Tag Archives: thriller

September 12, 2012

Book Review: COAST: An Act of Burial

 “The name of the ship is the Fort William” said Sutton, passing McKinley an intelligence dossier. “Royal Fleet Auxiliary supply vessel. We’ve just got hold of what appears to be the wreck site on satellite so finding it won’t be a problem and we can confirm details as you travel. We need to get you down there to secure her cargo. That’s your absolute top priority; we’ll let the Navy figure out what took her down.”

“Two questions sir,” responded McKinley. “Why us and why is the cargo sensitive?”

“Twenty seven thousand ton ships don’t just vanish with no time to send a mayday and, as far as we can tell, no survivors. Random attack? Accident?” The general spread his hands. “We don’t know. But something serious happened at about 02:00 GMT and we can’t ignore the possibility of a hostile action.”

McKinley looked at his watch. It was 04:18. No wonder the morning’s rush.

Sutton glanced behind McKinley to where there was a clock above the soundproof door. “Yes,” he continued, “time’s a factor. We need to get to the cargo before anyone else and we need to keep an ultra-tight lid on the situation. The ship was carrying four WE82 Trident warheads for a submarine that’s not supposed to exist. So it’s definitely not supposed to be in the Persian Gulf with armed missiles in range of the Iranians either. This is above top secret McKinley. Apart from the Joint Forces Command and a handful of admiralty at Faslane who are going mad right now, no-one knew about this, not even the captain of the Fort William. Why your lot? Yours is the only complete team I can deploy at the moment and, like I said, this needs to be completely secret. Not a whisper to the Saudis, the Bahrainis and never mind their neighbours across the gulf; no-one. The Navy are sending a destroyer but it’ll take nearly a day to get there and I can get you on site and working in less than nine hours.”

 Xander Richards. Coast: An Act of Burial (Kindle Locations 305-320).

 

 

I have a love-hate relationship with thrillers. I love when the action is intense, but I hate when the story telegraphs the suspense to the point that you see things coming. Finding a balance is not easy for all but the best authors. There is a certain finesse that usually takes time and practice to achieve, but when the author gets there, the books can be magnificent. Continue reading →


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January 16, 2012

Book Review: Raw Vengeance

“Why did he do it?” Rich asked Rhonda, hoping she would see the implications.

“What? Go after the mayor? He’s pissed he got the axe, that’s why.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Rich said, trying to get his point across. “He posted a farewell message online and drove slow enough on the freeway for us to catch up. The Mustang could have done well over a hundred seventy-five, but he kept it at one hundred, and he wasn’t wearing any armor. Wes wanted this to happen. He wanted to kill the mayor, but this looks like a classic case of ‘death by cop.’ This was a message.”

She nodded without saying anything.

 

 

Sometimes anger results in immediate action. Sometimes it sits, and festers until it boils over.  Raw Vengeance, by Josh Handrich, is a novella that introduces us to Rich Fordham, and ambitious young reporter looking for his big break. The streets of Chicago have lost their appeal to him and he knows he has to get abroad if he's going to make his name in the world, but he didn't count on the spiral of anger that he would get caught in as he sought his big story. If he gets the story it could be the on that puts him on the world stage, but one wrong move and he goes from reporting the story to being the story.

 Raw Vengeance is a short read with a quick pace that follows Rich Fordham along with a collection of surrounding characters that feed the story itself. I liked the story as it is, but I would have loved it in a longer format so that I could have gotten more involved with the characters instead of getting only a quick feel for who they were. The author introduces a number of characters using well-known archetypes with a splash of color that he introduces to make them something a little different from the standard. If future books in the series are going to be succesful the characters will need more fleshing out, especially Rich, who is the nominal hero of the story.

The pace moves along at a decent page and keeps the reader guessing about exactly what is going on and what is going to happen, which makes the story an enjoyable page turner. However, there are some leaps that come out of left field and left me scratching my head. As nice as it is to be surprised when reading a thriller, it is much more enjoyable when the reader is able to look back and say, "ahhh, I wondered what all of that was about," and this story falls a bit short in that sense. Raw vengeance has a wealth of surprises, but a dearth of suspense.

If you're planning a lazy weekend of reading, then this is a great book to start with, and it is well worth the $0.99 e-book price on Amazon.com.

 

LINKS:

Josh Hadrich's Home Page


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August 30, 2011

Book Review: Pandora's Grave

 He had felt the evil of the place from the moment they had arrived. Something palpable, something he could sense in the very air.

And now it had manifested itself in the body of the young man at his feet. Young man? Little more than a boy, really. One of the college students that had followed him to this godforsaken land, chasing the opportunity of a lifetime. Opportunity...

The Israeli straightened, rising to his feet, looking around at the few that were left. "He's dead," he announced flatly, stating the obvious.

"What--I mean, what happened?"

He looked up into the light green eyes of the young woman in front of him, eyes now filled with tears. She was on the verge of breaking. As were they all. Somehow he had to keep them together. Somehow...

"I have no idea, Rachel," he replied, his voice little more than a whisper.

When I was younger I read little outside of fantasy and science fiction, but my mother turned me on to The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy and it ended up adding another genre to my repertoire of reading: the military espionage thriller.

Stephen England's Pandora's Grave is an excellent thriller in the same tradition of Clancy, with plenty of action, twists and turns and a glimpse into the world of espionage where trust is a commodity none can afford and lies are the currency of the trade. When the members of the CIA's National Clandestine Service are sent in to rescue a group of archaeologists who had discovered something that should have been lost to the annals of history, everything goes wrong and the only obvious answer is that there is a traitor in their midst. Finding a spy hidden amongst spies proves difficult, but when the world is heading towards war there isn't enough time to play it safe. Harry Nichols, the head of the National Clandestine Service's Alpha Team is the main focus of the story, but the author weaves in all of the other characters with a deft touch that makes them all stand out as individuals and makes each of them believable. The characters compliment and reinforce the story itself which is embellished with technical details and action sequences that draw you into the book completely. I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of this book in print or in electronic format. Please visit the author's website at http://www.stephenwrites.com/. Buy in print HERE. Or electronically through AMAZON or SMASHWORDS.


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