Snow by Mike Bond

Snow. Mike Bond. Mandevilla Press. September 2017. 250 pp. ISBN#: 9781627040372.

Meet three successful men who are off in the Montana wilderness, free to hunt, drink and bond. They have no cares other than their high-stress lives, a stress none would give up except Curt, a half-Cheyenne mountain guide anxious to save his ranch from a takeover by a well-known energy company. Zack used to be an NFL football star and is now a TV sports newscaster. He loves his job but knows his football years have taken their toll on his body and even his mind. He owes a couple of million dollars to some high rollers in Las Vegas. Steve is a rabid Wall Street investor/broker whose confidence in investing money has gone much too far and he is now faced with the fact that he has lost not only his own money but also Zack’s money – millions! The “high life” is a capricious creature that can turn on a dime, making one bankrupt in seconds.

Miraculously or not, depending on one’s point of view, Zack and Steve find a crashed airplane inside of which they find a load of cocaine. Steve wants to turn “most” of it over to the police, but Zack’s having none of that. Curt really doesn’t know what’s happened until it’s too late.

For Maria Christina, a brilliant businesswoman, runs a cocaine cartel and has not taken well to her stolen cargo. She sets the executioner Diego onto the trio and at the same time the Feds get involved. It’s not very long before everyone knows where everyone else is and the race is on for very high stakes! There’s much more to this frenetic tale, including that Curt must make a choice to play criminal or snitcher!

“Lady Cocaine” is a costly habit as Steve and Zack discover but that doesn’t stop them from being enamored by her physical embrace. Readers won’t be able to put this book down as Mike Bond again makes them embrace the plot to the point it’s as if they were involved in the hunt of all hunts.

The plot is rather simple but Bond’s talent is as a Master of Suspense for sure!

Fast-paced mystery, adventure, and frenetic crime thriller!

Assassins by Mike Bond

Assassins.  Mike Bond. Mandevilla Press. December 2016. 502 pp. ASIN #: B01MTW71F6.   

Our main character opens the action by parachuting into Afghanistan with his peers, but the landing is a difficult one indeed.  At the beginning of thirty years of fighting, the soldier falls victim to multiple shreds of shrapnel lodged in his skull and one of his peers is wounded in the leg.  Their job was to serve as aides to defeat the Russians, to get them out of Afghanistan.  But little by little the reader learns about the real issues behind the constant war occurring in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries.  For Afghani lords don’t trust each other and even go to war against each other in their endless power plays.  There’s no trust between American soldiers or mercenaries and the Afghanis being helped.  Weapons are exchanged for the trafficking of opium.  It’s a brutal existence and death looms large in every stage of any operation.

As the story progresses, the plot thickens and we realize that the American government is being played.  For Arabs take American money and military support while at the same time hedging their bets with supporting terrorist lords.  For anyone sharp about global news, this isn’t news but reading out it plays out in action is starkly shocking. Americans fighting over there take orders and don’t spend much time analyzing the political sides.  One wonders what their motivation is to make friends with those who are both friends and enemies, who put up with insults of Muslims who see any American friend or foe as an infidel or enemy.

This novel covers thirty years (no spoilers here) from the early years to 911 to the evolution of terrorism into ISIS.  The action is rivetingly present on every page.  It’s an education in Middle East strife and at the same time a thrilling read in which tension never relaxes.  It’s so real it’s almost overwhelming!  It is what is really happening.  Assassins is Mike Bond’s best novel!  Well-researched, complicated, surreal yet real, this is a story (it is fiction, after all) that will sear the reader’s memory long after the last page is turned! Highly recommended, well-crafted fiction that tells the vivid story of an endless war!

Killing Maine by Mike Bond

Killing Maine.  Mike Bond. Mandevilla Press. July 2015. 391 pp.  ISBN#: 9781627040303.  

Special Forces Pono Hawkins veteran is leaving Hawaii to help his former peer, Buddy Franklin.  Hawkins has a checkered past, having been imprisoned for killing a woman.  The circumstances were merciful, but that’s not how others saw it. Up to now, after he’s released, he’s a Hawaiian surfer who teaches others the sport and the atmosphere it brings, thrills and peacefulness at the same time. Now he’s off to help this fellow veteran although there’s no love lost between the two of them.  Franklin’s got a hatred for the powers-that-be who control the industrial wind power turbines being built across the northern Maine lands. 

Wind power is an interesting topic treated in a careful manner in this novel.  The detrimental side effects are categorically stated as illness and death surround the animals and humans living around these wind turbines.  Franklin has taken on the issue in his own way, shooting the turbines so they can’t function.  But now a high-up exec behind the wind power business has been murdered and Franklin is the one who is accused of the death of Ronnie Dalt.  The goal is obviously to get Franklin out of the way and end the trouble he brings with his vehement hatred of those who are in the wind power business or Wind Mafia, as it’s called, for financial gain regardless of the consequences that follow.

There’s another matter that complicates things.  After Hawkins was imprisoned, he told his girlfriend to forget about him.  Now she’s hooked to Franklin.  No spoilers here; Hawkins plunges into his investigation as one never leaves behind a fallen, fellow soldier.  The search brings politicians, lawyers, and other important people into the limelight and someone out of these rich connections is trying not only to stop Hawkins but to kill him.

There’s more than plenty of high-paced action and thrills as Hawkins’ prey get closer.  Read it and root for those who would “save Maine” from the devastating effects of what was originally publicized as an energy source that would tip the scales to energy independence.

Nicely paced and plotted, Mike Bond!  As an aside it just might compel readers to look into its underlying issue as well!

Saving Paradise by Mike Bond

Saving Paradise. Mike Bond.  Mandevilla Press. November 2013. 302 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9781627040013.

Pono Hawkins is a Special Forces veteran of Afghanistan who has seen too much war and too much mindless brutality.  He’s a guy who seems programmed to correct wrongs when he sees them.  That hasn’t always been a wise thing to do; in fact it also earned him some prison time both inside and outside the military.  So he spends his days surfing and relishing every moment of this land, Hawaii, he loves so, so intensely!  He also teaches other vets how to surf, a form of therapy that takes them into a healing space they desperately need after having served in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade and more. He makes some money because of his surfing dog, Mojo. That’s all about to come to a squeaking halt!

Pono hates the tourist areas of Honolulu as well as the way the “haoles” or white Americans and Europeans have raped the land of Hawaii, imprisoned its native people in back-breaking labor for little pay, and taken their land for the sake of profit or “big business.”  That intense dislike quickly increases when Pono finds a dead woman on the edge of the surf not far from a well-known hotel.  Now, because of his criminal record, he’s not exactly getting much information from the local police.  Add to the mystery that a coroner’s report that initially said the victim died from drowning in a rather unique way, considering where she was found, has now been retracted.  Anyone with a connection to the police is mum about this serious retraction of significant evidence. Pono can’t let go; he becomes fanatic about finding the real killer. 

Wind-powered is supposed to be one of the natural resources that can lead to the creation of energy.  It’s supposed to be one of the “green” energy forms that people can feel good about using.  However, it turns out that it’s not so green and leaves behind enough side effects that are inhospitable to this already depleted earth to sink a ship  It also costs a fortune to set up but not because the wind costs money to transform into energy; it turns out that politicians and business executors are in the loop for the profits and if it means the displacement of Hawaiian natives, not a great loss – so be it!  The reader also gets a bit of an education about the pros and cons of this latest energy-producing fad! Add a gang to the creep list and some women about whom the reader will wind up mentally quibbling since they seem innocent yet know quite a bit about the murdered journalist, Sylvia Gordon. 

Pono moves to the top of the hit list due to his continuous inquiries and his insistence on using the enemies’ employees as sources or connections.  Just when it seems that there’s hardly anything left to plunder in Hawaii, a group of greedy entrepreneurs will stop short of nothing, including murder, to make sure their Wind-Powered Energy project succeeds.  But they fail to understand the passionate love the native Hawaiians have for their land and the determination they have to make sure this energy nightmare never happens. Intense clashes will arise in different ways that turn into a real nail-biter thriller.

Mike Bond knows Hawaii and human nature just as well. So it’s the heavy-hitters against a Special Forces Vet – quite the challenge!

Saving Paradise  is one heck of a crime novel/thriller and highly recommended!  It’s a keeper!