Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter

Marine sniper unit 2-2 is in country in SE -Stanland. Whiskey 2-2 and his spotter have been assigned to take out The Beheader, a charismatic Afghan warlord. Dressed as goat herders, they take a week to work their way towards this clown's town. The brass in the rear watch their approach real-time on satellite and Predator images when they see a squad of 6 in textbook ambush alignment approach and cut the spotter in half with that .50 Barrett monster. Whiskey 2-2 manages to crawl through the desert after taking out a few of the shooters and stays of task. He'll cry for his spotter later.

Watching his every move, the guys in the rear see him approach a small hotel where he can get a look down shot on Zarzi, the Beheader. Minutes later, the hotel is turned into a crater. Whiskey 2-2, the Marine's top sniper, is presumed to be among the remains of the 31 dead.

Fast forward six months. The sudden disappearance of that hotel resulted in an epiphany that turned Zarzi into a believer that the war is a lost cause and that the Afghans need to embrace the US if they want to survive. Zarzi has quickly become a political force and confidant of the US not to mention a media darling. He is on his way to the States to meet with the new President and other political heavies to announce his candidacy for the Afghan presidency.

FBI ass't director Nick Memphis is tasked with his safety. A bizarre message comes to light. Whiskey 2-2 is still on task and will do whatever it is to complete his assignment. Memphis asks his old friend Bob Lee Swagger to scope out just how a sniper would go about killing Zarzi.

What follows is an intense and delicate dance between Swagger, Whiskey 2-2, and what everyone now knows was a squad of mercenaries hell bent to also finish their task and take out Whiskey 2-2. But the real question is who is pulling the strings of these mercs? And how the hell do they manage to be right behind Bob Lee every damn time he gets close to Whiskey 2-2?

Memphis and Swagger sets traps with varying degrees of success to track back to just who could have authorized a missile hit on the Afghan hotel in real time.

This is Hunter's latest Bob Lee book and as you know, I am a devoted fan of the Bob Lee series. I thought iSniper and Time to Hunt were first rate yarns and this one sits right along side of those two. Actually laid down to read in bed last night and read deep into the night polishing off around 150+ pages of flash bang instense chases, counters, dodge, shoot outs, a peek behind the Predator curtain, a huge twist to the real intentions of The Beheader, and one jaw dropping revelation (plus a little comic relief of a cross country road trip by a Palestinian, a missile expert, and a programmer)

For me, Hunter is a can't miss for testosterone-laced thrillers. Bob Lee may be 65 now, but he is still THE MAN.

And so is Hunter.

That revelation? Let's just say the next book could begin near the end of 'The Sniper Strikes Back."

East Coast Don

California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker has been a favorite of mine, but this book tops the others. This was a story told in current times about a murder that took place in 1968. It was a story of two families in Tustin, California, one a working class family that was intact and functional, the Beckers. The others was a white trash family that was not functional, the Vonns. The children of the family are the same age. The Becker boys all make something of themselves. Perhaps the most charismatic was Clay who was killed in Vietnam, a pain that lived with all of the Beckers every day. Nick became a cop, Andy became a newspaper reporter, and David became a preacher. The novel is narrated by Nick. All of the Vonns begat trouble, but its Janelle who seems to have grown above the downward spiral that has the rest of the family in its grip. She wins a beauty contest, but has to forfeit her crown when she poses for the cover of Playboy, with more clothes on that when she won the title of Miss Tustin. She was only 19 when she was killed in the most gruesome manner, a gross decapitation. Parker briefly includes encounters with Charlie Manson and Richard Nixon, just to drop two names, and the plot involves the Orange County John Birch Society and the congressman they elect, Congressman Stoltz, who was also trying to help Janelle. Her murder is solved, but did they put the correct man in jail? This was a very good read with believable characters and fast action. This was good entertainment and gets my highest recommendation.

The Athena Project by Brad Thor

Rome, present day: Twenty Americans are killed on an Italian bus. A special Delta team is sent in to find the guy who supplied the bomb.

Paraguayan jungle, present day: a CIA operative find a grissly cache of bodies as well as a very suspicious container. All deep in the jungle.

outside Prague, late in WWII: The Nazis flooded a secret underground lab and then bomb its entrance.

Denver, present day: 2 FBI agents are doing a little moonlighting to catch this female Russian spy who is trying to get info on what secret government program is going on underneath Denver International Airport.

Croatian coast, present day: a brilliant theorectical physicist, but probably with manic-depressive disorder, takes up the invitation to create someone so big, it is beyond most people's understanding. Working in the nave of an old church, a long-dead Nazi project is resurrected.

Langley, VA, present day: a shadowy operative, Hutton, keeps his Delta team hopping from one task to the next to chase down the whereabouts of the Nazi's machine.

Ok, that's the basic setup. The Delta team is composed of four women. Hutton keeps the women hunting down clues in any number of exotic European locales all the while, expertly tying in various clues from home Paraguay and Denver. They are on the hunt for stolen electromagnetic pulse bombs that originated who knows where, but are said to be of eastern European origin.

To me, this was 2 stories. One is the basic plotting and what has to be done at the outset that despite some liberties taken regarding believabilty (the old Nazi device turn out to be a teleporter that can take me to San Diego. The thriller part of this was pretty good. Not his best, but decent, still.

Part 2 was the down time between assignments. I thought the dialogue sounded contrived and cliche. I kept waiting for the team to be sitting around a speaker phone saying, in person, "Good Morning Charlie." Between the ops they run, they sit around in evening dresses and drinking champaign all the while, wearing a glock holstered on their inner thigh, pestering each other about who needs to get laid by whom. That kind of dialogue got old by about pg 5. Really, the dialogue sounded like an early version of Charlie's Angles.

If you can get past the poor excuse for witty repartee , you might actually enjoy the plot. Tell me if you did or didn't like the dialogue. I guessing in the next book, he will have even more annoying females, shooting, and a bit of misdirection to tell his story. If he does, I'll pass.

Not sure there should ever be an Athena project as the main players in future books. Just keep Scot Harvath as the main character doing the heavy lifting and leave these Athena girls home.

East Coast Don

The Collectors by David Baldacci

This is the second book in a five-book series, and it involves the same four main characters as the first book, “The Camel Club,” which I already reviewed. But, some very interesting new people are introduced, and Baldacci does a great job with the development of those characters. This book presents two seemingly independent story lines which finally connect at about the half-way point. Annabelle Conroy is a confidence expert who had pulled together a team of people to steal a significant amount of money from Jerry Bagger, a casino owner in Atlantic City. Bagger is a bad man who does not tolerate anyone cheating him out of $1,000, but it is Annabelle’s intent to take him for much more, as revenge for Bagger’s murder of her father. Meanwhile, there is some espionage happening in D.C. with the sale of State secrets, but no one can figure out how it is happening. The members of the ever watchful camel club (Oliver Stone, the ex-CIA guy, now nearing 60 years old; Milton Farb, a man with a photographic memory; Caleb Shaw who works in the private reading room at the Library of Congress; Reuben Rhodes, another former spy type who brings some needed muscle to the team) are trying to figure that out. I thought the first half of the book was a bit pedestrian, but once the story lines came together, it was a good and worthwhile read. The interplay between Oliver and Annabelle was particularly fun, and it is Annabelle’s unfinished business with Bagger that sets up book three in the series. This may not be great literature, but it is worth reading on any airplane flight of more than a couple hours. I look forward to the third book.

The Camel Club by David Baldacci

Think of a carney yelling out on the midway of your local fair, “Ding, ding, ding – we have a winner!”

It is remarkable that we have not previously reviewed any Baldacci books, he the prolific writer in our own genre. So, I just chose a book, and jumped in. This is the first of five books in the Camel Club series. It’s the camel club because camels have great endurance and never give up. In the beginning, it consists of four men, Oliver Stone, Milton Farb, Reuben Rhodes, and Caleb Shaw. These are all older men who closely monitor the functioning of the government, especially the White House, from their apparently disenfranchised and impotent civilian positions. Each of the men has a special quality that he brings to the club, even though each seems so eccentric and useless. Alex Ford is a Secret Service Agent who is nearing retirement. (Think of Clint Eastwood in Absolute Power, another Baldacci story.) As a part of his security duties for the President, Alex has learned that Oliver Stone, who obviously is a bright and capable man with a mysterious past, is monitoring the White House from across the street in Lafayette Park. In the course of getting to know Stone, Ford has become impressed and realizes that Stone (a name that he has purposely adopted as a spoof that no one understands) is a valuable resource. This book involved a plot that brings the U.S. to the brink of nuclear war with the Middle East, and the North Koreans are involved, as well. I won’t give more away, but I’ll tell you that I’m immediately getting my hands on the next couple of books in the series, and I’ll be looking into the rest of Baldacci’s works. My only frustration with this book was that I was too busy to read it all in one sitting.

Black Light by Stephen Hunter

Back to a favorite – A Swagger story told in 3 parts. Does it get any better than this?

Part 1.

July 23, 1955. This is a big day. Earl Swagger awaits the parole of the young stud son of an army buddy who died in Earl’s arms on Iwo. Kid has potential and Earl has found him a job. That same morning, Earl, some search dogs, and a couple of slugs are on the prowl in the Blue Eye, Arkansas woods for a missing black teenage girl; which they find, raped, and dead for nearly a week. Jimmy Pye is released and meets up with his slow-witted cousin, heads for town, finds a planted gun, and waltzes into a big grocery store to commit a little armed robbery. Jimmy ends up killing 4 or 5 bystanders, but still manages to slip the dragnet and calls Earl wanting to give up. They agree on a remote cornfield where Jimmy decides he wants to go down in history as the guy who wasted the great Earl Swagger. Sorry pal, Earl is better, but Earl is wounded and when he calls in the shootout, he dies on the front seat of his cruiser. Add 3 more deaths to the day’s total. The surviving Swagger family goes into a tailspin.

Part 2.

Oklahoma, 1995. Lamar Pye is one of the worst of the worst lowlifes around, “not worth a turd on a hot day,” killing without remorse before dying in a maximum security prison. Oh wait, that was Hunter’s earlier book "Dirty White Boys." Russ Pewtie, the son of the Oklahoma deputy that caught Lamar, is a failed college student, sort-of a newspaperman, but he has an idea. Find out about that day Earl Swagger died at the hands of Jimmy who was the father of Lamar who screwed up his family. Father and son destroyed two different families. What a book it will make. To find out about Earl, he needs to talk to Earl's son, Bob Lee.

Part 3.

Bob Lee is 25 years out of Vietnam and still he struggles with his demons, but has at least beaten the bottle, so far. He lives quietly in the Arizona desert with his wife and 4yo daughter Nicky. Everyone in the town leaves him be, quietly laughing every time some reporter or producer tries and fails to get Bob Lee’s story. Russ, on the other hand, doesn’t want to tell Bob Lee’s story, he wants to tell Earl’s story.

Bob Lee begrudgingly agrees to help Russ and they head off for western Arkansas. Slowly, carefully, Bob Lee and Russ try to piece together seemingly obscure details about July 23 all the while being tracked by a cop who is reporting back to Red Bama, a local businessman cum organized crime jefe.

There are things from that terrible day that need to be kept secret. Bama tries everything he can to put roadblocks in the way of Bob Lee and Russ, but each time Bob Lee’s resourcefulness keeps them one step ahead of Red . . . barely . . . until Bob Lee’s methodical mind, and survival instincts, piece together a couple seemingly insignificant clues to the secret that Red feels must stay buried.

Yes, sir. Hunter has again put together a densely layered plot with enough blind alleys and unexpected twists to keep the reader firmly planted, book in hand, losing sleep. Hunter deftly weaves the underlying concept of intra-generational/familial evil into the investigation by Bob Lee and Russ. Bob Lee’s experience from his sniper days comes is critical to surviving in the Arkansas woods as they spiral down into the hole that Bama lives only to be lifted up to the surprising plot twists and the ultimate discovery of that awful secret that lead to Polk County’s worst day - when Earl Swagger was killed doing his duty. Hunter’s description of one particular instance, an ambush on a mountain road, actually raised my pulse rate and that almost never happens. Hunter has climbed up the ladder of my power rotation, now being firmly planted in my top 5: McCammon, Pelecanos, Hunter, Stella, Flynn. Eagerly awaiting my next Hunter book – Dead Zero (I'm #9 on a wait list of well over 100).

East Coast Don

High Life by Matthew Stokoe

In my attempt to look for a new author, I tried Matthew Stokoe’s novel High Life, which was mentioned twice in Ken Bruen’s book, The Dramatist. I’ve always liked Bruen’s many references to other authors, and this was an author that I didn’t know. With regard to Stokoe’s writing, Bruen wrote, “It was Chandler on heroin, Hammet on crack, James M. Cain with a blowtorch, and it matched my mood with a mild ferocity. The writing was a knuckleduster to the brain, a chainsaw to the gut. It not so much rocked as walloped the blood with a rush of pure amphetamine. The prose sang and screamed along every page, a cesspit of broken lives illuminated with a taste of dark euphoria. I felt downright feverish. How often is a novel like a literary blow to the system? I felt Jim Thompson would have killed for this. If James Ellroy had indeed abandoned the crime genre, then here was his dark heir.” Then, I was intrigued by a quote by Bruen from Stokoe, “Around me the world seemed to slip sideways and all the things in the room suddenly looked flat and sharply defined, like high resolution photos of themselves that were too intensely concentrated to recognize. I stood in a synaptic freeze and catalogued my idiocy.” High Life starts on the California coast in a public park in Santa Monica with a murder of a prostitute, Karen. She was married to Jack who had come to LA to make his fame and fortune as a television host, but who lost his way via his addictions and his fantasy world. The beginning of the story involved the one-year relationship of this couple and the police detective, Ryan, who thinks he can pin the murder on Jack. About 50 pages into this, I abandoned the book. While I don’t disagree with Bruen’s characterization of the writing, I could not get past two things. The first was the total coarseness, the crudity of the language. It’s not that I’m easily offended, but I usually find such vulgarity is a cover up for more clever and imaginative expression. Furthermore, the foul language was not just an occasional reference. Rather, it was nearly constant. My second problem with the book was the characters themselves. These were truly street people who were caught as they rapidly descended further down a death spiral. Perhaps the language was appropriate for the low-lifes that Stokoe was describing, but I just did not find that this book provided me with the entertaining escapism that I’m looking for.