Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: David T. Isaak

SMITE The WATERS: The Isaak Collection by David T. Isaak – Terrorism Thriller, Conspiracy Thriller, International Mystery & Crime

Smite the Waters by David T. Isaak begins with the xenophobic billionaire Rex Atwater whose goal is to eliminate terrorism. His certainty that it’s “us” or “them” has led him to one horrifying conclusion: he must nuke Mecca.

Convinced of his twisted plot’s perfection, Atwater assembles a deadly team. Carla Smukowski is a military assassin mourning the death of her brother. Boyce Hammond works as a covert FBI agent deeply entrenched in a right-wing movement. And rounding out the cast is Gerald Graves, a nuclear expert willing to commit this heinous crime. Together, they vow to annihilate terrorism.

Virtually every character in this story is fully fleshed out, gritty and driven, to draw the reader deep into their individual stories.

Carla stumbles through a haze of alcohol, no job prospects and no money to fall back on. But even under the influence, she carries herself with violent prowess, showing the years of military action that have made her such a valuable operative for Atwater. And her dire straits are no position from which to refuse his offer—not that the rage over her brother’s death would let her anyway. Well-used to death, Carla drowns sympathy for the innocent under blood spilled by the guilty.

Hammond, after years deep undercover, wants out. But the chance to catch a man like Atwater is too great for his superiors to allow his return to his own life. Catching the FBI’s white whale means putting himself in greater danger than ever, and even the Bureau couldn’t have predicted the scope of Atwater’s plan. As he realizes the true global peril Atwater poses, Hammond has to put his own safety aside for the sake of countless others.

Dr. Gerald Graves is rescued from a rough and wrongful Patriot-Act empowered imprisonment and delivered the means to address serious nuclear disarmament—at least, as far as Atwater cares to tell him. Because, while some people can be paid enough to work any scheme, true believers in a mission are driven beyond their own sake. And as Atwater knows very well, that true belief can be directed to unparalleled violence.

This dynamic cast is a highlight of Smite the Waters. Readers of the thriller genre might be used to shadowy figures who forward the narrative without much character behind them, but in this book, every person has their reasons for being here—whether they stand with or against Atwater.

Smite the Waters careens like a nuclear bomb towards total disaster.

Atwater’s goal—the destruction of Mecca to shatter the Muslim world and remove it as a threat to America—spurs intrigue and tension alike. Thriller readers will obsess over every revealed detail, trying to intuit how the grand plan will play out as some forces move to make it happen and others work against the clock to prevent it. Highjacking a cargo ship full of nuclear waste from Indonesia, turning it into a destructive bomb, and delivering it to its intended target is all in the plan, but can it be executed?

Smite the Water by David T. Isaak is a thriller filled with action and intrigue that takes you on a complicated, perilous race. Along the way, it’s left to the reader to find out who it is that will reap the rewards, and who will suffer the consequences.

April 16, 2025
EARTHLY VESSELS by David T. Isaak – Metaphysical Fiction, Coming of Age, Mystical Fiction

In Earthy Vessels by David T. Isaak, Crystal Keeling encounters a mystical power that sends her on a journey of true chaos.

Crystal wasn’t necessarily seeking spiritual enlightenment on the streets of Manhattan, but there were certainly plenty of fools and charlatans peddling it back in 1969 – as well as both legal and illegal means of achieving ‘higher consciousness’ one way or another.

Fortunately – and unfortunately – for Crystal, the man who found her, cult leader Anton Reginald LaMarr, and his Children of Pan were the real deal, whether they knew it or not. They had discovered a ritual that could draw down the soul of a Hero, and planned to implant that Hero’s soul into Crystal – using the usual orgiastic methods.

Crystal was fine with the ritual sex but had not signed up for imprisonment and pregnancy. She ran far and fast and never looked back.

When she discovered that she really was pregnant despite the birth control regimen she religiously maintained, she took it in stride – as did all the other members of whichever commune or co-op she happened to be living in at the time.

The child, however, a boy she named Rainbow Bounty, rebelled against her counterculture lifestyle every bit as much as Crystal had rebelled against her conservative upbringing before him.

Thus, readers follow Rainbow Bounty, who calls himself by his initials RB, pronounced ‘Arby’, because having people in the early 2000s think you’re named for a brand of fast food is much better than advertising that your mother was and still is a ‘flower child’. Arby makes his way from a job in the oil fields of Bahrain to Portland, Oregon because his mother hinted that there is a life-threatening event on the horizon.

But she’s not the one whose life is about to be threatened and thrown off its course.

The ritual that gave Arby life is about to come crashing down on his head – one way or another – and the fate of the world rests on him reconnecting with the abilities of his past lifetimes.

Whether those abilities will help or hinder is a crapshoot of the highest order, because Arby isn’t the avatar of some long-dead Hero or God. That would be much too easy. Arby is, as he has so often been in his life, the avatar of chaos, the embodiment of Murphy’s Law.

Arby is destiny’s Fool, and his purpose is to cast all plans into disarray. Even his own.

Earthly Vessels, beginning as it does in the counterculture movement of the 1960s, reads with a sense of nostalgia for that brief era, and Crystal’s acceptance of and equally brief involvement with the Children of Pan fits right in with books of the time, from the Harrad Experiment to Stranger in a Strange Land.

As the story moves from Crystal to Arby, a different perspective emerges, as the reader learns Arby’s place in the post-9/11 world right along with him. Arby discovers his expected role at a compelling pace, as there are forces beyond his understanding searching for him – on both sides of the cosmic balance that human shorthand calls ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

The scope of Arby’s story, diving deeply into that longest of long-running battles, with avatars fighting on both sides of the divide, will remind readers of both Good Omens and American Gods.

Earthly Vessels is both a deep exploration of the philosophy of the cosmos and a compelling thriller in one breathless story.

Arby is a protagonist readers can easily empathize with, an Everyman who rises to an occasion he never dreamed was possible, doing his damnedest along a path he doesn’t fully understand.

This story will keep readers turning pages as fast as they can, from the first until the surprising, fitting, and delightful last.

April 24, 2024
A MAP Of The EDGE by David T. Isaak – 1960s, Coming of Age, Psychological Fiction

To say that fifteen-year-old Rick Leibnitz has had a difficult childhood would be an understatement. Abandoned by his mother when he was eleven and left with a physically and mentally abusive father, Rick’s teenage anger is justified in A Map of the Edge by David T. Isaak.

After a violent episode with his father, Rick is caught holding drugs for a girl he hopes to impress and is sent to a juvenile detention center. There, he refuses to capitulate to the demands of his jailers until his probation officer offers him not only a possible reprieve but also, for the first time in his life, listens to Rick’s problems.

When he is handed back to his father’s custody, his nightmare life continues until Rick is befriended by Lincoln Ellard. Linc finds Rick a place to stay after a vicious beating from his father, and the two quickly become inseparable, with Linc eventually bringing Rick in on his drug dealing business. In his adolescent mind, Rick has it made–drugs, girls, popularity, but the good times end abruptly when a rival drug dealer attacks Rick and Linc, leaving their relationship perpetually plagued. When a close friend nearly overdoses, Rick again finds himself in over his head.

The novel’s title perfectly sums up Rick’s predicament. He is on the edge of everything.

Rick hovers on the edge of adulthood in many ways. At fifteen, he is too young to get a job or to be on his own, stuck living with his cruel, angry father who takes out his own wasted choices on everyone else. Rick can remember the beatings his mother suffered, and he feels that her leaving him is justice for his lack of action to protect her. But now, he has become the target of his father’s wrath and can’t legally escape it. Eventually, he refuses to even try to get along with his father and chooses defiance, which leads to even worse treatment.

Not physically big enough to stand up to his father, he seeks an escape in alcohol and drugs, a decision which leads to his first sexual encounter with the girl whose punishment he took on himself. Both the juvenile detention and that encounter push him again closer to the edge of adulthood. He romanticizes his imprisonment as a chivalrous gesture that is sure to lead to a grateful and lovesick Stacy. When she refuses him after his release, he’s pushed beyond his emotional capacity and turns to self-harm in multiple ways.

After meeting Linc, Rick thinks his life is finally turning around.

Linc convinced Rick that the drugs they sell and use aren’t really hurting anyone but instead are expanding their thinking. The two of them skirt the edge of reality and LSD-induced illumination. For a time, Rick lives on this edge of 1960s teenage idealism. He parties, with others and alone, has sex with lots of girls, and makes excessive amounts of money with little effort. He listens to Linc’s pontificating, believing him to be enlightened and knowledgeable.

When the boys are attacked by rival drug dealers, Rick reaches the edge where the fun stops and danger becomes real. His entire perception changes, and he cleans himself up as he and Linc drift apart. When Lisby, one of Linc’s many girlfriends, tries to commit suicide, Rick finally takes the advice of his probation officer, Leo, seriously. As his only true champion, Leo has attempted to keep Rick on the straight and narrow throughout the novel, but it isn’t until this last near-tragedy that Rick seems to understand. While the edge is exciting, its precariousness leads to destruction.

March 20, 2024
THINGS UNSEEN: The Isaak Collection by David T. Isaak – Murder Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Mysticism

After the murder of his sister, Dr. Walker Claybourne journeys to the Yucca Valley to wrap up Claire’s affairs– including the investigation, in David T. Isaak’s mystery novel, Things Unseen.

As a geology professor at the University of California in San Diego, a leading authority on volcanic landforms of the Southwest, Walker lives a life as solid and routine as the very rocks he studies. He has his tenure, his condo, and his quiet existence. On sabbatical to write a textbook, Walker plans on staying in Claire’s rented house just long enough to pack her things. However, he isn’t there long before guilt sets in as he realizes how little he knew his only sister.

With his parents both dead and his only other sibling teaching at Cambridge, Walker realizes how very alone he is, and he decides to investigate Claire’s murder.

His initial stop with the detective covering the case leaves him more confused than enlightened, so Walker turns to Claire’s friends, a strange group of both mystics and intellectuals. He quickly begins to see the complex woman his little sister was– counselor, reformer, and spiritual pilgrim. As the mystery deepens, the questions yield a plethora of suspects, while Walker faces multiple attacks on himself. He gradually begins to questions his own beliefs and long-standing intellectualism the more he learns about Claire.

This novel offers a fresh and complex take on the journey of self-realization.

In the beginning, Walker is a well-established skeptic and intellectual. His entire existence is built upon scientific observation and proof, the kind one can see and touch. He absolutely refuses to believe in the psychic visions of Claire’s friend Mandy or the Wiccan glamour spell entrancing him to another friend, Melanie.

Where Claire is passionate, seeing the power in the beautiful and often deadly landscape surrounding her, Walker is coldly calculating, analyzing those measurable traits easily explained by his many years of study and research. He admits that his life has been about endurance, a “doggedness” that has gotten him both his tenure and his lack of true friends.

However, Walker knows this stubbornness is exactly what he needs to keep him on the scent of Claire’s killer.

The more Detective Bolles pushes against his investigation, the more resolve Walker has to understand Claire and make up for all the years he’d wasted. He often wonders if his newfound obsession with knowing Claire’s mind and inner circle is healthy, or just a way of assuaging his guilt with the thrill of achievement in finding her killer.

However, this very uncertainty is, in itself, personal growth for Walker. As a goal-oriented man, he is always clear in his expectations and desires, but by investigating his fierce, loyal sister, he steps out of his “normal,” and likens the experience to his brain splitting and evolving.

Along the way, Claire’s friends and eventually Claire’s presence– whether in his mind or as a true spirit– convince him not to ignore the things for which he has no real explanation.

Walker begins to think that his years in academia have just been a way to hide rather than face life head-on as Claire always did, and he begins to truly notice the little details he sees every day. While Walker isn’t sure what the correct life path is, he no longer believes it’s simple. The path to truth, just like the mystery of Claire’s death, is a winding mixture of factual and spiritual, but one full of strong friendships and deep devotion.

March 6, 2024