Trained to Hunt by Simon Gervais

Pierce Hunt has been fired by the DEA (In the previous book). He went off the rails in response to a cartel's kidnapping his daughter and her friend. Despite a successful resolution, his daughter is still seriously shook up. Doesn't help that Hunt was helped out by the daughter of the Garcia cartel's boss.

Hunt and Anna Garcia have since become an item as she makes the steady move to legitimize the Garcia's business. Some underlings, still loyal to daddy Garcia's criminal ways, don't like the direction taken by Anna and are plotting to return things to the way they were. And they have a new product. A heroin-derivative that promises performance enhancing effects. Local Florida high school football players are turning up critically incapacitated or dead. Including the star QB of the high school where Hunt's daughter attends.

Hunt and his team weren't unemployed for long. As soon as the President demanded Hunt's head (previous book), the DEA quietly hired the team as contractors. Tracing that heroin-derivative back to Afghanistan takes Hunt's team to the small villages that is the source of the unique variant of poppy. Anna is dealing with her disloyal younger brother who is trying to kill her. When it turns out that the old Garcia distribution network is where this new drug has hit Florida, the DEA then tells her to stop the subversive network or all previously promised protections will cease immediately.  After Afghanistan, Hunt heads back to the US before being inserted into Venezuela before finally returning back to Tampa to help Anna deal with her brother.

Gervais' reputation is that of a quality thriller/action author whose pre-literary life dealt with the military, intelligence, and law enforcement. He knows of what he writes. Earlier books of his have been reviewed here. What ensues is a highly believable and realistic presentation of the investigation and subsequent battles. Good old testosterone-based thriller. Doubt many women will pick this up. Need a suggestion for a holiday gift for the (male) reader in your life? This would be a good place to start.

Available November 2019.

East Coast Don

A Red Dotted Line by Simon Gervais

Its offices are in Manhattan. The operatives live in penthouses. They are privately funded by billionaires who have no say in how their money is used. They do what must be done outside the rule of law and far enough from the White House for plausible deniability. Their level of tech is years ahead of all but the NSA. They are:

The International Market Stabilization Institute.

The what? Sounds more like a think tank for bankers and economists, not super duper spies.

The main spooks are Mike Walton (he's the one with panic attacks. Great trait for a spy wouldn't you say?) and his physician wife Lisa. As the book opens, the IMSI has just foiled/escaped an attempted hit on their leader. The chief suspect is The Sheik.

Mike and Lisa are sent to Moscow to observe and report on an exchange of sorts. But their cover is blown almost as soon as they land. Lisa is quickly sent to a backwoods town that is home to Russia's biomedical weapons research facility that apparently is close to weaponizing a virus that makes Ebola look like a chest cold.  Mike is tasked with finding a contact who used to work at the research lab and try and trace back who is the political boss in charge of the project.

If you like chases, this is your bag. Me? For most of the book, I felt like I had come into a movie theater midway through the film. Maybe one should first read the predecessor to this book, The Thin Black Line. That probably contains the requisite character development and history into the shadowy IMSI. I always seemed to be behind, trying to catch up. Thought about quitting numerous times, but decided to mostly skim through just to see the final result. Once achieved, I personally never felt anything for the successes of the characters because I knew nothing about them.

My suggestion would be to start with The Think Black Line (just an assumption as I haven't read it) before delving into A Red Dotted Line. I'm guessing that where 'Black' leaves off, 'Red' picks right up and assumes that the reader of 'Red' has previously completed 'Black' and has all the necessary background. But with my nightstand piled as high as it is, I doubt I'll be going back just to fill in the many blanks found in 'Red'.

ECD

available November 1, 2016