found murdered. Apparently by a Jamaican Muslim group. That’s what Williams grabs and Black Wasp heads for a night parachute drop into a crime-ridden corner of Jamaica.

The hunt goes through Jamaica then after a couple flight changes, arrives in Yemen where Salehi meets up with his benefactor who has promised him a ship and a lifetime of cash as a reward for striking at the Great Satan. Black Wasp just has to catch up with him before he disappears to the ocean. Black Wasp is pretty effective when it doesn’t have to check back in with Momma in DC every time a decision is necessary. It's a breathless week after the Intrepid attack.

I thought this was interesting and credible. It could happen. Whether there is something like Black Wasp buried deep within the government is open for debate. Not just on practical grounds. But moral grounds, too. The closer they get to Salehi, the more the bodies pile up. Most are bad guys, but there are what amounts to an execution or two along the way.

Way back when, I read every novel Clancy wrote (really liked Clark and Chavez characters. Wish Hollywood would make Without Remorse into a movie), but I began to tire of the plot lines when there was an attempt to pass the Jack Ryan flame on to Jack, Jr. I read the first couple Op Center books but didn’t return. While I’m not likely to go back to where I left off and work my way forward, I will say that if the Op Center series continues the Black Wasp theme along, I’ll be there. This is just the kind of book Men Reading Books was based on.

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Paper Son by SJ Rozen

Lydia Chen is a Chinese-American PI living in NYC. She partners with Bill Smith. Momma Chen tells Lydia about an unknown side of the family living in the Mississippi Delta area. Lydia had no clue she even had relatives in the south. Wondering why her mom was bringing this up now, Lydia is told that one of her cousins, a Jefferson Tam, has just been arrested for the murder of his father, Leland Tam, a local shopkeeper. Mom does not believe it’s true, she just knows, and that Lydia and Bill must go to Mississippi and prove his innocence. Don’t argue with mom.

Lydia and Bill head south to an entirely unknown place. Yes, Jefferson has been charged with the knife-murder of Leland, but as he was being transported to the county lockup, he somehow escaped. Lydia and Bill head over to Leland’s store where they meet up with another cousin, Pete, a professional gambler. The store has been ransacked. Jefferson is a fugitive. And the sheriff’s deputy/detective ain’t happy with a couple Yankee PIs nosing in on his case.

Throughout the investigation, more relatives pop up, including Reynold Tam, current congressman currently in a primary campaign for governor. His chief-of-staff (and son-in-law) is yet another distant relative.

The investigation twists one way (redneck meth dealers) then another (online sports gambling) then another (meth-head’s daughter dating a black law student), and yet another (mixed race parentage that go back more than a few generations). All the while Lydia is trying to figure out the Delta culture, lingo, and food preferences.

Turns out SJ Rozen, an Edgar Award winner (meaning she has the chops) has nearly a dozen and a half books to her credit. Mostly Lydia Chen/Bill Smith mysteries. Paper Son was a reasonable diversion after the heavy lifting from up on Bull Mountain. Easy reading, somewhat lighthearted, not overly violent, and well developed. Even with all the various generations, cousins, 2nd cousins twice removed, etc. When the reading bug hits and one is looking for something that won’t drag you down into a filthy gutter, a Chen/Smith book just might be just the ticket.

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Where does the title come from? In the late 1800s, before laws forbidding the Chinese from coming to the US (yes, that did happen), Chinese immigrants would get established in the US, then send for relatives (usually a son of relatives wanting a better life for the child) who’d stayed in China. Papers would be purchased that confirm that the boys were indeed the children of the immigrants and they were admitted as their children. Thus the term, Paper Son. Sort of the 19^th century version of today’s ‘anchor babies.’

The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution

The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution, with a forward by Stephen Fry, is mostly a transcription of a conversation by the four most famous atheists of our time. The conversation took place on September 30, 2007, and the four horsemen are Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who wrote The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation; Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who wrote Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon; Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist who wrote The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. And Christopher Hitchens, a journalist and essayist who is probably the most famous of this group of thinkers, and he wrote God is Not Great. This conversation can be found on You Tube. The book was published after the death of Hitchens, but Dawkins, Dennett and Harris all provide short chapters before getting to the conversation. This book is really a short monograph, only 134 pages of fairly easy reading. If the topic of atheism interests you, this book deserves your attention.

As a short example about the content of the conversation, Dennett addressed the issue of faith: “Somebody plays the faith card. They say, ‘Look, I am a Christian, and we Christians, we just have to believe this, and that’s it.’ At which point – and I think this is the polite way of saying it – you say, ‘Well, OK, if that’s true, you’ll just have to excuse yourself from the discussion, because you’ve declared yourself incompetent to proceed with an open mind.” The conversation says a lot more about the topic of faith.

Harris says, “We know there’s more than we presently know and are likely to know.” Dawkins talked about a debate that he had in London with Rabbi Neuberger. “And she asked me whether I said grace in New College when I happened to be senior fellow. And I said, ‘Of course I saw grace. It’s a matter of simple courtesy.’ And she was furious that I should somehow be so hypocritical as to say grace. And I could only say, ‘Well, look, it may mean something to you, but it means absolutely nothing to me. This is a Latin formula which has some history, and I appreciate history.’ Freddi Ayer [a philosopher] also used to say grace, and what he said was, ‘I won’t utter falsehoods but I have no objection to uttering meaningless statements.’” Hitchens comments are plentiful and cogent throughout the book.

I know I've wandered, once again, far from your usual genre, and I promise to immediately get back on that horse.