Exit Wound

Exit Wound is another entertaining installment of the adventures of Nick Stone. As usual, the book starts with a flashback to an earlier mission when Stone was an SAS operator—this time in Berlin just before the fall of the Iron Curtain. As usual, some of the characters in the flashback will figure in his new mission, including both close friends and deadly enemies. The new mission starts off with a nice hook, as Nick and his old mates are about to raid a warehouse in Dubai where a fortune in gold taken from Saddam's Iraq is lying gathering dust. But thing go badly sideways, and soon Nick is on the hunt for the villains who crossed him and his mates.

Next the action shifts to Iran, where Nick is trying to track down the lead villain. As usual for this series, he befriends a local, a very helpful and enthusiastic fellow who is also an aviation nerd who can help Nick track down the villain's plane. This is very convenient, and it leads to another set piece mission where Nick stakes out and attacks the villain's gang at their airport lair. This time Stone doesn’t do his usual meticulous preparation, but goes straight at the gangsters with no plan and no weapon but a steel bar scavenged from a waste ground. Huh?

Things get even crazier during the climactic sequence, as Nick and his newfound Russian ladyfriend head deep into the Russia hinterlands to track down the villains at a restricted military proving ground. Again, Stone has no plan, no weapon, no map and no idea where the villains are in a zone the size of Wales, but he plows ahead anyway, breaking into the restricted area on an old motorcycle with the Russian gal in the sidecar, chainsawing (!) several chain link fences and riding a hundred miles to find the bad guys. The climax was exciting but predictable, as was the aftermath, when Nick does his usual Santa Claus act to rain money and gifts upon everyone who helped him or was harmed during the mission.

I give this three stars because it was a fast-paced (for this series), entertaining story, full of McNab’s trademark gritty details and the always interesting protagonist, Stone. But I gotta say, this was probably the most unrealistic and pulpy novel in the series so far, moving it closer to James Bond or Mack Bolan territory than the usually believable Stone stories. Stone’s rash attacks on much better-armed villains seemed out of character to me, as did his friendly relationship with his new boss, Julian, and his over the top charity toward everyone involved. Stone is still a brutal killer, but I prefer the more realistic and self-absorbed Stone of the earlier books to this pulpy avenger. The series has also gotten rather formulaic, with the opening flashbacks, local helpers and convenient jackpots at the end in every book. Seems like there were more twists and surprises in the past. Exit Wound was still an entertaining read, but not one of my favorites.

Get a copy of Exit Wound here.

Firewall

I've recently gotten hooked on the brilliant Nick Stone series, so I'm going back and re-reading the early books that I first read 15 or 20 years ago. The third installment, Firewall, was published in 2000, back when the internet was still a wild frontier where new empires were being built and Russian organized crime was the global menace of the day. As a successful but slightly shady internet entrepreneur who travelled through Finland, Eastern Europe, Russia and London during the wild ride of those years, the locations, characters and technologies in this novel stirred up memories of some of the best times of my life.

Anyway, as Firewall opens, Nick Stone is on a job in Helsinki, about to kidnap a Russian mafia boss and escort him across the border to St. Petersburg where he'll receive a cool 300k dollars for his trouble. Unfortunately, his crew consists of some rather effed-up characters, and the op soon goes sideways in a most violent and frenetic manner. Things don't turn out as planned, but Stone does get a new job offer, which involves penetrating a high security home in rural Finland surrounded by a 40 foot high fence where some hacker-types have some data on their computers that Stone's new employers desperately want. This will be a fully criminal job for the Russian mob, but Nick is desperate for money because the bills at the high-priced clinic where his catatonic adopted daughter Kelly is being treated are piling up, so lacking any other options, he quickly accepts.

As the mission is hastily prepared, Nick brings in an associate from Remote Control named Tom to handle the hacker side of things, while Nick will take care of the tough-guy commando stuff. Their handler in Finland is a beautiful and mysterious blonde mafia moll named Liv, who acquires all the equipment Nick requests for the penetration and hacking job. As Nick prepares various special tools and makes his infiltration plan, Tom is busy trying to penetrate the firewall that the Finnish hackers have put around their network at the target home. Unfortunately the mission again goes badly sideways, as Tom is not cut out for the physical side of the op, violent new American players appear on the scene, and Nick has to make a daring escape.

This leads into the novel's second and potentially even more lucrative set-piece mission, which involves the sabotage of another hacker compound way out in the Estonian countryside. Apparently the technology the mafia is after can access the notorious ECHELON global surveillance network run by the NSA, which would give them vast power to expand their criminal empire. Now they want to destroy the whole installation to prevent a rival mafia group from using it against them. But first, Nick has to survive muggings and deal with some nasty Estonian thugs, who are his only contacts for the weapons he needs for the job.This mission was the highlight of the novel for me. McNab, calling on his expertise as a former SAS commando, provides a very detailed and believable account of Stone's preparation of the explosives, his stealth approach to the compound, and his laying of the charges in a precise way so as to maximize damage to the target. Not only was this dramatic reading, but it was like a free course in sabotage by an expert!

As usual with Stone's missions though, this one doesn't go smoothly, and Stone and an associate soon find themselves having to flee cross-country through a snowstorm in brutal winter cold. Here McNab's survival expertise is showcased, as Stone not only has to improvise a compass to hold a direction in the white-out conditions, but keep himself and his partner alive as hypothermia starts to set in. The novel ends with a twist or two that are, as usual, not very happy ones for Nick.

Firewall was another brilliant and exciting adventure in the Nick Stone saga. This installment was particularly action-packed, and the focus on the missions rather than Nick's personal drama with Kelly was a welcome change from other books. I also liked the setting: the decaying, corrupt world of post-Soviet eastern Europe and the bleak northern European winters were familiar from my own travels decades ago, and perfect operational environments for the bleak and cynical Stone.

Now that I've read six or seven of these books, I can confidently say that Nick Stone belongs up there with Quiller and Parker as one of my absolute favorite shadow-fiction series of all time. Nick isn't a particularly likeable character—he's a bit whiny and lacks the stoic appeal of other shadow warriors—but his adventures have such an edge of realism and intensity, so many authentic details from McNab's background as an SAS man, such gripping story-telling and timely plotting, that I find myself wanting to read them one after the other and get lost in Nick Stone's shadowy, action-packed world.

Get a copy of Firewall here.

Centrifuge

J. C. Pollock is a mysterious figure; he published seven special forces/spy thrillers between 1982 and 1993 that are well-regarded by fans of the genre, then disappeared from the scene without a trace. I read his 1985 book, Crossfire, a while back and thought it was very good (note to self: post a review). He brought an insider's technical knowledge of special ops and espionage that strongly suggests he worked in those fields himself then decided to write fiction about it, sort of like an American Andy McNab for the 1980s. As Pollock's goodreads profile puts it:

He is a topic of speculation on the Internet and many suspect that he was a CIA agent attached to the SOG during the Vietnam War, but this has had not been confirmed or denied. It appears that his life is like the novels he wrote.

I decided to try Pollock's 1984 offering, Centrifuge, to see if was of a similar quality. 

As the story opens, Mike Slater is flying his small amphibious plane to a wilderness lake in northern Maine. He has been summoned there by his former special forces commander in Vietnam, colonel Brooks, who Slater hasn't seen since the final days of that war eight years earlier. Slater quickly learns that he was not invited there for the fishing, but to help Brooks with a potentially very serious national security problem. Brooks, who now works as the chief of security for a top secret defense research facility, can't reveal any details to Slater; he simply wants to show him some photographs and ask him if he recognizes the man shown. But just as Slater is about to look at the photos, a hidden assassin shoots the colonel with a sound-suppressed firearm and Slater never gets a look at them. Brooks does warn Slater before he dies that someone will come after him too, along with the other two survivors of his special forces unit in 'Nam. Slater instantly goes into survival mode, using the skills he learned as a Green Beret to evade, track and kill the assassins armed only with his survival knife. He manages to eliminate three of them, but one gets away and takes the photos with him. He finds German passports on the dead men, and as he is flying back to civilization, wonders what kind of dark shadows from his past have come back to stalk him.

It's an exciting start to the novel, suggesting a larger conspiracy and containing a level of detail about special ops procedures that was rare in thrillers of that era. Unfortunately, this opening scene is probably the best part of the book. After that we are introduced to some key players at Chestnut Ridge Farm, the facility where Brooks worked, as they try to discover who killed Brooks and tried to kill Slater, and why. We learn that Slater has retired from special forces and now runs a kennel where he trains attack and guard dogs. We also meet the Soviet mole inside the Farm, learn about his background, his history with SOG ("studies and observations group", a highly classified spec ops unit in Vietnam), his motivations for defecting to the Soviets, and his connection to Slater's last mission in 'Nam.

When one of the two remaining survivors of that mission is killed, Slater has no doubt that the other man, named Perkins, will be targeted soon. So he travels to Mexico to try to persuade him to join forces and fight back. Perkins is very skeptical and doesn't want anything to do with his shadow warrior past, but after they come under attack right on Perkins's boat he agrees to join Slater and leave Mexico immediately. The two men decide to make their stand at a remote cabin Slater owns on a lake in the Quebec wilderness. They stock up on automatic rifles, grenades, claymore mines and survival gear and fly to the lake. This sets up the novel's climactic confrontation between the two Green Berets and whoever is trying to kill them—presumably KGB assassins but possibly hostile elements of their own side as well. We're given a detailed account of how they prep the battlefield by setting booby traps, scouting escape routes and planning ambushes around the lake. 

The action scenes are interspersed with intrigue at the Farm, where the investigators are closing in on the suspected mole, the mole is making emergency contact with his handlers, the mystery of the mole's connection to Slater is being solved, devious schemes are being hatched, and everything hinges on whether or not Slater and Perkins win their war with the assassins. We also meet the elite twelve man Soviet commando team that is assembled to end Slater and Perkins once and for all. The final showdown at the cabin is tense and believable special ops action, with a twist ending that highlights a running theme of the book: when duplicitous spooks get involved in the wars of honorable soldiers, the soldiers usually lose.

This novel was about half special forces action and half espionage tradecraft and intrigue, showcasing Pollock's technical knowledge of both domains. But that was also its main flaw: at times it felt like I was reading a special forces or spycraft manual that had been turned into a novel. It got a little too by-the-numbers, predictable and technical, and lacked drama, personality and surprises. Fans of realistic, technical 1980s-era spec ops, spycraft and survivalism should enjoy the book, as long as you're OK with its limitations.

Get a copy of Centrifuge here.

Dark Winter

Most shadow-fiction (my catch-all term for fiction that features spies, assassins, special forces, terrorists and criminals) is penned by professional writers whose real-life experience with the world of shadow warfare is limited or non-existent. Andy McNab (pen name of Billy Mitchell) is a different story; he actually lived the life of a covert operator as a member of the SAS (elite British Special Forces) in the 1980s and early 90s. His most famous operation is recounted in his book Bravo Two Zero, which tells the story of a daring mission behind enemy lines in Iraq during the first Gulf War to gather intel about Saddam's Scud missile launchers.

In 1998, McNab published the first novel in his popular series about everyman commando Nick Stone. Like McNab, Stone served in the SAS in the 1980s and 90s, before becoming a deniable operator for MI6, known as a "K". Stone's missions range from personal protection and kidnapping to black bag jobs, sabotage and assassination. The level of authentic covert ops knowledge incorporated into the stories and the realism of the action were something exciting and new in the shadow-fiction world, and made them immediate bestsellers. I read the first five books many years ago and remember enjoying them quite a bit; I recently decided to read the next installment and see if I still felt the same.

Dark Winter is the 6^th book in the series, published in 2003, during the early days of the "War on Terror". As the story opens, Stone is in Malaysia with his fellow K operative, Suzy, and they're on the trail of a suspected al Qaeda scientist. The Firm (British Intelligence) has learned of a plot to unleash a bio-terror attack in the West, and Nick and Suzy are tasked with taking out the terrorist. This was an exciting start to the story; in typical McNab style, the first-person narrative is almost real-time, photographically detailed, and puts you right in the shoes of the shadow operator. However, the hit doesn't end the plot, and we soon learn that some bottles of a bio-terror pathogen have arrived in London, and given the code name Dark Winter. Stone, who had recently been working for the CIA and is now a US citizen, is called back into emergency service in the UK by his old boss, a very nasty piece of work he calls "Yes-Man". Stone is given an al Qaeda informant to meet, then an address to investigate where the bottles may be located. These operations are described in excruciating detail, as Stone takes every precaution to prevent being followed, noticed, attacked or infected by the pathogen.

Between the set pieces of Stone and Suzy carefully infiltrating enemy hideouts and taking out members of the  opposition, there are chapters devoted to the ongoing saga of Kelly, a girl Stone adopted after her family was brutally killed in the first book of the series, Remote Control. It seems that Kelly has developed a prescription drug habit and may be bulemic, and she still hasn't gotten over the trauma of her family's deaths. She is further traumatized by Nick always having to leave unexpectantly to go on missions, and this causes Nick a great deal of guilt, especially now as he is called away just when she was making good progress with a new therapist. 

Anyway, just when it seems that Stone and Suzy have delivered a fatal blow to the terrorist cell, the story takes a dark twist and Nick is forced to go to Berlin to deal with another cell. The full extent of the terrorist plot is revealed, and events race to a dramatic climax, which I won't spoil, except to say that it is rather shocking and very gripping reading. While there were several sections in the first few hundred pages that were slow going, the last 100 pages or so were classic Nick Stone action, and the ending was up there with a notorious early scene of Remote Control for it's brutal, realistic violence. McNab, more than any other author I can think of, never sugar coats the nature of real shadow warfare or feels obligated to provide a happy outcome.

As I was reading this book, I had two main criticisms: 1) the excessive level of detail about things that didn't seem very interesting or relevant to the story, and 2) the excessive attention to the personal drama between Nick and Kelly, which seemed like a distraction from the main terrorism thriller story line. But now that I've finished the book, I'm not so critical.

On point 1), the attention to Stone's mundane experiences—buying fast food, the trash on the street, couples shouting at each other in the next flat, etc.—might be dull at times, but the brilliant thing about it is that when Stone does go into action—infiltrating a building, tracking down a terrorist, killing enemy operatives, or what have you—it is much more believable and hard-hitting than the exploits of someone like Mack Bolan, who goes from battle to battle with few real-life details in between. With Stone, you always feel like you're looking through the eyes of a real shadow operator at work, not reading a men's comic book. On point 2), the drama with Kelly gives Stone some personality and something besides himself to care about. Without that, he would be a rather cynical, emotionless, self-centered robot who would be hard to sympathize with. The relationship with Kelly also turns out to be critical to the way this story plays out.

I should also mention that Suzy was a great partner for Nick, and in some ways was the star of the book. She's a special ops veteran with a background similar to Nick's, and her fearless, ultra-confident, adrenaline-junky personality saves his bacon on more than one occasion.

All in all, despite some slow parts in the middle, this is an exciting and intense thriller, highly recommended for fans of realistic shadow-fiction. Get a copy of Dark Winter here.

The Tashkent Crisis

The Tashkent Crisis, published in 1971 and written by William Craig, is an obscure Cold War thriller that brings to mind classic Alistair MacLean adventures of the 1960s and Tom Clancy "techno-thrillers" of the 1980s. Based on a few positive online reviews and a cover blurb by Donald Hamilton, I picked up the hardback for six bucks and gave it a quick read.

As the novel opens, an American scholar on his way to the Moscow airport is approached by a Russian journalist, given a package and implored to deliver it to an old friend in the State Department. The American doesn't know it, but the package contains technical documents describing a devastating new Soviet weapon system, the existence of which Washington only dimly suspects. Apparently the Soviets have successfully tested an energy weapon that will enable them to incinerate any city on the planet at will. To make matters worse, a hardline general has covertly seized power in Moscow and is preparing to force America's surrender by demonstrating the awesome power of the new death ray. He soon issues an ultimatum to the President: surrender to Soviet forces in 72 hours, or Washington D. C. will be annihilated.

Desperate for an alternative to surrender or mutual nuclear destruction, the President authorizes a seemingly suicidal sabotage mission into the heart of Soviet Asia to destroy the secret weapon before it destroys them. A four-person team is quickly assembled, consisting of a bad-ass Russian-speaking Green Beret of Czech heritage, a KGB defector who had plastic surgery and is now working for the CIA, an ex-Soviet tank commander with experience running cells behind the iron curtain, and a five foot tall Jewish female assassin who grew up near Tashkent.

The sabotage mission was the heart of the story, and the most exciting part by far. The quick assembling of the team; the stealth, low-altitude insertion by helicopter from Pakistan over the Hindu Kush mountains into Uzbekistan; the tense jeep ride across the steppe, dressed as Soviet soldiers, to the vicinity of the secret base; the hideout at the ruined mosque; the intrigue as a traitor in their midst is revealed; the scouting of the secret base; the desperate attempt to complete the sabotage mission despite heavy security—while it's highly implausible that such a mission would be attempted on such short notice with such a team, it made for a gripping tale.

Meanwhile in D.C., the president masterminds a grand deception that involves setting off natural gas explosions throughout D.C. to provide cover for his emergency evacuation of the city, while Soviet provocateurs manage to convince anti-war protestors that the president is on the verge of launching an all-out nuclear attack on Russia. The ultra-hawk Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is pushing for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Tashkent base, there is still no word from the sabotage team, and the President, under intense pressure from all sides, holds the fate of America and the world in his hands.

It was fascinating to read how many of the American political divisions described in this book are still going strong after more than 50 years, as well as the international tensions. While this is definitely a snapshot of America in the early 1970s, with an unpopular war winding down, war-hawks rattling sabers and anxious to prove that the military can still win, paranoia about mutually-assured mass destruction, governments deceiving their populations and protestors being manipulated by shadowy powers, in many ways it is still very relevant to our time.

This was a good read, but I think it would've been even better as a more streamlined men's adventure novel focused on the sabotage mission, with less of the political intrigues, drama with the protestors, government cover-ups, etc. Also, the Soviet death ray and the weapon the saboteurs brought to destroy it both seemed rather unrealistic and science-fictional, and took me out of the story a bit.

Apparently Craig only wrote one more novel, which is surprising because this was an entertaining debut effort that, despite some far-fetched elements, had all the ingredients of a successful espionage thriller. Recommended for fans of the genre.

Get a copy of The Tashkent Crisis here.

Chant

In the 1980s, Asian martial arts and mysticism were a very popular motif in men's adventure books and movies. I have entire shelves of novels from that era about lethal ninja assassins, sinister Eastern mystics and Western martial arts masters trained in the East, often combined with a larger geopolitical narrative involving payback from World War II, the Vietnam War, or the ambitions of  modern-day Japan or China. I am a big fan of this sub-genre, so when I learned about an obscure three-book series about a Western martial arts master and shadow warrior called Chant, I decided to give the first book a read.

"Chant" is the alias of John Sinclair, an almost superhuman character who is like an ultimate 1980s action hero cross between Jason Bourne, Joe Armstrong (American Ninja) and Rambo. His backstory is a familiar one in ninja fiction: a Westerner raised in post-World War II Japan, trained in the most lethal martial arts by Japan's greatest masters, a man so gifted that he is taken as an apprentice by Master Bai, the sinister Sensei of a sect of ninjas who harness the power of the Black Flame—the inner darkness and passion that breaks the bonds of traditional martial arts honor to produce the ultimate human killing machines. Later, Sinclair enlists in the U.S. military, where he becomes an elite commando who puts his skills to work killing Communists behind enemy lines in Southeast Asia. In the process he becomes a revered hero of the Hmong people of Laos, who are fiercely resisting the brutal Pathet Lao guerrillas. For reasons that are unclear, Sinclair is betrayed by his own commanders and attacked by CIA assassins, but he manages to kill them and escape. From that point on, Sinclair is a Jason Bourne-like fugitive from shadowy elements of the US government—a master assassin who has become expendable.

A decade and a half later, Sinclair learns that some of his beloved Hmong have immigrated to the USA, where they are being enslaved and terribly abused by a very nasty family of rich industrialists called the Baldaufs. With his strong sense of honor and loyalty to the Hmong, who saved his life during the war, Sinclair goes on the warpath to destroy the Baldaufs and free the Hmong from their tyranny. Sinclair begins hunting down and killing off the industrialists and their henchmen using his superhuman martial arts skills. He employs the clever stratagem of approaching the head of the Baldauf family in the guise of an operative of a secret US agency that wants Sinclair dead, and is willing to help Baldauf for a fee. Sinclair essentially hunts himself with Baldauf's cooperation, while in the process gaining inside knowledge of the industrialists' operations so he can more effectively sabotage them.

As all this is going on, Master Bai arrives on the scene, having also been hired by Baldauf to find and eliminate John Sinclair. Bai brings with him three gigantic henchmen and his beautiful granddaughter Soussan, who is as lethal as she is seductive. Chant finds himself irresistibly attracted to Soussan, despite knowing that she is probably Bai's ultimate weapon to destroy him. Because Bai is not simply out to kill Sinclair for rejecting the Black Flame cult, but to prove its superiority by defeating Chant in an elaborate mental and martial arts contest. The whole thing gets a little ridiculous at this point, as Chant is challenged to defeat Bai's henchmen, Soussan, and Bai himself, on the threat of his Hmong friends being killed. What follows is a series of staged combats with each henchman, interspersed with Chant's inner confusion about whether Soussan is a sinister seductress or a sincerely changed woman who wants only to be with Chant and leave the Black Flame behind. The twist ending is violent, melodramatic, ridiculous and mystical, much like this book.

Chant is well-written pulp fiction that reminds me of an Eric van Lustbader novel of that era, at a fraction of the length and with the unnecessary subplots and pretentious writing stripped out. Which should make for a good read. And Chant is a pretty good read, if you don't mind characters who are too over the top, too skilled, too good and too evil to take seriously. Sinclair is very impressive, but he lacks charisma and never really makes you care about him—he's like a colder, more brutal and inhuman Mack Bolan. I mean, Mack has no compunctions about blowing away bad guys Dirty Harry-style, but Sinclair takes it to another level, gruesomely murdering people (even puppies!) in a manner usually reserved for villains. He may have a sense of honor, but he also has a streak of Master Bai's Black Flame still burning in his soul that allows him to kill without mercy. Anyway, if you're a sucker for this genre like me you'll probably enjoy this book despite its flaws.

Get a copy of Chant here.

Thai Horse

After enjoying Chameleon, I decided to try another thriller by William Diehl: Thai Horse, published in 1987.

The novel concerns the trials and tribulations of Christian Hatcher, an ultra-lethal shadow operative who has been doing dirty deeds for a deep black military outfit called the "Shadow Brigade" since the Vietnam War. Hatcher's Brigade director is a devious man named Sloan, who was responsible for Hatcher getting locked up in a brutal Central American prison for the past three years. Sloan has evidence that an old Annapolis buddy of Hatcher's named Cody—who was allegedly killed when his plane was shot down in 'Nam back in '73—is still alive and may be involved in organized crime in Southeast Asia. Cody is the son of a revered four-star general with terminal cancer who wishes to see his son one last time. To avoid any embarrassing publicity, the job is given to the Shadow Brigade, and Sloan promptly gets Hatcher released from prison and offers him the mission.

(As a side note, I liked Hatcher's description of Sloan:

A hundred years ago, thought Hatcher, Sloan would have been hawking elixirs from the back of a wagon or selling shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. Now he sold dirty tricks with fictions of adventure and patriotism, seducing wide-eyed young men and women into the shadow wars, to become assassins, saboteurs, gunrunners, second-story men, safe crackers, even mercenaries, all for the glory of flag and country. Hatcher had met Sloan in the time of his innocence and had bought the lie.

Let's face it, it's shady recruiters like Sloan who make the shadow-fiction world go round!)

Hatcher gets on the case, and soon lands in Hong Kong, an old haunt where he once infiltrated the criminal underworld as a Shadow Brigade operative. He makes contact with an old American friend named "China" Cohen, a likeable scoundrel who is now the "white Tsu Fi"—the legendary boss of a Hong Kong triad. It turns out that the leaders of the most powerful triad have good personal reasons to want Hatcher dead, and he soon finds himself the target of a big-time hit. This leads to a scene reminiscent of the assault on Tony Montana's estate in the classic 1983 film Scarface, as black-turtlenecked, submachine gun-toting hitmen storm Cohen's walled compound.

Following a lead that a Dutch smugger may have information about Cody, Hatcher, Cohen and an old Asian flame named Daphne head upriver into outlaw territory ruled by the notoriously brutal gangster Sam-Sam Sam. Here the movie that came to mind was Apocalypse Now!, as the crew encounters colorful, violent characters of various races and nationalities on the river, Hatcher finds his target and things go sideways in an explosively bloody way.

The intrigue gets ever more complex as people near Hatcher are knocked off, Sloan continues to be devious, drug lords prepare a massive shipment, a terrorist attack hits Paris, the rival triad leader hunts Hatcher, Hatcher hunts Cody, a group of colorful expatriate Vietnam vets gets involved, and it all somehow revolves around the meaning of the mysterious term "Thai Horse". Is it Cody? Someone else? An organization? An operation? A drug? Or just an old Thai legend? All is revealed in the last 60 or 70 pages, as Hatcher solves the mysteries of Cody and the Thai Horse, his beef with the triad comes to an ultra-violent climax, and various personal scores are settled in brutal ways.

Like Chameleon, Thai Horse is reminiscent of  Eric Van Lustbader's work from that era, and both authors were clearly influenced by thriller mega-seller Robert Ludlum. Like them, Diehl gets a little melodramatic, wordy and implausible at times, but he knows how to keep the pages turning and construct a complex but entertaining yarn. If you like shadow warfare with an Asian flavor, deadly assassins, international conspiracies, war-time backstories, strong characters, brutal violence, stylish romance, a dash of explicit sex and just enough realism to make the story plausible without becoming dull, you should enjoy this novel.

Get a copy of Thai Horse here.

River of Darkness

James Grady stormed onto the spy fiction scene in 1974 with his debut novel Six Days of the Condor (basis for the classic film Three Days of the Condor), a novel I greatly enjoyed for its paranoid take on America’s shadow government, its memorable characters Ronald Malcolm and the French assassin Joubert, and its brilliant concept of “Section 9, Department 17” which I have written about previously here.

Grady wrote a sequel to Six Days of the Condor called Shadow of the Condor the following year, which I read years ago and found rather forgettable. I recently decided to give Grady another try with his much meatier offering from 1992 called River of Darkness (aka The Nature of the Game). This is Grady’s attempt to write a sweeping, epic novel about American shadow wars from the 1960s to the 1980s, as told through the experiences of ex-Green Beret and CIA operative Jud Stuart.

The narrative switches frequently between Stuart’s current travails as a Jason Bournesque agent who has become expendable and is on the run, to the efforts of an honorable ex-marine tasked by shadowy D.C. players with tracking Stuart down and taking him out, to flashbacks to Stuart’s earlier adventures as a shadow operative. The first flashback is especially intense, as Jud is air-dropped behind enemy lines in 1960s Laos and has to survive a close encounter with Pathet Lao guerrillas. By the early 1970s Stuart is working for a shadowy outfit run by rogue American generals, taking part in everything from the Pinochet coup to spying on the Nixon White House, raiding Russians in Afghanistan, drug-running and assassinating VIPs. But Stuart eventually becomes a liability who knows far too much, so he becomes a hunted man as the novel opens.

The flashbacks to Jud’s covert operations were the novel’s highlights for me, both for the riveting action sequences and the authentic, historically relevant nature of the ops. This is where Grady, a former investigative journalist, shines: he gives the reader a sense of what really goes on behind the headlines, in the deep shadows where America’s secret wars are won and lost.

Unfortunately, there is a lot more going on in this novel than just Jud’s black ops, such as banal romances, family dramas, dull D.C. intrigues and fairly generic characters. It feels like Grady was trying to emulate best-selling spy novelists of the time like Ludlum, Clancy and Van Lustbader, who favored sprawling, complex, bloated epics over the leaner, more focused thrillers of yesteryear (like Six Days of the Condor). While I’ve enjoyed more than a few fat thrillers over the years, I thought this one had a little too much going on, and too many characters and machinations that just weren’t very interesting. 

All in all, I’d say River of Darkness is about half a riveting novel with authentic detail and gripping action, and about half a rather plodding and padded effort to make the novel more epic and Ludlumesque. It’s still a cut above run of the mill and comic book spy thrillers, and worth reading if you’re interested in a realistic fictional take on some of the dark goings-on during the Vietnam to Iran-Contra era in the name of American freedom and security.

Get a copy of River of Darkness here.