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THE BOMB SQUAD

Name: THE BOMB SQUAD
Author: Neil Perry Gordon
ISBN: 978-1-73266-777-8

by Neil Perry Gordon ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2020

A gripping page-turner with an improbable plot involving wartime espionage.

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This World War I historical novel pivots between New York City and Germany as a police detective plays cat and mouse with a sinister physician.

The Army’s munitions storage facility on Black Tom Island has been blown up. Germans are suspected, and New York Police Department Detective Max Rothman is ordered to put together a bomb squad to get to the bottom of the incident and conduct espionage for as long as needed. He assembles the squad using Jung’s archetypes as a guide. This crack team goes up against the German spies’ machinations. In a subplot, the philandering Dr. Harold Schwartz, a secret German sympathizer and the head of the Public Health Service on Ellis Island, has gotten nurse Caitlin Ryan pregnant and must deal with that. Meanwhile, Rothman, a widower, falls in love with Maria Richter in a whirlwind courtship. Eventually—after many plot twists—Rothman and Maria decamp for Germany to find the son she had been forced to give up. There, they intersect with Schwartz, who plans to alert the Kaiser to the crown prince’s perfidy and thus prevent a coup. Schwartz winds up in cahoots with Maria’s son’s father, Stefan Zeller. In a very uneasy arrangement, all four sail back to New York on a fishing boat. The fun lies in seeing what will happen next. In this riveting tale, Gordon is a busy plotmeister. The chapters are short and punchy, and circumstances—and allegiances—change with dizzying speed. But those upheavals are sometimes a problem. Even fiction of this kind has to be in accord with life as readers know it. So, for example, when Schwartz, who has ordered the pregnant Caitlin killed, finds himself suddenly in love with her, most readers’ jaws will drop. Later in the story, a character’s remark, “A novel of fiction could not have dreamed this up,” will speak for many in the audience. Some of the scenes are effective as set pieces, but more than once readers will feel their credulity imposed upon.

A gripping page-turner with an improbable plot involving wartime espionage.

Pub Date: April 6, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-73266-777-8

Page Count: 411

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | THRILLER | ESPIONAGE | HISTORICAL THRILLER

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MOSCOW X

by David McCloskey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2023

The CIA pokes the Russian bear, and thriller fans win.

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America and Russia don’t play nice in a tale that mixes spies, horses, and gold bullion.

Moscow X is a secret CIA operation designed to cause migraines for the Russian government, especially for Vladimir Putin. “Access to Putin’s money would give us beautiful opportunities for fuckery and general mayhem,” declares Artemis Aphrodite Procter, formerly the CIA’s Chief of Station in Tajikistan. Her hands already “wet with Russian blood,” she jumps at the chance to join Moscow X. At about the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Chernov of the Federal Security Service (FSB) illegally transfers 221 bars of gold from Bank Rossiya, although it’s theft on Putin’s behalf. “What is to be done when the police are robbing you?” wonders a bemused banker. Chernov demonstrates that “the law is nothing but ritual, it is a glorious gesture of subjugation to our leader.” Anyway, the gold belongs to Russia, which in turn belongs to God. Therefore, it’s God’s gold, so the “withdrawal” is ultimately legitimate. (Nice reasoning!) Putin has a financial stake in RusFarm, a Thoroughbred horse operation. Anna Agapova has deep ties to the Russian establishment, but she meets sub rosa with the CIA. She is a complex character who has troubled relationships with her husband and her country, but whether she becomes a traitor to her homeland remains to be seen. A nice detail: She carries a lipstick gun, the “Kiss of Death,” which plays an unexpected role in the story. The cast of well-developed characters also includes Hortensia “Sia” Fox, a “hot-shit NOC” (non-official cover) who wants a Russian scalp, and there are nasty villains like Anna’s husband. The story builds a bit slowly at first, but the tension grows as well. There’s a reference to overthrowing Putin, but that doesn’t seem like the point. Procter has it right that the best analogy for U.S.-Russia relations is of “two individuals punching each other in a fight without end.” Human life and horseflesh are at risk, and the blood that eventually flows won’t tilt the balance of power in either direction. The author researched his subject deeply, and it shows.

The CIA pokes the Russian bear, and thriller fans win.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023

ISBN: 9781324050759

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023

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TARGETED

by Stephen Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 18, 2022

There’s a dumpster’s worth of action and attitude here.

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Trouble finds retired sniper Bob Lee Swagger in this rip-roaring, blood-spilling, right-wing rant.

The opening feels like a zombie novel, portraying northern New Jersey as a “slough of despond” with “three-foot-long bull crickets,” the fragrance of “large, dead Italians,” and a landscape with “a wondrous satanic cast.” (Ha ha. Take that, Garden State!) Bad guys hijack a truck and leave corpses behind, but they fail to kill the warrior elite hero named Delta. Meanwhile in Idaho, the septuagenarian Bob Lee Swagger mends in peace from a near-fatal wound until bad news arrives: Congress will hold a hearing in Boise into whether retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Swagger had used unauthorized ammo in taking out Juba the Sniper. “Policemen must be prepared to retreat rather than return fire,” one pol pontificates. Apparently, some candy-ass congressmen hate guns and killing and stuff, and they want to find a way to bring down Swagger, the great American hero. “Even heroes have to be held accountable for their decisions,” a senator says. The cartoonish Congresswoman Charlotte Venable hates Swagger, the president’s favorite sniper. The author takes plenty of cheap, lib-owning political shots, as when Delta likens his situation to bathing in pain, breathing sulfur fumes, and listening to the wisdom of Stephen Colbert in stereo. A New York Times reporter has a mouth that looks like a vagina and is “your basic child-molester type of anonymous wretch.” The poor guy’s hair “fell like shit from a flock of diarrhetic geese.” Another reporter is a “CNN haircut eunuch.” The aforementioned crims storm the hearing, planning to take eight congressmen hostage. (It must take place in Idaho because who would ever attack the U.S. Capitol?) Bloody mayhem ensues, with an ingenious sequence involving a wheelchair that does Swagger proud. A neat subplot reaches back to the American Revolution and asks whether he is destined by his DNA to be a natural-born killer. Politics aside, were that possible, Swagger’s adventures are escapist fun. Just watch out when the geezer turns 80!

There’s a dumpster’s worth of action and attitude here.