Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Espionage

  • SOLSTICE SHADOWS: A VanOps Thriller, Book 2 by Avanti Centrae – Espionage Thriller/Suspense, Historical Thriller,

    SOLSTICE SHADOWS: A VanOps Thriller, Book 2 by Avanti Centrae – Espionage Thriller/Suspense, Historical Thriller,

    Something really nasty is afoot in the world as the Russians attempt to build a super quantum computer so powerful that it will be able to hack into America’s computer capabilities, bypassing even our most advanced protection and control or shut down every computer in the U.S.

    As we find out about halfway through Solstice Shadows: A VanOps Thriller, the second book in Avanti Centrae’s VanOps thriller series, they’ve run a test of their capabilities by using a prototype to shut down Manila in the Philippines, a city of nearly 14 million people. The test shuts off its electrical power, lights, traffic signals and causes its citizens to tear the city apart. A fine test case for its potential impact on the USA.

    All they need to complete their evil system is some rare superconductivity material that appears to have come from a meteorite that allegedly landed on Earth at roughly the same time as Moses led his people out of Egypt. The clue to its location is an ancient star map dating back to those times now in the possession of Maddy Marshall, the heroine of the VanOps’ first book. Also in her possession are slivers of the actual meteorite that she can activate with her mind, giving her the ability to meld with the ancient material and hurl deadly fireballs at an enemy.

    It’s a breathless chase across the world as Maddie, her twin brother Will, Maddie’s boyfriend Bear, and a female operative named Jag use the resources of VanOps, shorthand for Vanguard Operations, a secretive CIA unit to uncover the secrets of the star chart and discover whether the meteor even existed and if so where it might be located.

    Not only do the four have to constantly fight an assassin from Russia who mysteriously seems to show up wherever the quartet shows up, whether they’re in Egypt, Mexico, Morocco, and a host of other countries, but they have to deal with their own personal struggles. Maddie, for example, vacillates between attaching herself to both Bear and an ex-boyfriend. While Bear must handle his jealousy over Maddie’s attachment to her former boyfriend, Vincent. Will, Maddie’s twin brother, has to deal with the death of his wife while also being attracted to Jag who seems not at all interested in him.

    Aside from the fast-paced action, which shares some of Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” DNA through its chapter-ending cliffhangers and international intrigue, Solstice Shadows features some impressive research into extinct civilizations’ insights into astronomy and structures they built to track the movement of the stars. Be prepared for a physics lesson or two as well as some deep dives into the archeology of pyramids in Mexico and Egypt.

    Tying it all together is the not-improbable cyber-attack Russia could launch against the U.S. in the real world. The urgency of trying to find the superconductivity material to thwart a Christmas day attack provides the velocity of this smart, fast International thriller.

    Solstice Shadows: A VanOps Thriller won Grand Prize in the 2019 CIBA Global Thrillers Awards for high-stakes thrillers.  Find out more about the first book in the VanOps series, The Lost Power, here.

     

  • The QUISLING FACTOR by J. L. Oakley – Historical European History, Wartime Fiction, Historical Military Thriller

    The QUISLING FACTOR by J. L. Oakley – Historical European History, Wartime Fiction, Historical Military Thriller

    During World War II “quisling” became a byword for a particular type of traitor, one who not only betrays their own country but also actively collaborates with the invaders. The origin of the term was taken from an actual person, a Norwegian named Vidkun Quisling, who didn’t merely cooperate with the Nazis but actually headed a collaborationist regime in his own country.

    The Quisling Factor takes place in the immediate post-war period, as the Nuremberg Trials are gearing up in Germany. Norway is conducting its own post-war legal purge of collaborators at all levels of government.

    The story is a direct follow-up to the author’s award-winning World War II novel, The Jøssing Affair. This second novel focuses on the physical and emotional toll of war, and its precarious weight of peace on the survivors.

    While the events of J. L. Oakley’s latest novel directly relate to those in The Jøssing Affair, each book is quite capable of standing alone. The first one deals directly with the dangers of war, particularly for those who were part of the anti-Nazi resistance. The Quisling Affair is a peacetime story. While the novel definitely deals with the war’s aftermath, it also sits on the chilling crossroad between a spy thriller and Nordic noir, as the dangers faced by former intelligence officer, Tore Haugland, his wife Anna and his Norwegian family face in two directions.

    During the war, Tore was captured by the Gestapo, then tortured by Henry Oliver Rinnan, a Norwegian who ran a notorious organization that targeted resistance organizations in the Trondheim region. He is now scheduled to testify against Rinnan and his vicious gang. While those leaders are in prison, someone on the outside clearly does not want Tore to testify. His family is being threatened to perhaps block his testimony. There is also the possibility of betrayal from within. Not all of Tore’s Norwegian family is willing to accept his half-German, half-American wife as they are unable to separate their suffering at the hands of the Nazis from her heritage.

    This meticulously researched historical epic delves deeply into the traumas of all the survivors, whether military, resistance, or civilian, as well as peering into the abyss that lies between the horrors behind them and the hopefully brighter future ahead. The reader sees into Tore’s mind and empathizes with the way that his war continues to eat at him – and his heart that has chosen not just to survive but to love again.

    We highly recommend The Quisling Factor for readers looking for an exceptional post-WWII story, for a fantastic thriller with both espionage and domestic elements, and for anyone who loves Nordic noir and would like to see it set in another era. This book is a winner.

    The Quisling Factor won the Hemingway Book Awards Grand Prize for the 2020 Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards.

     

  • DEAD in DUBAI by Marilynn Larew; an international spy thriller

    DEAD in DUBAI by Marilynn Larew; an international spy thriller

    Larew has found a comfort zone in describing exotic settings, and her perspicacity for honing in on minute details gives her work a sense of authenticity. Through the eyes of her intrepid, intelligent heroine, we are treated to an insider’s view of locales like Dubai and Istanbul.

    In this second Lee Carruthers offering (The Spider Catchers provided the opening salvo), author Marilynn Larew again displays her prodigious knowledge of the international dealings in diamonds, deception and death that are hidden from the headlines.

    Employing her wry wit (“I disapprove of assassination, particularly my own”), Carruthers, a woman of a certain age (“my long brown hair had a few strands of silver”) is looking for a dead man. After quitting the CIA and vowing she wouldn’t go to Dubai to look for CIA operative George Branson, she is inveigled into doing just that by the appeals of Branson’s wife Cynthia, and possibly equally, by the little brass key that Cynthia gives her. Figuring out what that key unlocks will consume Carruthers; finding out why Cynthia plunges off a balcony to her death, and others will die while the hunt is on, will provoke far more troubling questions.

    Carruthers, a sort of female Bond, can identify a person’s borough of origin by his accent, and tell whether a man is an American or English by the way he takes his whiskey—with or without ice.  She knows where to get the best pastry, what wine to order, and in which Islamic enclave she can walk around without a head covering. She bribes passport control agents and befriends charming crooks. And she’s tough, always carrying a Glock, with a knife in a sheath on her leg.  She goes through several weapons in the course of this story, and uses a particular firearm to good effect occasioning one of the book’s better zingers: “Tears came to my eyes but they didn’t spoil my aim.”

    Carruthers is a person of principle, so when she gets caught up in a spy vs. spy morass, she keeps her own counsel and tries to do the right thing, though with the CIA and the Russian mafiya trying to outfox each other, she knows she may be seen as expendable. In the end, she has her ethics intact, a small bag of rough diamonds as compensation for her troubles, and some disturbing conclusions about who George Branson was, or is?—and who’s playing footsy with whom under the big table.

    In an age when national, ethnic and political identities and loyalties have blurred the lens of spy-craft, Larew’s heroine is right up to speed. And if the story line seems at times to move too fast and somewhat jerkily, it’s also true that there are few if any lulls in the action. Still, some readers may find the wrap-up final chapter rather mechanical, and may wonder why Carruthers, who keeps protesting that she quit the CIA in order not to be sent on dangerous assignments, hops on board for another missing-person case on the last page. But lucky for Larew’s readers that Carruthers accepts the assignments despite her better judgement.

    A sequel seems to be brewing that may perhaps reveal a softer side of Lee Carruthers. In this story there is a hint, but just: someone named Kemel, and a bloodstained pearl.

    Larew has built up steam with her fascinating femme-sometimes-fatale protagonist and her writer’s grip on the subtleties of international intrigue and double crossings that ratchets up the race against time in this spy vs. spy thriller.

     

  • CONFESSIONS of an ASSASSIN by Linda Heavner Gerald

    CONFESSIONS of an ASSASSIN by Linda Heavner Gerald

    Catherine Carnegie, daughter of the Black Sheep of the New York Carnegies, enjoyed the idyllic childhood of wealthy parents. She and her brother Nathaniel attended only the best schools and were cared for by a loving family retainer who made certain they never wanted for anything. However, when Catherine at age eighteen naively asserts her independence, choosing to go to the University of Alabama instead of a northern Ivy League school, her position in the household immediately becomes second-best to her Nat, who has chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps, attending Harvard. And though she has even severely disappointed her beloved grandfather, Catherine holds firm, leaving to attend a southern university to, as she envisions it, become her own version of Scarlett O’Hara.

    Thus begins a series of life-changing mistakes Catherine makes in the name of independence that will cause her heart-wrenching regret in her later years. Once at university, Catherine will come under the influence of a friend who urges her to go to work for a secret government agency. In the beginning, the work is glamorous and exciting. Eventually, though, Catherine will accept the assignment that almost destroys her life.

    Heavner begins this novel as a reminiscence by Catherine who, at fifty years of age, is looking back on a life of bad choices and regrets. She has become a woman who rarely leaves her house for fear of being “discovered” by the agency she worked for, or of taking an action that will cause them to eliminate her. She is tormented by the loss of the only man she has ever loved, and experiences frequent nightmares of the events of her past. As the story unfolds, Heavner hints at the possibility that Catherine’s salvation may come in the form of a package, the contents of which may free her from her pain, regrets, and grief.

    Although Heavner has employed the well-known literary device of telling her story in the style of a memoir, readers may become frustrated with the lack of action in the story, particularly in the early chapters. The story premise is unique and engaging, and many will find it fascinating, though they may become irritated with its obvious craft and editing flaws.