I recently heard Brad Thor describe his novels as “faction,” a portmanteau of fact and fiction. Rising Tiger begins with a factual battle between Chinese and Indian forces in the Galwan Valley of the western Himalayas, where China and India … Continue reading Rising Tiger | Book Review
Jack Reacher is working as a deliveryman in Boston when he witnesses a kidnapping at one of that city’s numerous institutions of higher learning. Reacher being Reacher, he intervenes, killing the kidnappers as well as a city cop who just … Continue reading Persuader | Book Review
How does a journalist report crime when the government is run by criminals? That’s not a philosophical question for John Russell; it’s an existential one. Russell is an English expatriate working as a reporter for a liberal German newspaper in … Continue reading Wedding Station | Book Review
I have read every Jack Ryan novel Tom Clancy ever wrote. At least I thought I had until I decided to re-read The Hunt for Red October. It turns out I had confused the movie with the book, so my … Continue reading The Hunt for Red October | Book Review
Slough House is the seventh novel in Mick Herron’s series about a department of agents MI5 doesn’t want but can’t fire. It is also the darkest and best installment. You can read it as a stand-alone, but trust me, you’re … Continue reading Slough House | Book Review
Mick Herron’s Slough House is where MI5 deposits the spooks it wants to fire but can’t, hoping they will quit out of shame, boredom, or fear of Jackson Lamb, the unhygienic Cold Warrior who rules the place like a personal … Continue reading The Catch | Book Review
Joe Country is the eighth installment in Mick Herron’s series about a motley group of disgraced agents whom MI5 cannot fire outright, so it sends them to Slough House instead and hopes the boredom of their tasks there grinds them into … Continue reading Joe Country | Book Review
Mick Herron’s Joe Country comes out on June 11, 2019, and features the usual suspects from Slough House, where MI5 sends the incompetent agents it can’t fire outright but would like to resign. I eagerly anticipate its publication, as Herron is easily one of the best suspense writers currently in operation—and funny to boot. The events of The Marleyborne Drop, a Slough House novella, take place between London Rules and Joe Country. Solomon Dortmund, a pensioned Cold War asset, thinks he has witnessed a drop—an exchange of intelligence between an asset and her foreign handler—and informs his own semi-retired handler, John Bachelor. … Continue reading The Marleyborne Drop | Book Review
Midnight Line, Lee Child’s previous Jack Reacher novel, was a page-turner, but it left me wondering whether Reacher was getting a bit old for all the action Child put him through. I gave it a four-star review, but to be honest, I promised myself I would give Child only one more chance to keep my interest in Reacher. Past Tense kept my interest. The novel has three storylines. One, Reacher finds himself in Laconia, New Hampshire, where his dad was born and raised. The only problem? There’s little trace of Stan Reacher there. Two, while searching for records of his dad, … Continue reading Past Tense | Book Review
London Rules is the fifth book in Mick Herron’s acclaimed Slough House series. Slough House is where MI5 houses agents it can neither fire nor put in the field, hoping they quit of their own volition instead. And it’s governed by a profane unhygienic Cold Warrior named Jackson Lamb who keeps things running, if not altogether smoothly, and not without a bit of blackmail of the higher ups. In this installment, there are terrorists loose in England; political shenanigans involving an MP, the MP’s pundit wife, the Prime Minister, and the PM’s favorite Muslim politician. On top of that, someone’s … Continue reading London Rules | Book Review
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