It’s 1979 in West Berlin and Helen Abell is an aspiring CIA agent. However, thanks to sexism she has beeSafe Houses?!? More like DANGER HOUSES!!
*ahem*
It’s 1979 in West Berlin and Helen Abell is an aspiring CIA agent. However, thanks to sexism she has been relegated to managing the agency’s safe houses in the city rather than doing any field work. Determined to prove herself, Helen is going the extra mile by checking out one of the houses after hours when she accidently overhears two incidents. One is just strange, but the other is criminal. Helen soon finds both her career and her life at risk, and she finds herself using her spy training against her own people to save herself and expose the truth. The repercussions of what happens in Germany in 1979 are felt in a small town in Maryland 35 years later with a brutal double murder, and a confused young woman seeking answers with the help of an investigator who has his own secrets.
This was a freebie I picked up Bouchercon back in the Before Times, and it’d been sitting in the To-Read pile ever since. I’m glad that I finally picked it up because the story that mixes some Cold War era espionage stuff along with the tone of a modern crime thriller with some conspiracy theory vibes was familiar enough to be comforting, but different enough to keep me guessing.
I particularly liked what the author did with Helen by making her feel fully fleshed out as bright and ambitious, but also extremely pragmatic and often frustrated with her situation. She makes for a great lead in the 1979 portion of the book.
It’s a satisfying mix of the spy and crime genres, and the investigation portion has plenty of good twists and turns as well although I can’t say much because of spoilers. Overall, it's a solid page turner that kept me engaged the entire time....more
Joe Hayward is at a seedy motel to confront the man he believes is having an affair with his wife. UnfortuIt’s like the TV show 24. But with sex toys!
Joe Hayward is at a seedy motel to confront the man he believes is having an affair with his wife. Unfortunately, Joe walks into the middle of an elaborate covert operation to stop some kind of super weapon, and thanks to his interference the city of Philadelphia might be doomed in a matter of hours. Now Joe has to rush to save the city with the guy he fears his wife is sleeping with.
I had a lot of fun with this one. The ticking clock mixed with flashbacks telling how all these characters ended up in this situation works really well, and there’s a good sense of humor that capitalizes on the over-the-top nature of the entire plot. The art adds to the action and sense of increasing desperation. It’s also nice to be able and sit down a read a quick and complete four-issue comic story....more
If this is love then I’d hate to see the Russian idea of hate.
The Soviets have suffered several espionage losses so they decide to run an elaborate opIf this is love then I’d hate to see the Russian idea of hate.
The Soviets have suffered several espionage losses so they decide to run an elaborate operation in which they’ll kill British agent James Bond in such a way that will embarrass all of English intelligence. The two big pieces of cheese in this mousetrap are a code machine used by the Russians and a beautiful code clerk named Tatiana Romanova who doesn’t realize what kind of pawn she actually is. Will Bond take the bait? Well, he is James Bond, and did I mention that that Tatiana is a beautiful woman? Yeah, take a guess how this goes.
I’m a big fan of Bond on film and generally like those a lot more than the Fleming novels I’ve tried. With this one being the basis for one of the best Bond movies I didn’t find anything to change my mind about that. Bond is usually a bastard in both forms, but there’s something even worse and apt to make me roll my eyes in the way that he’s even more of a privileged sexist bigot on the page then any time on screen.
Plus, the structure of this novel is just weird. It’s only 191 pages, but Bond doesn’t show up until halfway through it. Instead we spend a lot of time getting all the details about how the Soviets came up with this plan. Even when Bond finally appears we get a long segment about how he’s been bored at the office and what his domestic life is like when he's not killing people or having sex. Another problem is that since we’ve been told in detail exactly what trap awaits Bond there’s not a lot of mystery for the reader even when 007 is trying to figure it out.
Although to be fair, the movie also lays out the plan, but there it’s done much more quickly so that Bond gets involved much sooner. In fact, the basic plot beats from the book are used in the film, but the film did a better job of pacing and adding action to the mix. Since I do like the movie a lot I guess that means the basic plot works as long as it moves briskly.
Still, it is one of the classic Bond stories, and there is some charm to this including some spy vs. spy games in Turkey. It also has a top notch thug in the form of Red Grant, a psychopath from the United Kingdom who defected to Russia and became their chief executioner. If there was more of him in here I think I would have liked it more....more
It’s the early ‘50s and British intelligence is worried about unusual activity in Marseille’s underworld so they send one of their elite agents to cheIt’s the early ‘50s and British intelligence is worried about unusual activity in Marseille’s underworld so they send one of their elite agents to check it out, but 007 is murdered. His replacement? A young man named Bond. James Bond.
Anthony Horowitz already wrote one retro Bond novel based on some unused Ian Fleming material with Trigger Mortis. Here, he takes us even further back to give us the story of Bond’s first mission after earning his license to kill. Bond finds himself trying to unravel a dastardly scheme as he encounters colorful characters like a morbidly obese Corsican mob leader, a wealthy American businessman, and beautiful ex-British agent who has become a major player by running her own freelance espionage business. Along the way Bond does a little gambling while wearing a tuxedo, drinks some martinis, has a bunch of sex, and kills some people. So Bond got a pretty good idea of what his job would be like early on.
Bond fans will find a lot to like here, especially those whose favorite film version is Sean Connery because that’s the vibe Horowitz is going for. As in Trigger Mortis he cleverly skirts the problem of Bond coming across as a dated jerk by leaning into it and actually having Bond be a dated jerk in many ways. The thing that makes it tolerable is that he’s usually called out for it so it still lets Bond be the classic bastard he usually is without feeling like his behavior is being excused.
So you’ve got all the classic elements in an action filled story that provides an old school origin story. It’s a good dose of Bond to fill the time until the next movie finally gets made....more
Velvet comes to Washington D.C. as part of her effort to clear her name and expose the conspiracy that set her up. To do this she’ll need to blackmailVelvet comes to Washington D.C. as part of her effort to clear her name and expose the conspiracy that set her up. To do this she’ll need to blackmail Gerald Ford and kidnap Richard Nixon.
And I thought Jason Bourne was dangerous.
I gotta admit that I was a little let down by this one. Velvet is still an awesome character as a middle-aged lady spy kicking ass, and the artwork continues to be top notch as we see her get into a variety of situations that would make great action scenes in any blockbuster movie. Yet as we wrap things up the plot starts to collapse under the weight of it’s spy-vs-spy machinations with so many betrayals and twists that even John le Carre would need a flow chart to keep track of all of it. Frankly, I’m still kinda confused as to why the entire thing happened to begin with.
The ending also seems to indicate that there will be more Velvet at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet so it’s kind of unsatisfying. Although I guess there is a TV series in development so maybe that’ll motivate Ed Brubaker to return to this at some point.
Still, the three volumes that made up this story were some great comics that were well worth reading, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that we see Velvet return in a slightly more coherent story someday. ...more
What happens when you put time travel, magic, quantum physics, witches, a top secret military operation, alternate timelines, Vikings, a family of shaWhat happens when you put time travel, magic, quantum physics, witches, a top secret military operation, alternate timelines, Vikings, a family of shadowy bankers, and government bureaucracy in one book?
As you might expect, things get complicated.
The story begins with the written account of Melsianda Stokes, a woman from our present who has become stranded in London during 1851. Mel tells us how she’s an expert in ancient languages who was stuck in a dead end academic career until she is recruited by military officer Tristan Lyons to take part in a top secret effort translating old documents that make repeated references to magic being done by witches. Mel learns that magic was indeed once real, but that it ceased working in the mid-19th century. Now Tristan is leading the government’s effort to bring it back.
Mel and Tristan are able to determine what what caused the death of magic, and with the help of a physicist and a very old witch are able to get it working in a very limited fashion. The government demands an immediate practical application to justify the taxpayer expense and using magic to send people back in time to alter events in a way beneficial to the US meets that criteria. However, changing the past turns out to be harder than everyone thought with multiple trips required to make the revisions in several timelines, and causing a paradox has immediate and dire consequences. Soon Mel and Tristan are part of a growing covert department that sends operatives to the past to recruit a network of witches and perform complex missions to make subtle changes, and they find themselves working for infuriating bureaucrats who think they can control everything with PowerPoint presentations and policy memos.
That’s a very boiled down summary which is what you have to do when reviewing a Neal Stephenson novel because as always there’s layer upon layer that you could write essays about. The explanation as to why magic stopped working alone gets into a whole Schrodinger’s cat thing about how observation collapses quantum wave functions which is then tied into the rise of technology like cameras. Throw in the usual Stephenson digressions like an explanation of the sexual harassment policy related to issues like wearing codpieces, and you get one of his typical kitten squishers.
Stephenson isn’t flying solo on this one, and although I haven’t read co-author Nicole Galland I could sense that this was a bit more reined in and scaled down from his usual thing. Still, you can see stray bits from other works, and one of the big sci-fi aspects seem drawn directly from one of his other books. Which means that if you’ve tried Stephenson and get irritated with his quirks then you’re probably not going to like this. Usually I love a big fat Stephenson novel for its tangents and offbeat nature, but I found myself tapping my toe with impatience a bit during this one.
The second act of this book is mainly concerned with the ‘rise of D.O.D.O’ part of it, and it’s told in a series of emails and policy directives which gives us the picture of how a government agency dedicated to time travel would take shape. I’m usually interested in things about how big projects come together and this also lays the groundwork for ‘the fall’ piece by showing the development of David Simon Syndrome in the way that any large institution will almost inevitably become about projecting the image of competence rather than risk failure by doing the job it was created for in the first place. In this case the narrow vision and arrogance of those in charge also leaves them vulnerable to threats from within.
I get what the authors were going for there, and there’s also some good humor laced throughout that part. Yet it just seems to go on for too long, particularly since we know big trouble is brewing because of Mel being stuck in the past.
Secondly, for all the explanation and set-up for how the time travel and magic stuff works we never really know WHY it’s being done in the first place. There’s some mention about the government having indications that others are time traveling and changing things so that would be motivation yet we never get enough detail on that. Plus, no one stops to question whether they should be doing this at all which seems like a glaring oversight. Even when they see first hand the catastrophic results when too big of a change happens they don’t hesitate for a second. With poorly defined motivations this seems especially foolhardy.
It also seems as if the schemes ignore common sense and get ridiculously complex. For example, the first mission is for Mel to travel back to Puritan controlled Boston and obtain a copy of a book which will be incredibly rare in the future. This is supposed to be proof of concept as well as a fundraising expedition. Fair enough. Since the time travelers can take nothing forward or back with them Mel has to get the book sealed up tight and buried near a rock that still exists in the present. She also has to do this multiple times to force the change through the various time strands to the one they’re in.
A problem occurs when her strands undergo a shift that has a new factory built on the spot in the past so that she can’t bury the book in the location they originally pick. So they start a second campaign which involves Tristan going back to London to shift the investor from building that factory, and again, he has to do this repeatedly to get the change to stick in their timeline.
Sooooo….Why not just come up with another location for Mel to bury the book rather than go through the effort of a second mission that requires trips to the past? It’s not even discussed that I remember, and it seems like a much simpler solution to the problem.
That’s kind of the issue overall with this one for me. While it had a lot of stuff I loved (view spoiler)[like a Viking raid on a Wal-Mart (hide spoiler)] and a lot of deep thought was put into the concept it seems like the obvious was often overlooked. I also wasn’t crazy about the ending that seems to be more sequel set-up than resolution.
Generally I liked it, but it wasn’t the usual home run of a book I’ve come to expect from Stephenson. More like a solid double....more
007 returns to his roots with this story set in the late ‘50s that begins with the spy tryinBond. James Bond.
And a very old school James Bond at that.
007 returns to his roots with this story set in the late ‘50s that begins with the spy trying to save the life of a British race car driver who has been targeted by the Soviet’s deadly SMERSH division, and this leads to a plot created by evil Korean millionaire Jason Sin against the American space program. Along the way Bond meets a mysterious and beautiful woman named Jeopardy Lane who also has a keen interest in the activities of Sin.
I’ve only read a couple of the original Bond books so I’m much more familiar with the movie version of the character, but this does seem like one of the old Ian Fleming novels. Since Anthony Horowitz credits a unused outline that Fleming wrote as part of a never made TV series as an inspiration for this book it’s no surprise that it’s got a lot of the old Bond flavor to the story.
This creates a bit of a dilemma in that Bond in his original incarnation is kinda horrifying when you apply modern standards to him. At first it seems as if Horowitz was just going to let Bond be the same kind of guy he was as written by Fleming with the book starting shortly after the events of the Goldfinger novel. Bond is shacked up in London with Pussy Galore, a lesbian he *ahem* cured by banging her straight, and now she’s making him breakfast and has a cocktail waiting for him when he gets home after a hard day of spying.
All of that seems pretty cringe worthy at first until you realize that Horowitz is actually showing how their relationship isn’t working, and there’s a pretty hilarious moment when Pussy turns the tables on him. Likewise, there’s a scene in which Bond meets an old acquaintance who is a homosexual, and it’s clear that James has a history of being horrible to this guy because of it. However, the character gets to rip into Bond in a speech that Fleming would never have done.
So Horowitz manages a tricky tightrope walk of presenting Bond as the type of man he was as originally written while pointing out all his failings and still somehow making him heroic despite those flaws. Even the villain Jason Sin gets a backstory that humanizes him, and his portrayal is done without the racism that tarnishes older Bond books.
Overall this is an entertaining retro version of a James Bond story that is kind of bonkers but fun. If you like the Fleming books or the Sean Connery movies like Dr. No and Goldfinger then you’d probably enjoy this....more
(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at firs(I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
I’ve read a lot of John Sandford novels so I was a little confused at first when there wasn’t a serial killer on the spaceship.
In the year 2066 telescopes spot what can only be an alien ship near Saturn as it docks with a previously unknown object in orbit. The governments of the United States and China both want to get there first which leads to a rushed program to quickly put together ships capable of making the long journey. Political tension and potential sabotage make the voyage into space even more dangerous as crews from both nations race to Saturn.
Sandford (Real name John Camp.) regularly puts two new crime thrillers on the best seller’s list every year so it seems a little odd that he’d forgo one of them to team up with photo-artist Ctein to do a pure sci-fi novel. However, Sandford’s bio and his books have also highlighted his interest and knowledge of subjects like art, photography, archaeology, surgery, and computer technology so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that his mind might turn to this kind of book outside his normal genre.
There’s an authors’ note at the end in which they explain that the core of the idea was based on needing to get to Saturn in a certain time frame. From the details in that you can tell it was the focus of their thinking on how come up with some realistic near-future spaceship propulsion methods. By working up a couple of different ways to accomplish this they set up a kind of tortoise and the hare race between the Americans and Chinese which also helps set up the drama to the story. (The authors’ note also provides a very satisfactory answer as to why they decided to name the US ship after Richard Nixon.)
It also helps that Sandford has had a lot of practice at creating characters in familiar genre situations while still making them seem like real people who all work, bitch, commiserate, screw, take drugs, drink, scheme, and joke while risking their lives as part of a potentially disastrous contest with a rival nation to try and meet some aliens.
There are a few things here that make clear that Sandford’s not working on his usual turf. One of his strengths is writing scenes in which people have to act fast when things start going wrong, and generally his pacing is nearly flawless when it comes to building tension. However, the nature of this story requires a timeline in which months of boring traveling is involved, and while they do their best to use this downtime to set up story, build characters, develop the setting, and add humor, it just doesn’t have the sense of frantic momentum that Sandford can usually deliver except for a few scenes.
Plus, this is the only book of Sandford’s I’ve read which doesn’t focus on one single lead. While Sandy Darlington seems like he’s going to be the main character at first this actually turns into much more of an ensemble book, and that added to a sense that the story is drifting at times. I also question how much time and effort was spent describing the various cameras and the best way of using them, but that’s what happens when one of your authors is a photographer.
There’s also a slight letdown related to what they discover when they get to the alien object. It’s not a complete fumble, but it does show that Sandford and Ctein put more thought into how they’d get to Saturn rather than what the characters would find when they got there. (view spoiler)[While I thought the idea of the alien trading post managed by an AI was fairly clever, it really just existed to give the Chinese and Americans something to fight about on the way back to Earth. It was a bit disappointing that in a novel about people risking everything to make first contact that they essentially just end up getting an answering machine message. It gave me the impression that most of the creative juice was spent on propulsion systems and orbital mechanics which left me wishing that some of the same kind of care and effort was put into coming up with something equally well-thought out for an alien race. (hide spoiler)]
It’s still an entertaining read with some exciting fast paced parts, but those not interested in problems like how you vent excess heat from a spaceship engine might find it a bit dull at times.
3.64 stars.
(Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog. I also wrote a similar, but different, review for the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog for which I was paid after I had written and posted this.)...more
Everyone at the super-secret British spy agency ARC-7 thought Velvet Templeton was just the Director’s secretary until their best agent was murdered, Everyone at the super-secret British spy agency ARC-7 thought Velvet Templeton was just the Director’s secretary until their best agent was murdered, and she was accused of turning traitor and killing him. It also turned out that she used to be a top notch field agent.
See, that’s why you should always be nice to the admin in your office….
Actually, we know that Velvet was framed, and to clear her name she’s going on the offensive against her old organization to try and flush out the real traitor. Through the course of the story we’ve also learned the tragic event that took Velvet out of the field and put her behind a desk for years. Fortunately for her sake and our entertainment value Velvet hasn’t lost a step as she uses sneaky spy tactics and a general ability to kick ass to find out the truth.
This could be just your standard betrayed-spy-on-the-run story, but there’s two factors that make it seem fresh. First, the ‘70s setting was a smart choice and not just for the retro style it brings into it. The 21st century has given us all James Bond gadgets with the average smart phone acting as a handheld computer, camera, and tracking device, but by setting this back in days of yore it allows for some fun with classic spy stuff that modern technology has made commonplace. It also makes the things they do use like Velvet’s stolen bulletproof stealth suit with glider wings seem more inventive.
Velvet herself is the second thing that makes this stand out. The idea of essentially taking Miss Moneypenny and making her a bad ass was a nice hook, and in a time when females in comics is a hot topic having a 40-something woman be the fully formed hero of a series like this seems way more revolutionary then it should be. (It also probably means we’ll never see a movie version of it because Hollywood believes that old ladies such as Marisa Tomei can only play characters like Aunt May.)
Ed Brubaker is one of the best writers in comics, and here he teams up with artist Steve Epting to create a humdinger filled with spy vs. spy action....more
Holden Carver must not have read Vonnegut’s Mother Night because then he would have known he should be very careful about who he pretended to be…
HoldeHolden Carver must not have read Vonnegut’s Mother Night because then he would have known he should be very careful about who he pretended to be…
Holden was recruited by Internal Operations spymaster John Lynch to infiltrate a dangerous terrorist group led by a man called Tao by appearing to betray the IO and go rogue. Their plan works, and Holden is soon making his way up the ranks to become one of Tao’s top people. Things go sideways after Lynch is shot and is in a coma. Since he was the only man who knew that Holden was working undercover, the double agent is stuck working for a group of bad guys while his former organization thinks he’s a traitor.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the super powers?
See, this is the DC Wildstorm universe which has superheroes like The Authority. Holden’s abilities came from an alien artifact bonding to him during a botched recovery mission, and this leaves him with an ability to heal quickly. He also can’t feel the physical damage, instead storing it like a battery and able to deliver the pain to someone else by touching them. This has also left him immune to manipulative mind powers like Tao’s as well as feeling numb to pretty much everything else so it made him a great prospect to be a double agent. It also leaves him pretty miserable. The one thing that comes close to penetrating his shell is his on-going affair with Miss Misery, another Tao lieutenant who literally thrives on doing bad things to people. She’s not exactly the kind of girl you take home to mom.
Ed Brubaker has a knack for fusing genres like the way he combined a police procedural crime comic with the antics of the world of Batman in the excellent Gotham Central. Here he’s doing the classic story of the spy trying to come in from the cold in a superhero universe, and it works incredibly well. What’s interesting about this is that there is one layer of super activity going on with people running around in costumes punching each other and another more covert war going on in the shadows where the participants wear leather trench coats rather than capes. The artwork by Sean Phililps also has the same brooding noir style that has worked so well with other Brubaker stories like the Criminal comics.
Like any good spy story, there’s a lot of not knowing who to trust, and Holden increasingly feels like an expendable pawn in the games of others. He also has to do terrible things to maintain his cover, but eventually considers that he did things equally bad in service to the IO and wonders if it really matters at all what his intentions are. The murky world of spy games and suspect ethical choices have more of a vibe of a John LeCarre novel than a comic book. It’s also got plenty of graphic violence, profanity and nudity so it’s definitely for adults and not kids.
A note about the omnibus edition: This is one big bastard of a kitten squisher. Oversized and with over 700 pages, it contains not only the two ‘seasons’ of Sleeper, it also has the extra related stories Point Blank and the crossover issue of Coup d’Etat: Sleeper #1. It’s kind of pricey (I got mine as a Christmas gift.) but it’s a high quality hardcover and gives any reader the entire story in one volume.
Other reviewers have already pointed out that this story essentially asks what would happen if James Bond got killed, and it turned out that Miss MoneOther reviewers have already pointed out that this story essentially asks what would happen if James Bond got killed, and it turned out that Miss Moneypenny was more of a bad-ass than he ever was? So in an effort to come up with a new way of describing this I’ll ask what if Sterling Archer got killed, and Cheryl/Carol was more of a bad-ass than he ever was?
In 1973 Velvet Templeton is the secretary to the director of super-secret spy agency ARC-7. After their best agent is ambushed and killed Velvet is implicated as the mole who set him up, but it turns out that she knows a lot more than just how to take shorthand. Velvet was actually a great field agent in the ‘50s before events forced her into accepting a desk job. To clear her name Velvet has to get back in the spy game to track down who actually betrayed their agent.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the lack of diversity in comics as well as the movies adapted from them, and it’s very refreshing to have the lead of this promising series be a forty-something female in an era where women were either the secretary to the good guys or the honey trap working for the bad guys. And Velvet is an intriguing character with all the skills of Marvel’s Black Widow with the looks of real life hard-boiled crime writer Christa Faust minus the tattoos.
Brubaker again delivers a version of yet another fantastic genre tale with a unique twist to it. Epting’s excellent art is realistic enough to be storyboards for a movie but still stylized to provide the atmosphere of a Bond movie from the Sean Connery era. Maybe its best trick is the way that the story blends the old school comic book style spy action with the darker John le Carre tone of exploring the toll that working in covert espionage takes on someone.
Overall it’s a terrific comic that I can’t wait to read more of....more
Maybe we Americans were just a little bit hasty when we said that we won the Cold War? ‘Cause it’s seeming more and more like that we were really justMaybe we Americans were just a little bit hasty when we said that we won the Cold War? ‘Cause it’s seeming more and more like that we were really just leading at halftime.
Modern Russia with Vladimer Putin running the show is essentially the Soviet Union with a better public relations department, and the old spy games between their Foreign Intelligence Service and the American Central Intelligence Agency are back with a vengeance. Young and ambitious CIA officer Nate Nash is the Moscow handler of a highly placed Russian code-named MARBLE. When a planned meeting goes sideways Nash manages to save his asset, but he blows his own cover so badly in the process that he’s exiled to Helsinki where he sulks about the setback his career has suffered. Russian intelligence knows it has a leak and is desperate to find it so they send junior agent Dominika Egorova to see if she can pry loose the name of the mole from Nash.
Dominika was a talented ballerina as well as a true believer in the new Russia. She is also secretly a synesthete who sees sound as colors as well as auras around people that clue her into their mental state. When her dancing career was derailed she is sucked into the spy business by her uncle who promises her position but really sees her as just a beautiful woman that he can whore out for his own purposes. Despite how her uncle uses her and the bureaucracy that thinks she only has value on her back, Dominika manages to earn a place in the intelligence service with her brains and will as she nurses hidden grudges at the way the system has treated her. After Nate and Dominika meet, a delicate dance of manipulation begins, but who is recruiting who?
I’m a big fan of FX’s The Americans as well as currently being surrounded by a bunch of Russian consultants at the office. I’m convinced they must be secret agents running honeypot operations because there’s just no way that many good looking people are a representative sample of the Russian population. (Or I’m just jealous that they’re making us American office drones look like jeans wearing mole-people by comparison. Seriously, if the Cold War is really kicking off again, I’m putting my money on them.)
The point is that I was in the mood for a good spy vs. spy novel, and this one delivered. It won the 2014 Edgar Award for best first novel, and the author Jason Matthews is reportedly a former CIA officer who had over 30 years of service. The book is filled with the kind of details about spy operations that just feel authentic, but it never devolves into a Tom Clancy-style recitation of hardware and proper procedures because it’s got plenty of human drama as well.
Dominika is the engine that runs the rest of the book. She’s an intriguing character because of the anger and frustration she feels as someone who just wants to be permitted to do her job but is constantly used and humiliated by brutal men of limited imagination. The only false note to her is that it feels like Matthews wrote her synesthesia as giving her almost telepathic abilities when it comes to reading people. Why couldn't she just be smart and institutive instead of using a neurological disorder as a way of making her ‘special’? It’s becoming an overused fictional trope these days.
Another minor nitpick is that Matthews uses a gimmick of having the characters constantly eating or preparing food and then putting the recipe for what they had at the end of a chapter. This was kind of a neat touch at first, but after a while it felt like he was really straining to find new dishes to shoehorn into the action. Also, (This spoiler does not give away the ending but does involve a major character introduced halfway through the book.) (view spoiler)[ I initially enjoyed the female American senator character who sells secrets to the Russians. She’s a complete narcissist who is so self-involved and annoyed at any potential inconveniences that she refuses to take the most basic security precautions. This seemed like the kind of motivation you might find in a traitor in the age of Facebook. However, after a while with her relentlessly bashing the US intelligence agencies at every opportunity it left me wondering if Matthews suffered at the hands of some politicians during his career and was getting a bit of fictional revenge by portraying such a character as a villain completely devoid of conscience. What started as interesting became an over the top cartoon. (hide spoiler)]
Still, none of my complaints seriously hurt my enjoyment of the book which was filled with great characters playing tense spy games for high stakes....more
If you’re an overweight slob with a job you hate then maybe you just need to be inhabited by an ancient alien entity who can teach you some disciplineIf you’re an overweight slob with a job you hate then maybe you just need to be inhabited by an ancient alien entity who can teach you some discipline and help you get your life in order. But before you sign up be aware that you’ll be picking a side in a centuries old war among the aliens to decide the fate of humanity, and you’ll have a very good chance of getting killed in the process. So maybe you want to take another look at that new diet after all?
This was entertaining but felt relatively light weight. The idea of a wise old entity stuffed into the meat sack of a whiny slacker was played for some good laughs, and I liked the idea of a covert war being waged between two alien factions. I would have enjoyed it more focus on the history of Tao and the other aliens on Earth, and a little less on Roen as a rehabilitation project. ...more
(I received a free copy of this book from New Pulp Press for this review.)
This book starts out with infidelity, murder, more murder and political/poli(I received a free copy of this book from New Pulp Press for this review.)
This book starts out with infidelity, murder, more murder and political/police corruption.
Then things really get dark.
Robert Dell is a white South African journalist who protested apartheid. He’s a liberal, a committed pacifist and married to a black woman. His father, Bobby Goodbread, proves that sometimes the apple falls a long way from the tree. Goodbread is an American who got up to all kinds of evil deeds as part of his job as a CIA agent fighting communism in various hot spots. He worked with the right-wing whites in South Africa to keep apartheid in place and liked to brag that it was his information that led to the capture of Nelson Mandela. As you would expect, the two have little to talk about.
Dell is framed for a horrible crime by Inja Mazibuko, a brutal enforcer for a high ranking government official. As he’s about to be transferred to a prison where he’ll almost certainly be killed Dell is rescued by his estranged father. With no other options, Dell reluctantly joins Goodbread on a mission of revenge.
Mazibuko has returned to a remote region that he runs like a warlord so that he can marry his fourth wife. Sunday is a young girl who has essentially been sold to Mazibuko, and the prospect is terrifying since she witnessed him murdering her family when she was a child. Her desperate attempt to seek help in the form of a fax to an old phone number lands on the desk of Disaster Zondi, a police officer who just saw his department gutted by corruption. Zondi is from the area and used to be part of the same crew as Mazibuko before changing his ways. He also knew Sunday’s mother, and he returns to his old stomping grounds for reasons he doesn’t fully understand.
The opening chapters of this made me think that his was going to be a fast-paced violent thrill ride, and while the pace is brisk and there’s no shortage of carnage, there’s a lot more going on in this book than just a story about people trying to kill each other in the wilds of Africa. The poverty stricken area here is a mix of Zulu tribal rituals and superstitions mixed with bits of the modern world like BMWs, cell phones and AK-47s.
The major characters are all extremely well developed, and Smith makes you completely understand them all from the liberal and educated Dell to the teenaged Sunday who has never used a modern bathroom. Zondi’s return to the place he grew up stirs mixed emotions about the boy he used to be and the man he became once he left. Goodbread is fascinating as an aging Cold Warrior who thought he was doing the right thing at the time. Particularly disturbing is Mazibuko whose is almost a force of nature in his ruthlessness, and he makes for one spectacularly evil villain.
Just when you think you know where the story is going, there’ll be a surprising but logical twist and nothing goes as expected. It’s not a happy read, but it’s an intriguing one.
As a top agent for Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Lucas Davenport has mastered the art of introducing himself to local law enforcement sAs a top agent for Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Lucas Davenport has mastered the art of introducing himself to local law enforcement so that they won’t resent him as an outsider coming in to tell them how to do their job:
The cop who’d followed Lucas in said, “Hey, when I’m talking to you…”
Lucas pointed his finger at him and snarled, “Shut the fuck up. Who’s running this clown factory?”
As a plain-clothes cop, Lucas is also well aware of the danger of running across other police officers during a pursuit and the proper way to identify himself:
Both the cops were screaming at him and Lucas shouted, “BCA, you dumb motherfuckers,” and finally one of the cops waved a hand at his partner and said, “Put the gun in the street.”
“Fuck you,” Lucas yelled back. “My hands are over my head, I’m not touching the gun again because you dumb motherfuckers’ll shoot me sure as shit.”
Lucas can also demonstrate his gift of diplomacy and calm persuasion when dealing with a reluctant witness who is in danger but still refuses to reveal anything about the criminal enterprise he’s involved in:
The sat in silence for a moment, and then Lucas said, “Well, fuck ya. We told ya.”
As these quotes show, Lucas is a little grumpy in this one. Despite everything going well on the personal front, he’s chafing a bit at the blatant political nature of his new state job as the governor’s guy who ‘fixes shit’, and he’s also starting to worry that being surrounded by violent death for over twenty years has started to take a toll.
But when a Russian is killed at a dock on Lake Superior, the international pressure demands some kind of solution so Lucas finds himself teamed up with a pretty woman sent from Moscow to observe the investigation. Nadya claims to be a Russian cop, but Lucas is pretty sure she’s actually an intelligence agent and her agenda may be different from his. The FBI is also sniffing around, but they’re far more worried about terrorists than revisiting the Cold War. Lucas cares little about the ‘spy shit’, but he does get irked when more bodies start dropping all over Minnesota.
The spy angle and Davenport’s dissatisfaction with the job are a departure from the usual Prey books, but a grumpy Lucas is also a funny Lucas. Sandford has been making noises about ending the series for some time, but this as the first clear idea in the books that Lucas might be thinking about quitting law enforcement for good. Since there’s been about 10 more books since then, he apparently got over it although Sandford still talks about wrapping up Lucas’ story at some point.
This one also features another interesting twist on the villain with a Soviet era spy who is still a true believer in Communism and has raised his grandson to follow in his murderous footsteps. It’s another good step away from the typical serial killer we usually get in thrillers.
Black Widow has been kidnapped by an assassin with a grudge against Bucky. The bad guy uses the old Soviet programming techniques to brainwash NatashaBlack Widow has been kidnapped by an assassin with a grudge against Bucky. The bad guy uses the old Soviet programming techniques to brainwash Natasha into thinking she’s actually been a Russian mole or years, and her first act is to try to kill Nick Fury while wiping out a whole bunch of poor SHIELD agents in the process.
With the woman he loves turned against him, broken-hearted Bucky desperately tries to find the assassin and Natasha with some help from Captain America, Hawkeye, Wolverine and Daredevil.
So I guess this is the final Winter Soldier story from Brubaker, and he really puts Bucky though the wringer in this one. The story ends on a sad note that really does feel tragic and not something that will be fixed in the next issue. I’m sorry to see Brubaker leave, but he set up a lot of intriguing directions for this comic to go....more
Complaining about the constant killing off and resurrection of major comic book characters is like bitching about the weather, it doesn’t change anythComplaining about the constant killing off and resurrection of major comic book characters is like bitching about the weather, it doesn’t change anything but you can’t stop yourself from doing it anyhow. So yes, I am a little irked that a character who has suffered TWO noble deaths keeps popping back up, but that’s just the way it is and no amount of fanboy outrage is going to stop Marvel and DC from doing it so I refuse to work myself into a rage stroke because of it.
Bucky Barnes was only mostly dead following the events of Fear Itself, and now he’s good as new. Since Steve Rogers is back in the role of Captain America and Bucky had some pretty severe international legal issues hanging over him, Bucky decides that he’ll let the world think he’s dead while picking up his old Winter Soldier persona. As a brainwashed Soviet assassin he was put into cryogenic sleep between operations so that his reign of terror spanned decades. Bucky did a lot of damage and knows that there are plenty of dangerous loose ends from the old program still lurking about. With the help of Black Widow, who just so happens to be another ex-Soviet spy and his lover, Bucky sets out on a clandestine mission to shut down any remaining threats from the bad old days.
As a first step, Bucky tries to locate three remaining assassins he trained that have been in cryo sleep since the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, someone else gets to them first and is using them in a scheme against Doctor Doom that could start a war.
Brubaker does great work when he fuses criminal underworld/spy stuff with super powered people like he’s done in Sleeper and Incognito, and this storyline plays to that strength with covert types like Bucky and Natasha trying to quietly shut down potential threats with a little under the table backing from Nick Fury. This being in the Marvel universe allows Brubaker to throw some random batshit craziness at them like a gorilla with a machine gun or have them interact with a well known villain like Doom. I like the idea that Marvel has played with in recent years that the big splashy fights between superheroes and villains in front of the whole world are only the tip of the iceberg and that there’s always a secret covert war going on in the shadows.
It’s got a nice personal hook with Bucky feeling guilty about the evil deeds he did when brainwashed and seeing this as a way to finally redeem himself. The team-up of him and Natasha was another good idea with the two sharing a connection as ex-spies for the Russians, and they have fun chemistry together.
But even though I liked this story and very much enjoy how Brubaker writers Bucky, I still don’t know why they had to ‘kill’ him off on in Fear Itself. We all knew that Steve coming back as Cap was inevitable, and Brubaker had already written convincing reasons for Bucky to step down. It’s also understandable in the context of the story why Bucky would be willing to fake his own death, but they should have written it like that instead of trying to get some fake depth by not letting the readers in on it sooner and trying to milk the emotionality out of it.
I did love Steve’s reaction to the news that Bucky was alive because he angrily beats the crap out of Nick Fury for lying to him as part of a heartless manipulation. That’s what a lot of us would like to do to the Marvel editors who try to build hype with stunt killing of characters that lacks any sense of true consequences....more
You gotta love a book in which the weapons used by the bad-ass hero include a pair of socks and a ruler.
Skinner was raised in a closed environment as You gotta love a book in which the weapons used by the bad-ass hero include a pair of socks and a ruler.
Skinner was raised in a closed environment as part of a screwy experiment from his autistic parents, and as an adult he worked for an international security firm called Kestrel where he became legendary for his unique method. Skinner’s Maxim dictated that if anything happened to anyone under his protection, that he would wreak bloody vengeance on anyone and everyone responsible. This scorched earth policy worked well for a while, but eventually Skinner outlived his usefulness and had to go underground when Kestrel tried to arrange a permanent retirement for him.
Terrance was Skinner’s boss who was forced out of Kestrel, but they want him back to track down the people responsible for a cyber-attack on the US. Terrance recruits Jae, an analyst with a talent for building robots and OCD tendencies that allow her to find patterns in the chaos of world events, and he contacts Skinner and talks him into providing protection for her. Jae had a bad experience with Kestrel previously and doesn’t trust them so she and Skinner have that in common. The two race around the globe uncovering a vast conspiracy that somehow involves a slum in Mumbai.
Charlie Huston used to crank out hard boiled books featuring criminals and/or vampires and then fill them up with enough attitude, atmosphere and graphic violence to make them highly entertaining reads. He was good enough that he probably could have had a successful career if he had no bigger ambitions, but Huston has been showing a remarkable capacity for growth over his last several books. In Skinner, he takes what could just be a good set-up for an action spy thriller and gives it a huge amount of depth by using a couple of complex characters to throw around some very big ideas.
Skinner’s story examines how a bunch of variables like economics, political unrest and climate change have combined into a murky threat cloud that always hangs on the horizon and perpetually seems about to engulf the world. Huston has nailed that general unease that comes with scrolling through a day’s worth of news stories and realizing that the problems far outnumber the solutions. The Jae character is particularly good at conveying this since she has a tendency to start following patterns obsessively to conclusions that indicate the world is doomed. While there’s plenty of action, gee-whiz tech and the usual tropes of covert thrillers like suitcases full of fake passports and money, it’s the bigger picture that makes this feel a lot more important than just a typical spies-on-the-run-against-a-vast-conspiracy story.
My one gripe is that there’s almost too much in the book. I would have liked to get more with Skinner and Jae because they’re both such intriguing characters, but it kind of feels like we’re racing through their history to keep the core story moving. It almost seems like this could have been the conclusion of a larger series, but it was nice to get a self-contained story rather than an author just kicking off a new multi-book narrative so I won’t bitch too much about it.
On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience from the plane ride there. I had a bunch of paperbacks I’d bought for the trip, and I finished one and got another one out of my bag. It was Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. I didn’t much feel like reading about the deaths of American soldiers at that moment so I picked another one and only read that book months later. So there was a certain grim satisfaction and symmetry for me in reading Bowden’s account of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Those who read Black Hawk Down and expecting a blow by blow account of the manhunt and the military operation are probably going to be disappointed because the classified nature of it only gives Bowden enough material for summaries that aren’t much deeper then the media accounts. Instead, Bowden focuses on how a decade of war had honed the US’s tactics to find and target al Qaeda’s leadership, and how President Obama came to the decision to use those abilities.
Bowden lays out how the US military and intelligence agencies had developed hardware like drones to gather data and then linked that sophisticated databases that make it seem like The Machine in the TV show Person of Interest isn’t that far fetched. Bowden credits this evolving system with the eventual decrease in insurgency attacks in Iraq as well as being a key tool that has severely hurt al Qaeda.
Perhaps what will surprise most readers is how willing President Obama has been to use these methods. Anyone who thinks that he’s some kind egghead liberal peacenik should probably reevaluate that stance because he’s personally authorized the use of this system to target and kill al Qaeda’s leadership at a rate four times that of President Bush. One gets the distinct impression that you don't want Obama deciding that you're a clear and present danger to the United States.
The story of how this process developed is interesting and fairly scary. (After reading Kill Decision and this, I’m worried that the evil robot apocalypse will soon be upon us.) Bowden does a nice job of laying out how the changing US tactics and increases in the use of highly experienced special forces groups like SEAL Team Six contributed to the decision to risk going into Pakistan after bin Laden when the intelligence that he was actually there was not certain.
However, while this story is intriguing, it also feels a bit like filler because Bowden didn’t have enough declassified material about the manhunt and final raid to fill out an entire book. There’s a telling lapse in which the courier who was the final link to bin Laden is discovered. Bowden describes how that courier’s alias had come up several times in various interrogations over the years, but he doesn’t know how the US ultimately tracked him down. Bowden notes that one analyst told him that story would make a book in itself so it’s frustrating to be left hanging. Plus, it seems entirely possible that bin Laden was actually discovered by someone ratting him out for the $25 million reward and that this talk of tracking the courier is a story to cover for whoever dropped a dime on him.
The story of the attack itself as Obama and several of his key advisors watched in real time via drone cameras is a vivid account, but again, there’s nothing there that hasn’t been reported already. Plus, since SEAL Team Six couldn't be identified or interviewed, Bowden has to stick with bland descriptions instead of sketching out some background to give us an idea of who they are or what they were thinking during the attack.*
*My library copy of the book included a loose card with a note from Bowden noting that a member of the SEAL team released a different account of bin Laden’s final moments after his book went to press, and that he’ll research and note it in later editions.
There’s some fascinating stuff here like how the US has adapted its methods over the course of the war on terror, and there’s a very nice account of how the plan came together as well as how President Obama arrived at the decision to risk the raid. We also get some insight into how bin Laden spent his last years isolated in hiding and increasingly seeming like Hitler in the bunker ordering phantom armies into battle. Still, this feels like a good magazine feature article that’s had a fair amount of filler added to pad it out since there weren’t enough classified details released yet to make it a thorough and definitive telling of the death of bin Laden....more
Secret agent Sterling Archer has written a book about being a spy, but he isn’t very happy about it.
Archer thought he was being asked to write his memSecret agent Sterling Archer has written a book about being a spy, but he isn’t very happy about it.
Archer thought he was being asked to write his memoirs, but after a seven martini lunch and a sexual encounter with his editrix*, he learned that his contract was actually for a how-to book. Sterling doesn't like this because it’ll probably make his job harder if he gives away all his trade secrets, and he isn’t even going to get to do a chapter about cobras.
*An editrix is a female editor. Seriously, read a book sometime.
While Archer may be grumpy, it’s good news for those of us who enjoy watching his exploits on the FX television show. Not only do we get the inside scoop of what it takes to be a world class secret agent, Archer also shares his tips for grooming, clothing, dining, sex, and most importantly, his favorite cocktail recipes. Here’s a sample:
“Singapore Sling
Invented in the Long Bar of that timeless jewel of the Orient, the Raffles Hotel. From which I was banned after an unfortunate incident involving two prostitutes, a lemur, a rickshaw (and driver) and several members of the Singapore Police Force’s Gurkha Contingent. And let me just say this about that: if you ever want to get the absolute shit kicked out of you - and want it done in a precise and professional manner - the Gurkhas are THE shitkickers for you.
Anyway, it’s lame the Raffles banned me, so I’m not including their stupid drink.”
The book is filled with pearls of wisdom like this from the world’s greatest secret agent. Who says he’s the world’s greatest secret agent? Archer does. Repeatedly.
There’s plenty of stuff that Archer fans will recognize. (At last we have the recipes to make Green Russians and Eggs Woodhouse!) While it’s got the same style of humor, it doesn’t rely on recycling jokes from the show, and the tone of the book so exactly matches Archer’s manner that I could hear H. Jon Benjamin’s voice in my head while reading. (How is there not an audio version of this?)
My only complaint is that aside from a brief introduction from Archer’s mother Mallory, we don’t hear from of his coworkers. Hopefully, they’ll do another tie-in book written by Pam so we can learn all about being a human resource director as well as an underground street racer and champion fight club participant.
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