Wild Fire

Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille

Fiction/Mystery-Thriller/Adult/516 Pages

A federal agent is sent to the Custer Hill Club on a surveillance mission and ends up dead.

Detective John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, set out to investigate. Before long, they start to unravel a plot which has been hatched to set off a nuclear chain reaction that willl lead to global chaos.

Review

This is a scary book. Scary because it could happen. Wild Fire is a rumour that has been on the Web for years. DeMille has written this book based on that rumour.

I've been a fan of Nelson DeMille for years. There's an exhilarating style to his writing; it always stirs the imagination. This is reflected on the pages by a voice that reads like an animated child telling a grand tale. It's obvious the author is as excited by the subject matter as he wants the reader to be. And, if I could hazard a guess, Detective John Corey, is the character DeMille relates most to. This of course is supposition based on the fact that this is the fourth book in which Corey has made an appearance.

I like Corey; he has an irreverent sense of humour, which I suspect matches that of DeMille. In Wild Fire, he is at his wise-ass best, blatantly disregarding rules and regulations on his path to solving the mystery. True to form, Demille delivers a cracking good read.

But ...

At the beginning of the story, the federal agent is captured by the bad guys, who then proceed to reveal their plans for world domination. To me, this felt cliched (almost al la James Bond) and somewhat contrived. I reckon it would have been better for the reader to discover the evil plot the same time John Corey and Kate do. You know, build the suspense more. But that's just a personal view.

This is a good book. You can't go wrong spending a few hours with John Corey. Especially when he learns an important lesson; never to call his wife a bitch when they're having an argument.

My Rating:

The Sirius Crossing

The Sirius Crossing by John Creed

Fiction/Spy-Thriller/Adult/213 Pages

"Jack Valentine has been in the intelligence game too long and it is starting to show, but he accepts one more mission - he always does. It seems like a simple task, but it throws up deadly questions and he doesn't know the answers. What were American Special Forces doing in Ireland Twenty-five years ago, and why does it matter now? What is the thread which leads from a deserted mountainside to the offices of the White House?

Suddenly Valentine has information that everybody wants, and he finds himself the quarry in a pitiless chase. To complicate matters, he is joined by an old friend who is staying just ahead of his own deadly pursuit. And he draws an old flame into danger, because it seems that wherever Jack Valentine goes, innocence seems to suffer. Valentine no longer knows what threatens him most; the dark alliance of men who want to kill him; the terrible storm crossing he is forced to undertake in a battered, converted trawler; or his own dangerous cynicism."

Review

An okay book, but it lets you down on a number of occasions.

The concept is a good one - American Special Forces on a clandestine mission in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles in that country - and it has the potential for a cracking good yarn. Unfortunately, it sometimes felt like the author was padding the story; trying to flesh it out and establish more depth to his characters. He does this with the frequent use of flashbacks, which sometimes are placed inappropriately thereby interrupting the flow. Also, as well as trying to solve his own dilemma, the main protagonist, Jack Valentine, sets about resolving his friend's troubles, resulting in a sub-plot which is unsatisfactorily concluded. It left me with a feeling of "Huh ... ?

On the plus side, there are some excellent insights into the denizens of the IRA, and how their struggle shaped the political landscape. It also explores the darker side of the people caught up in the struggle. The descriptive passages are of a celluloid-like quality. And the crossing of the sea during the one-in-a-hundred-years storm is nail biting.

A word of caution. because of the nature of the characters in this book, the violence is quite graphic.

My Rating:

Code Breaker

Alistair MacLean's Code Breaker by Alistair MacNeill

Fiction/Action-Thriller/Adult/394 Pages

A world-renowned cryptologist is kidnapped. He is carrying coded documents which detail the operations of UNACO, an ultra secret organisation operating under the auspices of the UN.

UNACO's top team is sent to recover the cryptologist and the documents, only to find themselves up against their most ruthless foe yet, while someone back in the United States is threatening to bring the organisation crashing down.

Review

Before he died in 1987, Alistair MacLean was commissioned by a film company to write several story outlines. Of those outlines, Hostage Tower and The Death Train have been made into movies. Code Breaker is the sixth outline to be published as a novel since MacLean's death. All the stories are centred around one UNACO team, Strike Force Three, with the same characters appearing in each book.

MacLean was the master of the thriller with a twist, and while it's plain to see the machinations of his mind behind Code Breaker, for me it didn't come up to par. Compared with the novels written by MacLean, Code Breaker is way too convoluted. It lacked the crispness we have come to expect from MacLean, and ended up being too long.

But then, that's not really surprising as MacLean once stated in an interview that he "wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished." He also believed in not allowing anything to get in the way of the action. I think this is where MacNeill has stumbled as he gets bogged in a couple of places, and the pace is allowed to drop off. Also, there is a glaring continuity error in one part.

All that aside, Code Breaker isn't a bad book. It's a good bit of escapism, not too heavy. Ideal for the train trip to work and back.

My Rating:

Eragon

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Fiction/Fantasy/Young Adult/503 Pages

A smooth stone suddenly appears in front of Eragon while he is out hunting. Eragon takes the stone home, where he soon discovers it's not a stone, but a dragon egg which hatches. A bond forms between boy and dragon and, with the help of the local Storyteller, Eragon learns he has been marked as a Dragon Rider.

Eragon doesn't know it, but unfriendly forces are searching for the egg. They attack Eragon's home, killing his father. Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, set off in pursuit of the murderers, intent on revenge. Along the way, he learns more of his destiny, and how his life is interwoven with those of people he hasn't even met.

His journey eventually ends in a rebel stronghold, and a great battle with an army of Urgals.

Review

This isn't a genre I normally read; I generally find fantasy formulaic. And I have to confess I probably wouldn't have read this book if they hadn't started advertising the movie, and we didn't have it in our bookcase. I usually see the movie first, and if I enjoy it, will try and find the book to read so I can fill in the details the film didn't cover. I saw Fellowship Of The Ring before before reading the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

With Eragon, however, I decided to read before viewing. Looking at the stills from the movie in the recently released edition, it looks to have been a good decision. They have someone playing the part of the evil king, Gabaltorix, but in the book he doesn't make an appearance; he's just an unseen menace constantly lurking below the horizon. The threat of his promised arrival makes for more tension in the tale, and the reader looks forward to the time when he and Eragon finally meet face to face in the final confrontation. However, the reader has to wait. Until the second book, Eldest, or the third (yet to be named) one can only speculate.

I do feel there are definite echoes of Lord Of The Rings, particularly where the elves and dwarves are concerned. The author has even gone to the lengths of creating a language and including a glossary of terms and a guide to pronunciation. I think it's safe to assume that Tolkien has had a great influence. That being said, the story is more than original enough to be recognised as its own entity.

Christopher Paolini was only fifteen when he wrote Eragon, and that also sometimes shows in his writing. Some of the battle descriptions are quite graphic, but what fifteen-year-old boy doesn't want to know all the gory details? There is also a naivety to the characters, but as the story is about a boy coming of age, penned by a boy coming of age, it's a natural progression. Just like the story.

Look forward to reading Eldest.

My Rating: