Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "espionage"

Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou
Steven Burgauer
Publisher: BATTLEGROUND PRESS; 1 edition (November 11, 2016)


Don’t let the rather misleading title of Steven Burgauer’s new World War II novel fool you. Yes, there’s a ring of Nazi spies plotting to blow up a boat building factory in New Orleans. But the scope of the book reaches far beyond Louisiana and involves many more characters and situations than the small band of unlucky German agents.

The various settings indeed center on New Orleans where Andrew Jackson Higgins, an actual historical figure who in reality did what is described in the novel, is building landing craft for the allies, especially boats that can travel in shallow water, land safely on shores and beaches, and return to the water by a simple change to the propellers. But we also spend much time in New Orleans bordellos and meet mixed-blood prostitutes, some keenly interested in Haitian voodoo with helpful connections for the U.S. government. These connections include Sicilian mob families who provide helpful intelligence on the German and Italian defenses of Sicily where an allied invasion is planned using the Higgins boats.

But we also spend considerable time with Navajo code-talkers before we spend even more time in bloody South Pacific island hopping by U.S. forces. We go to London and visit British intelligence where one Commander Ian Fleming makes several appearances. Burgauer throws in scenes in Cuba, an amphibious invasion by a U.S. squad in Tunisia, as well as a number of U.S. Locations described in many a soldier’s backstory.

In short, a lot of moving parts keep this story going with so much rich detail providing every page with verisimilitude, notably in the settings and multi-cultural panorama of the mixed-blood women, soldiers and officers, Mafia bosses and henchmen, and the Navajo code-talkers. Considerable research is demonstrated from street slang to military technology which, admittedly, often slows the flow in order to get in historical descriptions from World War I battles to engineering specs for Higgin’s boats. Sometimes, these bits are a tad repetitious, as when Burgauer makes sure all readers know what the acronym, SNAFU, stands for.

While the title isn’t the best choice for what this book includes and some passages can easily be skimmed, Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou is for World War II buffs, those who like historical fiction in general, fans of New Orleans legends and lore, and readers who like espionage yarns spun out with an epic sweep. In other words, it’s a book for a wide variety of readers.


This review was first published by BookPleasures.com on Nov. 21, 2016 at:
goo.gl/FKoKjW


Purchase Nazi Saboteurs on the Bayou at:
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Saboteurs...

The Forgotten: The Ari Cohen Series, Book Three
Spencer Hawke
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 11, 2015)
ISBN-10: 1515375633
ISBN-13: 978-1515375630
https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Ari-...

Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

“While pompous politicians belch over their taxpayer funded extravagant lunches, real Americans are trying to do something about the horrors many precious fallible children of God are destined to suffer through. Hopefully this book will help inspire at least one leader to skip a lunch and DO SOMETHING . . . This work, is my attempt to spread the word [about the trafficking of abducted children] . . . If you wonder why this book is more expensive than the first two books in the An Cohen series, it is because a portion of these proceeds go to fund organizations that I feel are trying to fight this injustice.”

Spencer Hawke’s stated purpose in his “Dedication” to The Forgotten signals there’s more going on in this thriller than the sorts of pumped-up action you’d expect in similar yarns by the likes of Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, or Jack Higgins, among many others.

The third book featuring former Mossad agent Ari Cohen (following The Arrows of Islam and The Swiss Conspiracy) is a human trafficking mystery in which Cohen follows a trail starting with his criminal rival Peter Stengal, a.k.a. the Raven, who is involved in a cartel that kidnaps young girls and boys for sex, slave labor, and organ harvesting. It’s a personal mission for Cohen as his niece, Renee, has been abducted by a child trafficking syndicate in Paris. It’s also a personal matter for Stengel who seeks compatible bone marrow for his dying son before The Raven decides to team up with the good guys as he too is repulsed by the evil he observes.

Cohen has become an operative of Athena Ops, led by Col. Tom Burke headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Athena, established over 200 years ago by America’s founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, has many resources at their command, including advanced technological eyes-in-the-sky. Of course, such technology can’t replace a skilled asset in the field willing to face physical obstacles and match skills and wits with the enemies of individual freedom and, in this case, simple decency and humanity.

Judging from this book, the Ari Cohen series isn’t as hot-blooded as many other special operations books as the action is comparatively limited and the threat isn’t on a massive power-hungry megalomaniacal scale. That is, until the final 60 pages with the invasion into underground slave chambers and a slave auction in Zanzibar. Even then, the story never goes overboard with blazing gun battles or pyrotechnic explosions. In the background, but not the action, the husband of the president of the U.S., unseen Zulu warriors, and hungry lions prowl in the jungle but never play important roles in the escapes of the adducted youngsters.

I rather doubt Ari Cohen or Athena are likely to replace any reader’s affections for previous fictional spy heroes or their organizations. But it’s hard to dismiss a thriller with a purpose as important as Hawke’s. For that reason alone, readers who like espionage adventures should make a point of exploring The Forgotten and perhaps indeed be inspired to support the work of real-world efforts to thwart the evil fictionalized in the story. It’s a fast-moving read to boot featuring sympathetic characters with deeper than average motivations.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 9, 2016:
goo.gl/QguAT9

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
John le Carré (Author, Narrator)
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Audible.com Release Date: September 8, 2016
ASIN: B016E8U2FO
https://www.amazon.com/Pigeon-Tunnel-...

I can’t think of any spy novelist who’s spent more time under critical microscopes than John Le Carre. To date, the best full-length excavation of his life an works has been Adam Sisman’s 2015 John Le Carre: The Biography which relied much on interviews with the writer and some insiders in the Le Carre circle.

For readers who want a straight-forward, linear biography of Le Carre, Sisman still remains the source to go to first. As implied by the subtitle of The Pigeon Tunnel, “Stories from My Life” is a pretty apt description of what readers will find from Le Carre himself. The book isn’t an autobiography in the traditional sense of following a subject’s life from childhood to sagehood told from a writer looking back over his years both in the public eye and in his personal life. Considering the amount of material available on the often elusive and confusing story of David Cornwell a.k.a. John Le Carre, readers should never expect a full, all secrets revealed account anyway.

Instead, Le Carre offers a literary slide show of events and people who he has known that have left an impression on him throughout his career. In a sense, we get a series of character sketches of actual personalities who don’t appear in the book in any chronological order. For example, Le Carre doesn’t delve into the importance of his unusual parents until very late in the book. We meet spies in the British intelligence services, German diplomats, Russian would-be defectors and gangsters, innocent Arab terrorist suspects, and powerful figures like Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdock. But this isn’t a book full of name dropping. Some figures get fleeting descriptions, as in “Muttsky and Jeffsky,” Le Carre’s humorous monikers for two Russian minders during one of his two visits to Moscow. Others get much more discussion, as in Yasser Arafat and Le Carre’s three brief encounters with the Palestine leader.

Along the way, we do get insights into the models Le Carre fictionalized in his work. As his own spy work was so low-level, essentially being an informant on potential Communists in British academia, the more action-oriented scenes are seen when Le Carre travels the world looking for depth and details for his novels. After he blunders with a scene in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy when he wasn’t aware of a tunnel in Hong Kong linking an island to the mainland, Le Carre didn’t want to get caught flat-footed again. So he endures battle conditions in Cambodia and Vietnam and we witness him being secretly smuggled from car to car in Beirut to meet Arafat. We get many observations on espionage, with often pithy notes like “Spies spy because they can.” Humorous moments occur when world leaders, like the president of Italy, think he has some special knowledge that might help them in ongoing operations.

I’ll admit, reading the audio version as narrated by the author has to be the way to go for Le Carre fans. This is a book that’s as readable as any Le Carre thriller because it’s colorful, insightful, revealing, descriptive, and full of a lifetime of accumulated understanding of human nature. While those who know something about the life and context of Le Carre’s output will gain most from a reading of this slideshow, I think It can be enjoyed even by those without any awareness of the backstories of the Le Carre canon.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Feb. 8, 2017
goo.gl/XU0o5s

The Spy Across the Table (A Jim Brodie Thriller Book 4)
Barry Lancet
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: June 20, 2017
Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
ASIN: B01M4QEFXZ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M4QEFXZ


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton


You can tell from the titles of author Barry Lancet’s previous three novels featuring reluctant PI Jim Brodie that the writer likes to draw on his deep knowledge of Japan in his globe-trotting adventures: Japantown, Tokyo Kill, and Pacific Burn. In these books, Lancet shows off what he’s learned from his considerable experience living and working in Japan for over 25 years, where he edited books on Japanese history, arts, and philosophy.

Now, The Spy Across the Table might spend much of its time in Washington D.c. and San Francisco, but Brodie again shows off how much of a Japan and Asiatic expert his character is, not to mention how much Brodie learned in his father’s Tokyo security firm, especially regarding physical combat, and how he can be pulled into strange murder mysteries against his will. In this case, Brodie witnesses the shooting deaths of two of his close friends on a Kennedy Center opera stage which sets him off into trying to track down the killer. At first glance, these deaths during a Kabuki play might not make anyone think of international espionage, but in short order Brodie is called into action by the U.S.’s First Lady despite the unhappiness of American intelligence agencies over his participation. Just why does the President think Brodie can contribute to an investigation when National Security agents are all over the case?

Then, Brodie is involved with Chinese and North Korean interests in a murky game revolving around a somewhat bizarre and inexplicable kidnapping, most particularly in a duel with Chinese spy Zhou, the man Brodie matches wits with across restaurant tables. And that’s just the first half of the novel.

Readers unfamiliar with the previous Brodie tales need not worry about knowing what went on in Brodie’s life before Spy as there are apparently no integrated plotlines linking the books. From time to time, we get summaries of what happened in those yarns. Perhaps the earlier novels revealed more about his character as we don’t learn much in the new book about who he is beyond his own actions and choices, at least for the first 100 pages or so. Character development isn’t the point and I often thought of detective stories of the ‘40s and ‘50s where hard-boiled gumshoes tracked down their prey with little introspection or second guessing of their actions. Like such pulp adventures narrated in the first person, Lancet quickly drops us into a fast-paced story with Brodie chasing a killer through the back rooms of a theatre before the chase widens far beyond that of a seemingly pointless double murder in the U.S. capital. Then, Brodie travels to Japan, his home turf, and that’s when we begin to learn much about his family, friendships, and love life.

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of this story is Brodie’s bad luck at finding himself ensnared in increasingly impossible situations and his skill an fortitude in extricating himself from dilemmas that would end the careers of many another hero. Lancet is very good at presenting surprise after surprise. In fact, that’s my favorite characteristic of the book, that no matter what hot water Jim Brodie is plunged into, he’s able to find very unexpected ways out of danger. So if you like your thrillers fusing espionage with murder mysteries, set in locations vividly described, and moving at a fast, dense clip with more twists and turns than many another author’s entire canon might provide, The Spy Across the Table should be very diverting summer reading.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com May 22, 2017
goo.gl/SQHKYv

Quantum Zero Sentinel (Quantum Chronicles Book 1)
Scott Rhine
Publication Date: December 11, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01N6FXSYY
https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Zero-S...

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton for BookPleasures.com:

While Quantum Zero Sentinel is billed as science fiction, I think fans of espionage-oriented thrillers could also be a very appreciative audience for this adventure.

For example, the story opens when an innocent civilian, young female engineer Maia Long, is blackmailed by a government agency, in this case the FBI, to go undercover and spy on the Quantum corporation as the Bureau fears Quantum super-computers could be sold to criminal gangs like the Lords of Death as well as to foreign governments. An innocent civilian blackmailed by the government to work for them? Few tropes in the spy fiction genre have been employed more often than this setup.

True, Maia’s infiltration isn’t into any enemy government’s military or para-military entities. Then again modern spy stories often focus on industrial espionage as the consequences of technological breakthroughs in the private sector can be far more frightening than out-and-out war. In this case, the extraordinarily powerful Quantum computers could destroy the U.S. economy and threaten national security. And inside the circle of power brokers in Quantum, Maia slowly learns there are very different and contradictory agendas in the company’s leadership. Trust isn’t something to rely on, even when she becomes a member of the Sentinels, a secret organization wanting to protect the technology from those who would misuse it.

One difference between Quantum Zero Sentinel and your average spy vs. spy caper is just how cerebral everything is, especially the physics lessons we get in some of the dialogue or the strange new weaponry like the peanut butter gun. We aren’t just told Peter Desmotes is the big brain behind everything, we hear and see him in action. I admit, we’re led to believe he’s a cantankerous sort who frightens away secretaries like TV’s Murphy Brown, but we don’t witness this sort of behavior. Instead, Maia is drawn to him in a very romantic way.

Be careful not to confuse this title with Anthony Fucilla’s sci fi series, also called the Quantum Chronicles. And, if I’ve described a book that doesn’t sound especially sci fi, fear not. Mythology, clones, regeneration, and genetics have important roles in the story, notably as Maia learns about abilities she didn’t know she had. Much of this appears in the later chapters when Rhine sets up his next sequel. If you don’t like cliffhangers and prefer standalone novels, this book isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you like epics spanning a number of titles, well, here’s an intelligent journey you can begin with your summer reading.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on June 27, 2017:
goo.gl/GQhqHs

Pigs
John Henry Bennet
Paperback: 392 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 5, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1478360429
ISBN-13: 978-1478360421
https://www.amazon.com/Pigs-John-Henr...

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

I’m perhaps coining a somewhat inaccurate term, but while reading Pigs I felt like I was experiencing my first espionage procedural. That’s because, page after unfolding page, I really felt like I was witnessing a layered series of events in a very realistic “you are there” documentary style.

It all begins with the actual Buncefield Oil Terminal disaster of Sunday, December 11, 2005. It was the largest explosion on mainland Britain since WWII. In reality, it took years for any causes to be identified—it was finally determined that likely a failure with a switch or alarm attached to one tank resulted in an oil overflow that night.

But in Benet’s imagination, while investigators weren’t initially sure if the disaster was an accident or a terrorist act, readers are quickly notified it was a bomb planted by an Islamic agent in a “pig,” a device used to clean oil pipes. In the story, investigators were hampered by having no one taking credit for the strike. That was and is unusual behavior for Jihadists who usually want very public recognition for their blows against the West.

In the aftermath of the explosion, we are taken to the offices of important government ministers, the offices of intelligence officers who are British, French, and Israeli, observe camera clicking surveillance teams, and go into meetings of a multi-national terrorist cell. We meet a wide cast of well-drawn characters and follow them around, step by step, day by day, as they methodically determine just who was responsible for the explosion. And, as the story progresses, we watch the terrorists hatch their next scheme to blow up an oil platform in Qatar, a country they consider too cozy with the West. That’s just the next item on their vicious wish list before a serious attempt to plant a dirty bomb in London.

With his background, it shouldn’t be surprising that Bennet was able to fill his yarn with so much international verisimilitude. While serving in the British army, he spent time in the Middle East before he had a commercial career in the UK, France, the Middle East and Gulf. His travels included London, Paris, Doha Qatar, Dubai UAE, Jeddah Saudi Arabia, Eastern Europe, Hungary, Russia, Asia, North America, and Africa. His publicity doesn’t indicate any background in intelligence, so we don’t know if experience or research lead to all those operational details and personal interactions he provides.

Before the increasingly exciting final 100 pages or so, there is little glamour in the investigations, very minimal violence, little high drama or pyrotechnics, many interagency turf wars, and the obligatory politicos working to make sure no blame falls on them. In addition, we see much simple low-tech legwork in various settings before it all comes together in a London showdown where another pig is employed in the heart of the city’s sewer system.

So Bennet’s Mi-6 operative Harry Baxter, head of a three person team looking into the possibility of terrorism in the Buncefield disaster, is a very believable globe trotter in the trilogy that began with Pigs and continued in Porkies (2015) and Lies, Damn Lies (May 2017). You can be sure—this reviewer plans to read the other two volumes this year. For those who like their spy adventures down-to-earth, topical, and down-and-dirty without the exaggerated elements of the likes of Fleming, Ludlum, or Higgins, give Pigs a try. It’s an engrossing ride even without the over-the-top aspects of other thriller writers.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 16, 2017 at:
http://dpli.ir/4zCg4C

A Conspiracy of Ravens (James Hicks)
Terrence McCauley
Series:James Hicks (Book 3)
Publisher:Polis Books (September 19, 2017)
ISBN-10:1943818711
ISBN-13:978-1943818716
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Rav...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

Over the years, a plethora of very fine novelists from Robert Ludlum to jack Higgins to Tom Clancy to Clive Kusler to Eric Van Lustabader to Gayle Lynds etc. etc. have made the spy thriller genre largely a paint-by-numbers playground. For the majority of these thrillers, readers know what to expect and what they expect is mostly action. Lots of action in series with recurring characters. Often these are interchangeable characters fighting terrorists with a variety of motives and modus operendi including exotic diseases and weapons, a hefty body count, and international consequences for whatever schemes the foes to humanity, liberty, democracy, or religious freedom have concocted. Quite often, the heroes are not only battling the evil-doers of the world but their own supposedly righteous superiors or other government agencies as well.

Still, the field is irresistibly magnetic for generation after generation of new writers, and Terrence McCauley is among the relative newcomers who know how to paint those numbers with exactly what thriller readers hope for. He’s done it twice before with the previous James Hicks novels, Sympathy for the Devil and A Murder of Crows. His main man, James Hicks, is now “Dean” of the clandestine intelligence organization known as The University. (Anyone think of Clancy’s “The Campus” here?) The University is so clandestine, the CIA didn’t know about it for decades and isn’t happy to learn about it now. So Hicks has to appease Charles “Carl” Demerest, head of Clandestine Services at the CIA. Hicks simultaneously keeps operational secrets from the agency while occasionally asking them for backup.

The only reason Demerest doesn’t declare war on the University is because they’re the prime weapon against The Vanguard, a shadowy and deadly organization comprised of weapons dealers, drug runners, and money launderers who want to up the stakes by instigating international wars. Before these schemes get off the ground, they hit with deadly efficiency the University’s home base, wipe out their field operatives, and engage in open warfare in New York, Washing D.C., Berlin, and China. Hicks is in their gun-sights as well.

A Conspiracy of Ravens is solid action that is the proverbial page-turner. It demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the uses of surveillance technology that is completely believable as the behemoths of international espionage clash all over the globe with an ever-growing body count. As usual, the story is so fast-moving, what is lost is much character depth. We get many insights into the likes and loves of James Hicks and some of his surviving team members, especially Roger, a more than versatile club owner. On the other hand, we keep hearing Hicks is in love with Mossad sniper Tali Sadden, but we see so little of her, she is the most shadowy, one-dimensional character in the book.

A Conspiracy of Ravens should please any fan of this genre, and fortunately it’s very enjoyable as a stand-alone story. I must admit McCauley was able to impress me in some passages, surprise me in others, especially in the final acts. It’s clear this isn’t the final saga in the series as we’re witnessing an ongoing war between the University and The Vanguard. Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.R.E., move over. You just don’t cut it anymore.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 22, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/xnYzlbS

December’s Soldiers
Marvin Tyson
Defiance Press & Publishing
Release date: May 14, 2018
ISBN-10:1941948035065
ISBN-13: 978-1948035064
https://www.amazon.com/Decembers-Sold...
It should be no surprise that December’s Soldiers was published by Defiance Press this year. Not only does the house champion Texas writers, but a month before they issued Marvin Tyson’s fictional account of what might happen after Texas secedes from the U.S., they published Daniel Miller’s non-fiction Texit: Why and How Texas Will Leave the Union.

Tyson’s new sequel to his 2015 Fall of the Western Empire opens when an ex-president of the U.S. is drawn into a scheme by a group of rich Chinese underworld figures who will take care of his massive gambling debts if he’ll help ignite a war between the U.S. and the newly created Republic of Texas. They hope such a war would distract all eyes from their planned takeover of all the crude oil leases in Texas.

Ex-president Jackson isn’t the only political leader working for the Chinese. An important senator and the Attorney General are also mixed up in the plot. Opposing them are the presidents of the U.S. and Texas who want a smooth transition for Texas from statehood to independence. A more than capable group of Texas investigators try to connect the dots between troublemakers in Texas and Washington, the leaders of the conspiracy, and the Chinese bosses. And that takes some risky and deadly doing.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in this fast-paced tale of political intrigue. Both Texas and the U.S. are called on to help out Europe in its current economic crisis, the U.N. is concerned about any potential war, and a number of states in the American heartland announce they wish to follow Texas’s lead and secede from the union. The U.S. government says that simply can’t happen.

The rich well of main and supporting players includes the movers and shakers at the top of the political heaps as well as the investigators in the trenches who engage in gunfights and prison escapes in their quest to avert any larger wars. As a result, Tyson has us in locations in or near Austin, Texas and Washington. as well as important scenes set in Macau, China, and the mountains of Kurdistan. In short, Tyson paints a large canvas that isn’t confined within the borders of Texas.
December’s Soldiers is a thriller that should appeal to readers well beyond those interested in any potential Texas secession. It’s, in part, a page-turner of an espionage tale as well as a layered and very believable political thriller. It’s refreshing to meet so many positive political leaders in a story with no shortage of optimism.

I have to admit—I have no idea what the title means. I can’t connect it with anything I read. For now, consider December’s Soldiers a hot summer read for hot summer nights.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on July 1, 2018
https://waa.ai/am61

The Blockade Runners
Peter Vollmer
Print Length: 379 pages
Publisher: Endeavour Media (August 17, 2018)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B07G4FX1Y2
https://www.amazon.com/Blockade-Runne...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

My first paragraph here is almost word-for-word how I opened my 2017 review of Peter Vollmer’s A Question of Allegiance:

I may not have been the very first one, but I was certainly among the earliest reviewers of the novels of South African writer Peter Borchard a.k.a. Peter Vollmer. My reviews began with 2011’s Relentless Pursuit, continued with 2012’s Diamonds Are But Stone, and 2015’s Left For Dead. Of special interest was his 2015 Per Fine Ounce, a continuation novel featuring a character named Geoffrey Peace created by fellow South African novelist Geoffrey Jenkins, a writer with notable connections with Ian Fleming.

Once again, I’m happy to report Vollmer remains a master in his descriptions of international settings and very developed characters. He’s able to vividly capture historical times and places; in the case of The Blockade Runners, his focus is on Rhodesia in 1965 when the U.N. has imposed an embargo on the country to put pressure on Prime Minister Ian Smith to accept majority rule and not continue his minority white government.

The main character of the novel is rugged, womanizing South African banker David Tuck. Despite his military background, he’s known for his accounting skills, especially with international accounts. His South African bank, in its Rhodesian offices, recruits him to be the paymaster for smugglers wanting to bring in oil, weapons, and helicopters illegally into Rhodesia. He has no idea what he’s getting into, to put it mildly.

Soon, he’s paired with the alluring Gisela Mentz, a former East German operative for the Stasi. Together, blending Gisela’s undercover training and Tuck’s quick reflexes and resourcefulness, they travel to Europe and the Middle East to arrange for the secret transfers of funds to smugglers willing to run the U.N. embargo. While France and Germany are willing to look the other way, Britain has a very different agenda. MI6 goes so far as to send out assassins to take out Tuck and Mentz as covertly as possible.

So Tuck and Mentz, quickly romantically involved, are in constant danger and have a series of near-misses and escapes. Adding to the danger, Mentz has inherited a Rhodesian farm targeted by black revolutionaries who want to chase whites out of their country. So, the pair are literally under the gun both when operating around the globe and at home as well.

While The Blockade Runners may not be a pure spy vs. spy espionage thriller, it has all the tropes of such novels. There are numerous chase scenes, deadly fights in exotic locations, clever twists from David Tuck’s fertile mind, generous sex scenes, and complex international chess moves. In short, The Blockade Runners should appeal to readers of Fleming, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and all the other old-fashioned thriller writers versed in international intrigue. Vollmer has gone down this road before—I’m delighted to see he’s at it again. I also appreciate the irony—from beginning to end, readers will be rooting for the bad guys. After all, blockade runners are the criminals.

Wes Britton’s review of A Question of Allegiance first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 23, 2017 at:
http://dpli.ir/LtmtBi

Wes Britton’s 2011 review of Relentless Pursuit was posted at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2012 review of Diamonds Are But Stone is up at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2015 review of Left for Dead is up at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2015 article,” The Re-Boot of PER FINE OUNCE: A Continuation Novel That Isn’t What You Think” was published at:
https://literary007.com/2015/03/25/th...

Wes Britton’s review of The Blockade Runners first appeared Sept. 11, 2018 at:
https://waa.ai/aI7E

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