Action-adventure from an author who’s been at the sharp end of the spear.
Fury (Black Site, 2012, etc.) again enlists gung-ho Delta Force Maj. Kolt “Racer” Raynor for anti-terrorist action, and this time the threat involves missiles and airliners rather than forted-up bad guys on the ground.
With the once-cashiered Racer cautioned about the maverick decisions that got him canned, the major and team are HALO-dropped into India, where an airliner has been hijacked. Forced to land on the 767 as it moves onto the runway, the four harpoon their way into the cabin and dispose of the bad guys. Team member Stitch has a finger shot off in the melee. That leaves Racer, Digger and Slapshot to detour to chaotic Libya and extract a U.N. investigator who has uncovered post-revolution looting of Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Curtis, CIA on station, doesn’t like Racer's rough-and-tumble solution. No problem, since the U.N. geek is safe. Racer’s team is then sent to Cairo because a former agent from Libya’s nefarious Jamahiriya Security Organization, Aref Saleh, has gone rogue and is distributing the airplane-killers to bad guys. In Cairo, Racer’s team liaisons with a resentful Curtis, and things go south because of lackadaisical CIA Operations Security. Enter David Wade Doyle, aka Daoud al-Amriki, California boy turned jihadist. Racer and al-Amriki met in Pakistan during the mission that earned Racer’s return to Delta. Now, al-Amriki is in Yemen training English-speaking jihadists to infiltrate the U.S. and bring down airliners with the Igla-S missiles. There’s more scoop about Delta Team operations in this Fury effort and a separate narrative about female members joining the Joint Special Operations Command, with Cindy Bird, code name Hawk, sent on the Egyptian reconnoiter. The bad guys get missiles into Mexico but are stymied at Nuevo Laredo in a messy Racer-led firefight. All but al-Amriki are KIA. Posse Comitatus keeps Delta from in-country operation, but Racer and recuperating fellow officer TJ, another Delta who hates al-Amriki, take leave to D.C. and tie up a perfect-coincidence termination.
Action-adventure from an author who’s been at the sharp end of the spear.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-66838-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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