“For more than half a century, there [was] no manned presence on the lunar surface. That was about to change …”
One of my fondest and most vivid read“For more than half a century, there [was] no manned presence on the lunar surface. That was about to change …”
One of my fondest and most vivid reading memories is my first reading of Tom Clancy’s THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, arguably English literature’s first techno-thriller. I recall holding my breath, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, and swallowing deeply as defecting Soviet submarine Captain Marko Ramius played a deadly silent game of hide and seek in the mountainous undersea terrain of the Reykjanes Ridge off the coast of Iceland. EAGLE STATION riffs on the same themes by moving that international chess match into the air, into space, and onto the surface of the moon, as a Sino-Soviet alliance wages covert (and officially undeclared but very, very hot) warfare (with extreme prejudice) against the USA over control of the lunar surface and the mining of the moon’s helium-3 resources.
There is no shortage of brilliantly exploited, fast-paced themes here to thrill even the most hard-core technology, political, and military junkies – hard-nosed international diplomacy; deployment of the recently created US Space Force; hard-core military tit for tat that treads ever closer to the boundary of a declared world war; high speed aerial battles; advances in weaponry that would make your head spin; and, of course, government decision making under the stress of all of these conditions.
EAGLE STATION is a snap to recommend to fellow readers and the latest nominee for my Top Ten of 2024 reading list.
On a side note as we rapidly approach the fateful November day on which the US will decide whether its future will include democracy and the rule of law, I shuddered when I tried to imagine a certain Donald J Trump in place of EAGLE STATION’s president, John Dalton Farrell. The possible results for the world as I pictured Trump making decisions in the same scenarios were simply terrifying. Food for thought … !
Some vintage Corey sarcasm, “The guy was a friggin’ camel jockey who probably couldn’t tell the difference between an ATM and a condom dispenser.”
At tSome vintage Corey sarcasm, “The guy was a friggin’ camel jockey who probably couldn’t tell the difference between an ATM and a condom dispenser.”
At the close of THE LION’S GAME, we all knew that Asad Khalil, a bloodthirsty and utterly ruthless terrorist, had made the Terminator pledge, “I’ll be back”. And here we have have it. In a nutshell, THE LION is John Corey vs Asad Khalil, aka The Lion 2.0, the grudge match. But the reality is that Khalil’s list is effectively a revenge packed laundry list of intended victims closing out with John Corey and his new wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield. Then he can get down to business with his intended finale, a large scale fundamentalist Islamic takedown of American culture, a memorable piece of terrorism intended as a reprise of 9.11, if you will!
THE LION is a 500+ page doorstopper version of Tag (The Death Match version). But despite the fact that the ending is predictable before a reader has laid eyes on the opening paragraph, it’s solid gripping entertainment and more than compelling enough to hold a John Corey fan’s interest from first page to last. Vintage Nelson DeMille and John Corey stuff that is easy to recommend to fans of the suspense thriller genre. Beyond that, there’s some pretty compelling stuff that will give thoughtful readers pause to consider the actual roots of Islamic terrorism. For example,:
“It started on April 15, 1986, when Reagan sent a bunch of fighter-bombers to blow the shit out of Libya. Asad Khalil lost his whole family in that bombing.” … “No shit?” … “I guess he’s still pissed off.”
“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breath“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breathtakingly credible, terrifying, provocative, heart-stopping, and predictably open-ended version of a concatenation of incidents, confrontations, political decisions, scenarios, sabre-rattling, threats and retaliations, and globally dispersed events that lead to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons in what would certainly escalate to WW III. At the close of the novel, the reader is left with no doubt as to what is coming and will almost certainly ask themselves whether there would actually be any historians or history books who would remain to analyze the events that brought about the horror!
On a side note – for me it was an open question whether Follett was making mock and lampooning politics in the US or portraying the danger that current right-wing neo-fascist and obstructionist knee-jerk Republicans pose to a fragile world peace. It doesn’t take much knowledge of the US political stage to know who a female president with a philandering husband and a demagogue blowhard male opposition candidate for the opposing party actually represent.
But I digress.
The bottom line is that NEVER has definitely been added to my Top 10 of 2023 list and, even more notably, to my short list of lifetime favourite novels. Obviously, recommended wholeheartedly without reservation for your reading enjoyment.
“This wasn’t soldiering … this was the intelligence field, …”
“… which apparently came chock-full of lies, dubious allegiances, ulterior motives, chang“This wasn’t soldiering … this was the intelligence field, …”
“… which apparently came chock-full of lies, dubious allegiances, ulterior motives, changing agendas, and everyone telling you what you wanted to hear while they were sticking the knife deeper into your black and blaming it on someone else.”
John Puller preferred soldiering. He was a Chief Warrant Officer, a combat veteran, and a special agent or military investigator with the US Army. His older brother, convicted of treason and national security crimes has inexplicably escaped from Leavenworth (not to mention killing someone on his way out the door). Despite the enormous potential for conflict of interest, the military and political powers that be assigned CWO John Puller as the best man to find his brother and bring him back to justice. In the course of the investigation, Puller’s digging reveals that there are darker operations at work and not everybody is prepared to see the truth of Puller’s original conviction and subsequent escape brought to light.
Of all of the David Baldacci novels – both series and stand-alone – this one seems to have reached the finish line as the weakest and least satisfying. The first two novels in the John Puller series, ZERO DAY and THE FORGOTTEN were better than this one although I had already expressed a certain measure of disappointment in THE FORGOTTEN. I described the characters as stereotyped, cartoonish and unremarkable. In THE ESCAPE, the problem continued and escalated. In addition, the story was too repetitive and too long (by at least 50 to 100 pages) and became simply pedestrian. Very un-Baldacci-like indeed.
I’m still a confirmed Baldacci fan and I’ve got lots of unread novels ready to go on my TBR shelf but I think I’ve reached the decisions to part way with the John Puller series if there are any further titles in the works.
“Politics is a dirty, ruthless business [that] makes the intelligence sector look relatively honorable by comparison.”
Ordering the assassination of a“Politics is a dirty, ruthless business [that] makes the intelligence sector look relatively honorable by comparison.”
Ordering the assassination of a foreign head of state is an impeachable offense for the president of the USA. And, when he reaches the decision to give that order, he has absolutely no doubt that the Senate would convict him if his orders came to light, all intentions directed to good will, good government and world peace having become irrelevant. Graduate readers of THE HIT, the previous novel in the Will Robie series, will understand that the director of the CIA is happy to send the USA’s finest undercover assassins to do the job if for no other reason than he believes the job to be a one-way suicide mission. Will Robie and Jessica Creel are on their way to North Korea but their paths will cross with an equally skilled assassin who has been sent by Kim Jong Un to the USA to avenge what their eastern minds have perceived as an unforgivable insult to their sovereignty and place in the history of the world.
I’ve yet to encounter the David Baldacci novel that wasn’t a successful, gripping page-turner and THE TARGET is no exception to that rule. Subject only to a desire to read his various series in order to get the most benefit from his character development and their back stories (and there is certainly plenty of that), I am still willing to pick up any Baldacci novel without bothering to refer to any back cover marketing blurbs. That said, THE TARGET is also particularly evocative in its rather gruesome depiction of daily life in the prison camp of totalitarian North Korea. If only half of what Baldacci writes is accurate (making allowances for the fact that there is clearly no love lost between the USA and North Korea), then life north of Pyongyang and the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula must be a Spartan and brutal affair indeed. The only word I can think of is “shocking”!
Well done and well worth the read. Thank you for another winner, Mr Baldacci. Definitely recommended.
“Sending a killer to catch a killer actually made sense.”
Jessica Reel is the hitman on a CIA black op. Charged with the elimination of an ultra-ra“Sending a killer to catch a killer actually made sense.”
Jessica Reel is the hitman on a CIA black op. Charged with the elimination of an ultra-radical Muslim that the American government cannot allow to take over the leadership reins of his government, Reel turns rogue and assassinates her handler. Two more hits of senior CIA staff make it quite clear that Reel has an agenda, that she is on a vendetta against the agency, and that she must be stopped. The government has selected Will Robie for the job, a highly skilled assassin with a record of success. One might say that the US government has tasked the best of the best with the responsibility of turning his sights on the elimination of the worst of the worst. “His mission: bring in Reel, dead or alive.” The unstated preference is unquestionably death with appropriate deniability and no line of proof of culpability leading to the CIA or the President and his Cabinet.
As Robie begins the deadly game of cat and mouse, hunter and prey, tracking down Reel, the questions and the puzzles begin to pile one on top of the other. It becomes clear that Reel’s attacks on the agency are her response to a much larger and much deadlier government conspiracy and Robie begins to question his orders.
If you’re after entertaining, gripping, thriller brain candy, then David Baldacci is definitely a good choice. While THE HIT is hardly what one would call Pulitzer Prize or Nobel Prize literary material, it’s definitely enjoyable and it convinced me to eagerly move on to the third installment in the series, THE TARGET. With all of the ongoing problems in the world, the seditious right-wing attempts to storm the US Capitol, and the Middle East still being a violent hotbed of political turmoil, I caution any potential readers that THE HIT will not be making you sleep any more soundly at night.
In passing, it occurs to me to wonder if a really cool assassin should be called a “hitster”!!
“Where did it start … how did the world ever get this crazy?”
I AM PILGRIM is a top flight, first class, genre-crossing thriller that will take your br“Where did it start … how did the world ever get this crazy?”
I AM PILGRIM is a top flight, first class, genre-crossing thriller that will take your breath away. It’s an espionage thriller, it’s a crime thriller, it’s a police procedural, and it’s a human drama. Two “investigations” run simultaneously. The first is a murder in which the murderer, drawing instructions in effect from a manual written by a retired top level US intelligence agent, has eliminated every possible piece of forensic evidence or clue to their identity. The second is a global battle of wits between a radicalized ex-Mujahideen Muslim terrorist and the most intuitive, most savvy, master spy that the USA has ever created (the author of that manual, wouldn’t you know!). The clock is ticking and the terrorist MUST be stopped before he releases a bio-weapon that is a literal existential threat for mankind!
I AM PILGRIM is a little heavy-handed in its use of stereotypes – misogynist, radicalized Muslims; über-wealthy Saudi-Arabians; sweaty, uncouth, sadistic Turkish police and jailers à la MIDNIGHT EXPRESS; brilliant US spies capable of deciphering the most obtuse puzzles and problems and their heroic ability to withstand torture that collapses mere mortals within seconds. But that said, the back-story outlining the reasons for the anti-hero’s radicalization and the love he clearly shows for his son through the novel’s climax make him a real person. For me at least, that mitigated the concerns I might otherwise have had for the Muslim stereotyping and only made me re-rate a superb novel down from five stars to four.
Sit back and relax. You’re in for a long ride. I AM PILGRIM is a doorstopper but it’s enjoyable from front to back. The details of intelligence tradecraft, by the way, are eye-opening and quite jaw-dropping. At the mid-way point of the novel, author Hayes takes the time to drop in a cautionary note that Saudi Arabia, the USA, and the Muslim world at large would be well advised to think about:
“A writer called Robert Louis Stevenson once said that ‘sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.’ He was right – so I say, pull up a chair and pick up your forks; the time is coming when we’ll all be chowing down.”
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