The Point of A Gun by Steven W. Kohlhagen

We all know that the morass of all those 3-letter intelligence agencies in the government just do not trust each other. Each holds their cards so close to the vest that any possible cooperation falls by the wayside of interagency squabbling and jealousy.

What if someone way up the food chain decides to take their agency’s own data and supplements it with more data obtained by way of good old hard work by a talented hacker with plenty of deep web contacts. This group also has a couple shooters who will act on the intel and do so with impunity . . . under orders of course.

This vigilante group is good. Their research finds out what domestic terror acts are about to occur and stops the dirtbags in their tracks during the at, with extreme prejudice. To let the cops/feds left to clean up the mess, a calling card . . . SAMMS . . . is left on the bodies.

Of course, the government really isn’t all that pleased about a group of vigilantes on the job even if SAMMS really is protecting American lives. The President and a couple confidants reason that the head of SAMMS is the counter terrorism head from one of six federal agencies. Instead of a mole hunt, each of the heads are brought in to form a committee to hunt down SAMMS. Two are ruled out as possibles right away leaving four.

SAMMS continues to lay waste to dirtbags while the President attempts to ferret out a professional spook from a group of four professional spooks. The President is a bit out of his element.

The media and public have been kept in the dark with plausible explanation about the various killings throughout the US. But even as the number of dead dirtbags mounts up, the President starts to develop a bit of an admiration for the vigilantes, now referred to as The Paladins after the 1950s TV show. Even to the point of trying to bring them in to answer only to him with a twist. Provide the feds with the actionable intel and let the FBI make the takedown.

On one level, this is sort of a more modern twist on LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy where George Smiley must manipulate spy chieftains to determine the identity of the Russian mole. The President’s investigator tries to do the same thing. Leak some different intel to each of the four and see which leads to action by the Paladins. Think that worked?

All in all, a reasonable tale. I did break away from this about halfway through to read A Promise To Kill reviewed last week (BTW, that was a WHOLE lot more interesting). For me, this was a bit far-fetched, but well told. As a variation on the mole hunt, LeCarre did it a whole lot better.

East Coast Don

A Promise To Kill by Eric Storey

Clyde Barr is back. After dealing with the kidnapping of his sister in Nothing Short Of Dying, Clyde Barr headed off to the Utah desert on his mare and mule, Bob. Struggling to regain his identity, he finds an old man (Bud), idling in a pickup in a ditch. Being the curious sort, he checks in on the man, guesses he is having a heart attack, ties up his steeds, and drives the man to the closest hospital. In thanks, Bud invites Clyde to dinner at his home in the Ute reservation town of Wakara where Bud lives with his physician daughter Lawana and 15yo grandson Taylor.

Bud mostly runs a small horse ranch, but being laid up, he talks Clyde into sticking around til he gets back on his feet. Lawana is skeptical of this White while Taylor easily takes to Clyde. While working the fences and shoveling manure with Taylor, Clyde learns how Lawana came to become a physician and that his father had died in Afghanistan. Barr comes to realize that he is pretty good at ranching.

A ranch comes with needing supplies. Clyde and Taylor head into town. In the tack store for horseshoe supplies, Clyde hears Native music and goes to peek. Only the drumming music gets drowned out by the roar of maybe a half dozen Harleys. Seemed out of place in a reservation town.

Barr’s next trip to town crosses paths with a couple young Ute toughs, but their Warrior Spirit fades when Jury, the head dog of the Reapers ‘club’ shows them what tough means. Clyde being the nosey sort steps in and Jury takes issue.

Turns out about 40 bikers have set up camp outside of Wakara and have been raising hell in town for the past week or two. Anyone who looks at them cross-eyed gets a lesson in biker respect.

The one oddball of the bunch is a small-ish dude who looks more like an accountant. Goes by Orval. What he says, the bikers do. Tries to do nice with the Natives by being fake nice. The Utes see through that façade, but a few generations on the reservation has sapped the renowned Ute Warrior Spirit.

Did I mention that Barr’s the nosey type? He also sees things as right and wrong. And what the bikers are doing to the peaceful folks on this Northern Ute reservation is just wrong. When the Natives decide to find out why the Reapers are in Wakara, their stealth helps them learn that the Reapers have stolen something and are waiting for the pickup and to get paid.

Out on the rez, TVs, internet, and cell phones aren’t high on anyone’s list of things to do. But when driving to Vernal for hard to get supplies, the radio news is going on and on about Homeland Security essentially shutting down the western third of the country. Air, rail, and other commercial travel west of the Continental Divide has been shut down. The west is, for lack of a better term, under martial law.

Orval is joined by the Middle Eastern looking Omani. This is the real boss. He is in Wakana to collect his merchandise and make good use of it. The Natives and Clyde work out a nighttime raid on the Reaper camp to drive them out. In doing so, Clyde realizes that the semi at the camp contains Omani’s merchandise. In the ensuing raid, Barr manages to highjack the semi and hide it in plain sight out in an abandoned oil field deep in the desert.

Omani, Orval, Jury, and the rest of the Reaper’s ain’t happy and begin to exact their revenge on the town. And that ain’t right, either. Barr recalls the skills that kept him alive in Africa, South America, and Mexico to lead the Natives in a bloody counterattack.

Storey packs a lot into a compact 265 pages. Barr is the modern-day equivalent of the dusty loner cowboy drifter. Looking for something, but not sure just what. He may have found something with Lawana and Taylor. Yet the horrors of his past and the destruction he reaps on the Reapers are issues that might be too much for anyone, Barr included.

Be prepared for an edge of your seat desert conflict that pits the guerilla tactics of the Natives vs. the ball busting skills of the bikers. The reckless ride through the town and the surrounding desert will keep your eyes glued to the page. This may only be Storey’s 2^nd book, but it sure reads like it was penned by a seasoned pro. You might compare Barr to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. Both see the world as right and wrong. The one difference between the two is that Reacher is supremely confident in his abilities. Barr on the other hand questions his actions and motives. Questions his interactions with the Natives. Is scared to death about why he attracts danger so readily and puts people he comes to care about in lethal danger. 

I wouldn’t call Reacher out as a scarred hero. But Barr? His whole life is a scar.

East Coast Don

Into a Dark Frontier

Into the Dark Frontier is a apparently a first novel for John Mangan, and thanks to NetGalley for sending the book along. In the not too distant future, the entire continent of Africa has become a failed state. In the midst of chaos, there is opportunity for some, danger for most. Slade Crawford, a former SEAL, has run into some trouble. His son died, his wife divorced him, and he was falsely accused of terrorism. Crawford fled to African in hopes of starting over, but he ran into the hopeless, the insane, and the sociopaths who were drawn to the situation. Crawford is a compelling character, as is the 15-year-old Elizabeth who was accidentally pulled into this anarchy. I was less impressed with Crawford’s antagonist, Colonel Gary Kraven.

The story was fast paced and Slade worked his way across the continent and through some unbelievably horrendous situations. Ultimately, it is my conclusion that this story is not simply in a genre that holds my interest. In the end, it was clearly a treatise on anti-globalism, and the blame for the troubles in Africa was blamed on the last few decades of decisions in support of globalism.

The Castle

Jason Pinter has authored at least 10 books, and The Castle is his latest release. See if this rings a bell: Rawson Griggs is a wealthy real estate tycoon in New York who has decided to run for President. The Castle is the nickname for his monolithic building in mid-town Manhattan. Griggs has been empowered by his own success where his ruthlessness is legendary, but he is totally naïve as to the business of politics. What could go wrong?

The story starts with a remarkable rescue by Remy Stanton. Stanton was doing well for himself as a 30-something consultant with a firm in Manhattan. It was when he was walking home late one night, after a couple drinks in a bar, that he noticed a couple walking along, in love, oblivious to their surroundings. Remy saw two men approach the couple with obvious ill intent, and he impulsively intervened. One of the men pulled a gun, and while Remy was seriously wounded, this assailant was killed. The second guy got away. It was Griggs’ daughter, Alena and her husband Paul Bracewell who Remy had rescued. Rawson Griggs decided there was not enough he could do to reward Remy for saving his most precious asset, Alena.  So, Remy was taken into the Griggs inner circle just as Griggs was making the announcement of his run for the presidency. Although a political neophyte, Griggs talked a good game and Remy was all in on the deal.

Griggs created a firestorm of publicity for his campaign, and meanwhile people who were not in his camp kept giving Remy warnings that Griggs was a dangerous guy. Then, there was the lovely and talented Alena who knew that her husband was not favored by her father. That’s enough of the plot – I don’t want to give away more. But, this is spell-binding and I could not put it down. If it were not for the recent political events in the U.S., I would find this book impossible to believe and I probably would not have finished it. However, now we know that anything is possible. This book was just released in late 6/17, and it gets my strongest recommendation. Now, I plan to go back and have a look at Pinter’s 5-book Henry Parker series.

The Late Show by Michael Connelly

The late show, or late shift in the LAPD is where political outcasts with insufficient cause for firing are assigned.  Detectives merely triage criminal cases and hand them off to the day shift.  Detective Renee Ballard is a good detective with empathy for the victims, no matter who they are, and tenacity to follow leads where others won’t follow… a regular Harry Bosch junior.  But Renee made the mistake of challenging the establishment, the good old boys club, by filing a sexual harassment complaint against one of the department’s up and comers, Lt. Robert Olivas.  Unfortunately, her partner, Officer Kenny Chastain had ambitions of his own in the department and failed to support her claim.  Consequently, Ballard is on the late shift in Hollywood division doing only preliminary investigations with a clock watching partner, Jenkins marking time to his pension.  But Ballard makes the most of her assignment where she can avoid the political B.S. and spend the day living her surf bum bohemian lifestyle.  Her permanent address is Tutu’s, her grandmother’s home an hour and a half north in Ventura but Renee actually lives in a utility van and sleeps in a nylon tent on the beach with her rescue dog, Lola.

One night she catches two cases she wants to work and not just hand off to the day shift.  One is the brutal beating of a transgender prostitute and the other the murder of a drug dealing waitress in a nightclub shooting.  Both these crimes represent the reason she became a cop and fuel her drive to catch the bad guys.  She is assigned a couple of duties which are expected to complete her involvement in the two cases but she can’t let go.  Against orders she spends her off duty time investigating where she’s sure her daytime colleagues will not bother.  Her former partner, Kenny Chastain is assigned to the nightclub murders and is assassinated in his garage as he arrives home from work.  Ballard then gets a hint that the club murders may have involved a cop… not just any cop but her nemesis, Lt. Olivas.  Suddenly, she is being investigated and with no political juice or mentors within the department must tread lightly.  Could this be what ends her career at LAPD or worse what ends her life like her former partner?  She can’t let either of those possibilities keep her from finding the truth.

Michael Connelly has created a new fascinating protagonist in Detective Renee Ballard.  One with the same moral code, disrespect for authority, and tenacity to catch the perpetrator at all costs as his beloved Harry Bosch.  I’m hopeful we’ll see more of Detective Ballard but it begs the question, what does he do with Maddie Bosch, Harry’s daughter?  Maddie was clearly headed down the path to follow in her Dad’s footsteps but what is her fate now that Ballard fills that spot?  I can’t wait to see.