Thriller

I could not wait for this book to end. It just got so tedious. Thor keeps calling someone “the Green Beret” or “the CIA chief” as if we, the reader, can’t remember. Ending was trite and anticlimactic. ( )

As usual, non-stop action, with no regard for laws. After stopping most of a terrorist attack on U.S. spoil, Scot is sent to exfiltrate an ISIS operative in Libya, when things go wrong and the bad guys almost win. Meanwhile, ISIS continues to mount escalating attacks in Europe, with rising death tolls. There is also treachery going on in Washington D.C. in the ranks of the CIA, forcing the intervention of Nicholas and the Carleton Group. Scot backtracks the Libyan terrorist to his contacts in Sicily/Italy, where he meets up with an old ally, from the Carabinieri, who seems to want to operate lawfully. I think there were too many plotlines and the ending seemed a bit abrupt. ( )

Great character development. Great thriller. ISIS & European ops.
LOVE behind the scenes at the end of his audio book. ( )

Rating: 2.5* of five

Look, I know I'm not a Brad Thor demographic denizen. I'm so far left of the Democrats that hailing frequencies frequently fail to open, while Thor is a darling of Aynholish people with whom I share nothing but the right to trial by a jury of my peers. His politics appall me. His writing, though, isn't bad. He crafts a sentence that leads to another in an agreeable and steady way.

Well, gawddam if he shouldn't, since this is his SEVENTEENTH Scot Harvath novel. The appeal of shoot-'em-ups is they draw lines and fill in borders with clear, dark colors. People Thor doesn't like are "the Tajik" or "the street thug." Depersonalizing those one wishes to deprive of complexity and therefore humanity is effective. The reader isn't troubled to learn pesky things like names, only labels applied for the brief moment that construct is allowed to exist before dying at some noble American's skilled and dextrous hands or lushly described armaments.

These books are covered by the right to free speech. They do not directly incite the reader to violence against those he is likely to see in his insular life. Instead they validate the less-than-humanity of groups, ethnicities, social outcasts that Thor knows his readers don't want to see as more substantial than paper targets at the shooting range. As such, they contribute to a national crisis of empathy among the lowest segments of society: The political conservatives, the white nationalists, the evangelical apologists for the crimes of the others.

I read it. I can't say that, as a plotting and writing example, it was any worse than most and considerably better than many books that fly off booksellers' shelves. But I feel defiled by the contemptuous, arrogant, and entirely unwarranted high opinion these characters and their readers have for themselves and each other. ( )