SAVAGE

A novel focuses on covert military operations in the harsh terrain of the Darién Gap.

When readers first encounter Dirk Lasher, he’s in a bad way. Running a dive bar in Florida, the former operative is reeling from the recent death of his beloved wife. As if fated, a young soldier, Capt. Benjamin Blake, shows up at the bar, telling Lasher and his compatriot Jack Williams that they’re needed for a mission that has gone belly up in the brutal jungles between Panama and Colombia. Though reluctant, both men are soon roped into the action, with Williams a week ahead as Lasher grieves stateside. Once Lasher acquaints himself with the personalities of the new special ops unit he’s joining, they’re loaded onto a plane bound for the jungle. Before they can land, they’re attacked by the rogue unit they’ve come to root out, and their plane crashes, wiping out everyone on board except for Lasher and a radio specialist, a young woman called Bonsai. As Bonsai and Lasher flee the scene of the crash, they’re rescued by—who else?—Williams and Blake. Chaos quickly erupts: The group is attacked again; Blake is killed; and it’s only Lasher’s quick thinking and deadly work with a hunting knife that prevent the rest of them from being gunned down. As the three survivors attempt to navigate the terrain and unravel the mystery of the rogue unit, Bonsai begins to fall for the enigmatic Lasher. While certain genre conventions do abound in Edward’s military thriller, such as the way female characters are often described in broad, physical strokes (“Bonsai was a fit twenty-six-year-old. She was tall for a female, about average height for a male, still the shortest of the four. Her face was narrow and her chin came almost to a point”), there is more than enough action and suspense here to keep readers flipping pages. In addition, the author offers an intriguing knife-wielding hero who just wants to complete his mission so he can go home and grieve. In this gripping, fast-paced series opener, some of the violence—much of which comes at the business end of a hunting knife—is brutal to get through, but is never gratuitous.

A high-octane military thriller sure to pound the pulses of even seasoned adventure seekers.