Washington Power Play: A Political Thriller by Allan Topol

Washington Power Play: A Political Thriller. Allan Topol. SelectBooks, Inc.. May 2017. 320 pp. ISBN #: 9781590794258.

China is planning a New World Order! A new name for a new attempt to take over both Asia and the United States.  Kelly Cameron, an FBI agent, has just completed a mission that is taken by her superiors to be both a success and a failure, a success in that she was able to stop a terrorist from committing mayhem and murder and a failure in that her killing the terrorist prevented her superiors from interviewing him to discover valuable information.  So is her sudden promotion to join a task force to find a government mole a true reward or something worse?

Kelly’s first task is to get up to speed on China, especially after a sudden attack on Japanese planes by Chinese jets.  Her first connection is with a powerful American lawyer, Andrew Martin, a man who, unknown to Kelly, has questionable ties with China as a delivery boy for secret messages to a Chinese diplomat.  Then there’s Xiang Shen, a former lover, who appears and supposedly wants to reignite their powerful connection.  Kelly’s not buying!  And Xiang has no choice but continue to pursue in order to guarantee his family’s safety back in China. A dilemma indeed!

And what about the head of the task force, General Darrell Cartwright, who desperately wants to run for President of the United States?  He’s not happy with several members of the task force and these snippy debates between the parties which are stopped one step away from being outright combat.  This seems a bit out of proportion to their task which is a clue that indeed something is rotten in Denmark.

Allan Topol knows how to ramp up the tension from the very first page. Although the reader thinks he or she knows where this is going, that’s not quite the obvious plot!  Kelly will risk death, be faced with action to save her kidnapped daughter, and discover there are more disloyal characters than one mole than she ever imagined.

Washington Power Play… is a fine political thriller with plenty of passion, debate, threats of violence and actual physical combat to keep the reader flipping the pages of this fast-paced, international power play plot!  Nicely done, Allan Topol, and definitely recommended reading!

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!

Blind Justice: A Thriller by Ethan Cross

Blind Justice: A Thriller.  Ethan Cross. The Story Plant. August 2015. 352 pp.  ASIN#: B00ZRR4XG.

Deacon Munroe, a blind investigator, is called to work on the deaths of a friend, a top-ranking general and his wife.  The reader already knows that the General died without revealing what his killer demands to know.  However, the killer makes the General kill himself and so it looks like the General killed his wife and then himself.  But Deacon, a remarkably skilled investigator, immediately realizes something is wrong with the crime scene. And so begins an unbelievable tale in which there is a far larger conspiracy to carry out a drone terrorist attack in the middle of Washington, D.C. at the National Mall.

This is a middle-sized novel that packs enough action that it’s over the top of tension.  The extremely perceptive skills of Deacon Munroe, accompanied with a calming sense of class and style, make the entire story fascinating as the rest of it feels like a montage of every crime novel that’s been written in the last five years.  The success of a crime or thriller novel lies in including something unique that can’t be found in any other story or a particular style that enhances the stereotypical criminal story.  Deacon Munroe is that person!

Early on in the story, Munroe, suffers a great loss and soon thereafter he realizes that he’s always been in love with his late friend’s sister.  But the hunt for answers lies larger than that attraction and Annabelle is not ready for Munroe’s brief attempts to get closer. 

The task at hand is to stop a killer from getting his hands on something that could be responsible for a chemical attack that would kill thousands. 

I’m not sure how I felt about this novel riddled with deaths, violence and surprising evil.  No break in the action allows one to grab one’s breath.  The reality of the possible terrorist action being planned is probably what is responsible for the tension one feels while waiting for how this action will unfold!

Nice characterization and plot, Ethan Cross!  Great for lovers of the mystery and crime genres!

The Moses Virus by Jack Hyland

The Moses Virus: A Novel.  Jack Hyland. Taylor Trade Publishing. January 2014. 232 pp. hbk. ISBN #: 9781589799080.

Millions of people have read or heard the story of Moses and the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt.  We also know of the plagues visited upon the hard-hearted Pharaoh and the Egyptians who refused to yield to the command of Moses’ God.  But few have ever questioned the cause of those plagues other than the miraculous intervention of God. 

The Moses Virus: A Novel is that long awaited explanation and the villainous consequences of that plague throughout history.   Here in this present generation Thom Stewart, eminent forensic archaeologist, is invited to be present at the opening of a famous archaeological site at the Roman Forum. It’s a day that ends in excitement but not of an expected historical discovery; instead another notable archaeologist and his student are found dead, accompanied by a group of skeletons attired in white lab coats.  It’s obvious they all died in ferocious agony!

The majority of the characters herein work for the American Academy in Rome, Italy, a scholarly society dedicated to the research and publications of archaeologists, artists, architects, writers, musicians and other scholars.  With the sudden disastrous deaths Tom, assisted by an ally, Alexandra Cellini, begins to search for the cause of this lethal virus, increased when he is followed, robbed, kidnapped and attacked because everyone believes he knows where a secret cache of the virus is hidden.

 

What starts out as a staid normal crime turns out to be a hair-raising, frantic search for answers.  Throughout this story, the author presents a lovely description of all the main sites of Roman history in an enticing way that makes the reader want to visit this famed city.  We also get quite an education of the specific nature of the plagues that have killed millions of people during the time of Egyptian pharaohs, the Black Plague of Europe, and other events in which millions of people died quickly and violently.

No, this is by no means the whole story.  Tom and Alex discover they are being continuously watched by many different groups.  The novel moves in and out of Italy and results in several deaths beyond that of the initial scientists.  It also compels the reader to ask some important questions about the role of the Catholic Church in secret negotiations with Hitler during WWII. 

The Moses Virus… is deceiving and unique in how slowly it starts out, how calm everyone remains even with the intense possibilities of this conflict, and how it grows into its intensity where life and death scenes appear over and over and quickly as well.  The central conflict is similar to most “virus or secret weapon” plots but is unique in its intelligent and sensitive presentation.  One suspects that there will be a follow-up to his very interesting piece of criminal fiction.  Nicely done, Jack Hyland!