Fury (Kill Bin Laden, 2011), one of the first soldiers sent in pursuit of bin Laden, pens frontline-action fiction.
Former Major Kolt Raynor, call-sign Racer, cashiered from Delta Force, is a drunk, fired from a last-resort job as security officer aboard pirate-targeted cargo vessels off Africa’s coast. Avoiding psychiatric counseling, Racer is drowning self-condemnation and PTSD in Old Grand-Dad. Always too impetuous for superiors, Racer’s gut-wrenching guilt arises from a mistake in judgment, a hard-charging decision that killed three members of his recon team deep in Pakistan’s anarchic Federally Administrated Tribal Areas. Worse, Raynor’s best friend, Lt. Col. Josh Timble, three more Delta ops and two CIA pilots were shot down attempting to rescue Racer’s group and are presumed dead. Three years since the snafu, word has come from not-always-reliable operatives that Timble and the others are alive and imprisoned in a forbidding Khyber region compound. The current Delta Force commander and a retired Ranger colonel, who is head of the private security company Radiance, have planned a recon mission to confirm proof-of-life. With that, Racer is yanked out of the bottle, put through merciless re-training by Delta ops who’d rather not be nursing a disgraced drunk, and then dropped into FATA to suss out the rumor’s validity. Fury is retired Delta Force, giving the action a rapid-fire, realistic air as it moves from Peshawar to Dara Adam Khel’s infamous weapon’s bazaar with chaotic intensity. Racer confirms Timble’s POW status. He also uncovers a conspiracy by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, rogue Pakistanis and Turks and a traitorous German to destroy a CIA black site. With sufficient back story and from-the-headlines references, Fury delivers a credible action adventure story. There’s minimal character development, and the bad guys are stereotypical, including Daoud al-Amriki, an American jihadist. More action hero than cerebral spy reluctantly wielding an HK416 carbine, Racer is locked and loaded for a series of adventures.
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-66837-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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