Wesley Britton's Blog, page 36
May 31, 2017
Book Review: The Badwater Gospel by R.W. Magill
The Badwater Gospel Kindle Edition
R.W. Magill
Publication Date: April 10, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01DLPD32C
https://www.amazon.com/Badwater-Gospe...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
The Badwater Gospel opens with a bit of literal gallows humor. In his jailhouse journal, convicted murderer Langdon Dorsey looks out his cell window and only thanks one group in his acknowledgements—the termites that destroyed the gallows he was supposed to swing from.
Touches of such humor are rare in this quirky Western where card shark and con man Lang Dorsey arrives in the Montana town of Badwater while impersonating a Baptist Minister. He’s accompanied by 18 year old Paris Miller who’s pretending to be his daughter, a beauty Dorsey falls in love with as the two fornicate all over Montana in the winter of 1887.
Mainly told in a series of first-person journal entries, Magill adds considerable verisimilitude to the book with occasional court transcripts from The Territory of Wyoming vs. Dorsey, letters written by the secretary at the Badwater Baptist Church, and a newspaper article from the Laramie Daily Sentinel. Throughout, we hear Dorsey’s side of things as he explains how a number of killings occur around him while he argues his innocence of these crimes beyond his confidence man chicanery. In court, the evidence compounds against him as he’s ultimately convicted of multiple murders.
As the story takes us through many surprising twists and turns, I often thought Dorset is something of a raunchier, rougher, and randier incarnation of Bret Maverick. Had the ‘50s TV show not had to deal with the mores and broadcast codes of the era, perhaps James Garner’s gambling man character might have been more of a kindred spirit with Dorsey who’s never presented as a willingly violent man. He’s a criminal who simply wants to get ahead by hook or crook. The story’s true villains are far darker than either Dorsey or Paris, a seductive girl with increasingly suspect motives. Or perhaps author Magill has cards up his sleeve that he doesn’t want to show until he absolutely has to?
Publicity for Badwater Gospel uses terms like “genre bending, anti-Western, noir, murder mystery.” I suppose several killings can be called mysteries, although Dorsey and most readers will have no difficulty figuring out who’s responsible for the violent deaths. I don’t really know what an “anti-Western” would be, considering all the uses of Western settings in too many dark films to count, TV shows like Deadwood, or novels like this one. I don’t see how The Badwater Gospel bends any genres. And I don’t think any such distinctions really matter. Publicists like to use tag-lines and coin phrases that will draw prospective readers to their offered titles, but sometimes the book can stand on its own with no need of special puffery.
In that light, I’d recommend Badwater Gospel to any adult reader whether they’re fans of Westerns, anti-Westerns, or hard-boiled noir yarns. Gratefully, R.W. Magill has given us well-drawn and very sympathetic protagonists presented in vivid and very believable settings. I’m equally grateful Magill found a very plausible way to tie-off the story with an unexpected but very satisfying conclusion. To say more would be a spoiler. Just know however bloody and vicious the book gets, there’s justice, of a sort, after all.
First posted at BookPleasures.com May 31, 2017 at:
goo.gl/jB9ySa
R.W. Magill
Publication Date: April 10, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B01DLPD32C
https://www.amazon.com/Badwater-Gospe...
Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton
The Badwater Gospel opens with a bit of literal gallows humor. In his jailhouse journal, convicted murderer Langdon Dorsey looks out his cell window and only thanks one group in his acknowledgements—the termites that destroyed the gallows he was supposed to swing from.
Touches of such humor are rare in this quirky Western where card shark and con man Lang Dorsey arrives in the Montana town of Badwater while impersonating a Baptist Minister. He’s accompanied by 18 year old Paris Miller who’s pretending to be his daughter, a beauty Dorsey falls in love with as the two fornicate all over Montana in the winter of 1887.
Mainly told in a series of first-person journal entries, Magill adds considerable verisimilitude to the book with occasional court transcripts from The Territory of Wyoming vs. Dorsey, letters written by the secretary at the Badwater Baptist Church, and a newspaper article from the Laramie Daily Sentinel. Throughout, we hear Dorsey’s side of things as he explains how a number of killings occur around him while he argues his innocence of these crimes beyond his confidence man chicanery. In court, the evidence compounds against him as he’s ultimately convicted of multiple murders.
As the story takes us through many surprising twists and turns, I often thought Dorset is something of a raunchier, rougher, and randier incarnation of Bret Maverick. Had the ‘50s TV show not had to deal with the mores and broadcast codes of the era, perhaps James Garner’s gambling man character might have been more of a kindred spirit with Dorsey who’s never presented as a willingly violent man. He’s a criminal who simply wants to get ahead by hook or crook. The story’s true villains are far darker than either Dorsey or Paris, a seductive girl with increasingly suspect motives. Or perhaps author Magill has cards up his sleeve that he doesn’t want to show until he absolutely has to?
Publicity for Badwater Gospel uses terms like “genre bending, anti-Western, noir, murder mystery.” I suppose several killings can be called mysteries, although Dorsey and most readers will have no difficulty figuring out who’s responsible for the violent deaths. I don’t really know what an “anti-Western” would be, considering all the uses of Western settings in too many dark films to count, TV shows like Deadwood, or novels like this one. I don’t see how The Badwater Gospel bends any genres. And I don’t think any such distinctions really matter. Publicists like to use tag-lines and coin phrases that will draw prospective readers to their offered titles, but sometimes the book can stand on its own with no need of special puffery.
In that light, I’d recommend Badwater Gospel to any adult reader whether they’re fans of Westerns, anti-Westerns, or hard-boiled noir yarns. Gratefully, R.W. Magill has given us well-drawn and very sympathetic protagonists presented in vivid and very believable settings. I’m equally grateful Magill found a very plausible way to tie-off the story with an unexpected but very satisfying conclusion. To say more would be a spoiler. Just know however bloody and vicious the book gets, there’s justice, of a sort, after all.
First posted at BookPleasures.com May 31, 2017 at:
goo.gl/jB9ySa
May 27, 2017
Devon Allman on his famous Dad, Bregg Allman
I just learned Allman Brother Gregg Allman left us May 27, 2017 at the premature age of 69.
When I interviewed so many musicians for online radio’s “Dave White Presents,” I never had the opportunity to talk with Gregg. However, on May 22, 2013, I had the wonderful chance to interview Gregg’s son, Devon Allman, about his family’s Southern rock legacy and his own band, Royal Southern Brotherhood, which featured fellow Southern music legend, Cyril Neville.
You can still hear that conversation and hear Devon talk about his Dad and his famous uncle, Duane, at:
http://tinyurl.com/pwdyytr
or all the archived broadcasts at—
http://www.audioentertainment.org/dwp
When I interviewed so many musicians for online radio’s “Dave White Presents,” I never had the opportunity to talk with Gregg. However, on May 22, 2013, I had the wonderful chance to interview Gregg’s son, Devon Allman, about his family’s Southern rock legacy and his own band, Royal Southern Brotherhood, which featured fellow Southern music legend, Cyril Neville.
You can still hear that conversation and hear Devon talk about his Dad and his famous uncle, Duane, at:
http://tinyurl.com/pwdyytr
or all the archived broadcasts at—
http://www.audioentertainment.org/dwp
Book Review: Knoll: The Last JFK Conspiricist by Stephen Hillard
Knoll: The Last JFK Conspiricist
Stephen Hillard
Publisher: SelectBooks (June 6, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1590794214
ISBN-13: 978-1590794210
https://www.amazon.com/KNOLL-Stephen-...
Reviewed by Wesley Britton for BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/3j1bKW
Stephen Hillard hasn’t written the JFK conspiracy novel to end all JFK conspiracy novels, but instead demonstrates that trying to contribute anything new to this old thriller sub-genre requires some major literary and imaginative contortions.
In part, that’s because Knoll deals with Columbus McIntyre, a small-town attorney who wasn’t even born in November 1963. He’s the son of a mysteriously murdered police officer who was killed in 1970. Columbus learns his father had something to do with the president’s assassination which involved Mafioso kingpin Carlos Marcello.
In short order, McIntyre joins the long list of “witnesses” or those who know something, however minute or obscure, about snipers in Dallas who become marked for assassination themselves. Who’s responsible for so much murder over the decades? The government? The Mob? After all these years, what’s the point of covering up the secrets anyway? Who needs posthumous protection?
Knoll isn’t a story set in large capital city offices or palatial residences of the rich and powerful. Instead, McIntyre is a fugitive on the run in American small towns, back alleys, and on interstate highways always looking over his shoulder. He’s only fleetingly in Dallas but mostly is on his motorcycle in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Colorado, hardly the places most readers will associate with most assassination theories. While current events are set in 2014, there are many scenes recreated from the 1960s with many late-‘60s psychedelic trappings. They are most appropriate in this stream-of-consciousness tale that bounces back and forth in time and geography that is always murky and blurry in its scattered revelations and unsolved mysteries.
Much of the book doesn’t focus on the assassination at all but rather McIntyre’s family relationships, his past, and the life he’s slowly losing grasp of. So he is very much an “Everyman” character swept up into events that took place long before he was born. In short, this is a book that tries to pull old conspiracy stories into the present day where the only ones to be on the firing line are people completely innocent of any complicity in anything at all that happened in 1963.
Knoll is indeed an odd contribution to the Kennedy conspiracy subgenre and, at this late date, probably had to be. It has nothing new to add to the possibilities of more gunmen than Oswald in Dealy Plaza, but it does give us a very readable innocent man on the run yarn.
Stephen Hillard
Publisher: SelectBooks (June 6, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1590794214
ISBN-13: 978-1590794210
https://www.amazon.com/KNOLL-Stephen-...
Reviewed by Wesley Britton for BookPleasures.com:
goo.gl/3j1bKW
Stephen Hillard hasn’t written the JFK conspiracy novel to end all JFK conspiracy novels, but instead demonstrates that trying to contribute anything new to this old thriller sub-genre requires some major literary and imaginative contortions.
In part, that’s because Knoll deals with Columbus McIntyre, a small-town attorney who wasn’t even born in November 1963. He’s the son of a mysteriously murdered police officer who was killed in 1970. Columbus learns his father had something to do with the president’s assassination which involved Mafioso kingpin Carlos Marcello.
In short order, McIntyre joins the long list of “witnesses” or those who know something, however minute or obscure, about snipers in Dallas who become marked for assassination themselves. Who’s responsible for so much murder over the decades? The government? The Mob? After all these years, what’s the point of covering up the secrets anyway? Who needs posthumous protection?
Knoll isn’t a story set in large capital city offices or palatial residences of the rich and powerful. Instead, McIntyre is a fugitive on the run in American small towns, back alleys, and on interstate highways always looking over his shoulder. He’s only fleetingly in Dallas but mostly is on his motorcycle in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Colorado, hardly the places most readers will associate with most assassination theories. While current events are set in 2014, there are many scenes recreated from the 1960s with many late-‘60s psychedelic trappings. They are most appropriate in this stream-of-consciousness tale that bounces back and forth in time and geography that is always murky and blurry in its scattered revelations and unsolved mysteries.
Much of the book doesn’t focus on the assassination at all but rather McIntyre’s family relationships, his past, and the life he’s slowly losing grasp of. So he is very much an “Everyman” character swept up into events that took place long before he was born. In short, this is a book that tries to pull old conspiracy stories into the present day where the only ones to be on the firing line are people completely innocent of any complicity in anything at all that happened in 1963.
Knoll is indeed an odd contribution to the Kennedy conspiracy subgenre and, at this late date, probably had to be. It has nothing new to add to the possibilities of more gunmen than Oswald in Dealy Plaza, but it does give us a very readable innocent man on the run yarn.
May 22, 2017
Book Review: The Spy Across the Table (A Jim Brodie Thriller Book 4) by Barry Lancet
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
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
May 19, 2017
The Black Star Gambit meets the Beta-Earth Chronicles meets The Twilight Zone
As I told y’all yesterday, from 5:00 to 6:00 today, Wes Britton will be participating in the Facebook release party for Jan Domagala’s Blackstar Gambit, book 7 in the Col Sec series!
Here’s something I didn’t know yesterday. To whet your appetite for that hour, thanks to publisher Ben Ohmart of BearManor Media, I’ve got eight hot prizes as giveaways for you, depending on how fast you are with the trivia questions. You’ll be able to choose a free Beta-Earth Chronicles e-book OR one of these four very cool BMM Titles:
Volumes 1 and 2 of FORGOTTEN GEMS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE edited by Andrew Ramage; THE "TWILIGHT ZONE" SCRIPTS OF JERRY SOHL edited by Christopher Conlon; and TRIVIA FROM "THE TWILIGHT ZONE" by Bill DeVoe.
The Release Party for Blackstar Gambit scifi thriller kicks off at noon:
https://m.facebook.com/events/2087978...
See you between 5:00 and 6:00, if not before—other great stuff happening all day—
Here’s something I didn’t know yesterday. To whet your appetite for that hour, thanks to publisher Ben Ohmart of BearManor Media, I’ve got eight hot prizes as giveaways for you, depending on how fast you are with the trivia questions. You’ll be able to choose a free Beta-Earth Chronicles e-book OR one of these four very cool BMM Titles:
Volumes 1 and 2 of FORGOTTEN GEMS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE edited by Andrew Ramage; THE "TWILIGHT ZONE" SCRIPTS OF JERRY SOHL edited by Christopher Conlon; and TRIVIA FROM "THE TWILIGHT ZONE" by Bill DeVoe.
The Release Party for Blackstar Gambit scifi thriller kicks off at noon:
https://m.facebook.com/events/2087978...
See you between 5:00 and 6:00, if not before—other great stuff happening all day—
May 18, 2017
May 19 release party for Black Star Gambit--Wes Britton participates
While I’m very slow with my reviews and announcements this month, the big news of the week is that tomorrow, Fri. May 19th, I’m participating in the Facebook release party for Jan Domagala’s brand-new thrilling scifi novel, Blackstar Gambit, book 7 in the Col Sec series.
Join a host of science fiction and fantasy authors on Facebook as we entertain you with games, quotes and plenty of surprises. The party begins at noon Eastern time; I’m on at 5:00 p.m. For 30 minutes, I’ll be myself—the second half of my hour, I’ll play Joline Renbourn, one of the important characters in my Beta-Earth series. Expect some cool giveaways during that hour if you can answer a few trivia questions--
Till then, you can learn much more about the book, read an excerpt, see what’s happening during the event, and how you can join the festivities at the event’s Facebook Page:
https://m.facebook.com/events/2087978...
One of the book’s Youtube trailers is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2VMl...
Here’s another trailer where you can hear a passage from the novel’s prologue read aloud for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drgtq...
Till the event, knowledgable SF fans might be intriqued to know the book’s publisher is called Imzadi Publishing, especially if you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Join a host of science fiction and fantasy authors on Facebook as we entertain you with games, quotes and plenty of surprises. The party begins at noon Eastern time; I’m on at 5:00 p.m. For 30 minutes, I’ll be myself—the second half of my hour, I’ll play Joline Renbourn, one of the important characters in my Beta-Earth series. Expect some cool giveaways during that hour if you can answer a few trivia questions--
Till then, you can learn much more about the book, read an excerpt, see what’s happening during the event, and how you can join the festivities at the event’s Facebook Page:
https://m.facebook.com/events/2087978...
One of the book’s Youtube trailers is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2VMl...
Here’s another trailer where you can hear a passage from the novel’s prologue read aloud for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drgtq...
Till the event, knowledgable SF fans might be intriqued to know the book’s publisher is called Imzadi Publishing, especially if you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
May 7, 2017
33% Sale on all Bear Manor Media books!BearManor Media is having a 33% off sale from Monday, May 8 6:00 a.m. to Friday, May 12 midnight. The discount is for anything available from BMM including the current 5 e-book editions of Wes Britton’s Beta-Earth Chr
BearManor Media is having a 33% off sale from Monday, May 8 6:00 a.m. to Friday, May 12 midnight. The discount is for anything available from BMM including the current 5 e-book editions of Wes Britton’s Beta-Earth Chronicles—
www.brearmanormedia.com
It’s the perfect time to get caught up on the saga of the Blind Alien on Beta-Earth! On sale this week:
The Blind Alien,
The Blood of Balnakin,
When War Returns,
A Throne for an Alien,
The Third Earth
www.brearmanormedia.com
It’s the perfect time to get caught up on the saga of the Blind Alien on Beta-Earth! On sale this week:
The Blind Alien,
The Blood of Balnakin,
When War Returns,
A Throne for an Alien,
The Third Earth
May 5, 2017
Book Review: The Fourth Pularchek by Samual Marquis
The Fourth Pularchek: A Novel of Suspense (A Nick Lassiter-Skyler Thriller Book 3)
Publisher: Mount Sopris Publishing (6 June 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Asia-Pacific Holdings Private Limited
ASIN: B071RH5WYH
https://www.amazon.in/Fourth-Pularche...
Reviewed for BookPleasures.com by Dr. Wesley Britton:
Back in Jan 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing The Coalition, book two in Samuel Marquis’s Nick Lassiter-Skyler Thriller Series. At the time, I wrote “novelist Samuel Marquis has accomplished something rather rare. In The Coalition, Marquis has injected fresh air into the often thread-bare genre of political conspiracy and assassination thrillers . . . only part of the saga deals with conspirators and killers and Machiavellian power moves. Much of the story deals with character regrets, guilt, and self-discovery on very personal levels that humanize even the villains.”
I could make the same claims for the Fourth Pularchek. This time around, the multi-faceted female assassin Skyler from The Coalition and Nick Lassiter from 2015’s The Devil’s Brigade become major characters together in yet another epic struggle. Again, the lines between good and evil, right and wrong are as blurry as any moral distinctions can be. Explorations into personal motivations, moral codes, and especially family history get even deeper in Marquis’s new novel.
For example, Nick Lassiter learns his biological father isn’t the man he thought but is rather the Polish billionaire and intelligence commander Stanislaw Pularchek. Pularchek heads an organization that hunts down and kills Islamic terrorists but more particularly ex and neo-Nazis, especially those connected to genocidal atrocities during World War II in Poland. Once Pularchek learns he has a biological heir, he does all he can to give Lassiter a full indoctrination into his family’s history which partially explains Pularchek’s series of vendettas against those he sees as pure evil.
One of Pularchek’s weapons is the female assassin Skyler who is fulfilling a promise to be a guardian angel for Pularchek while she hopes to finally retire from the sniper game. In fact, Skyler becomes something of a secondary character in the book, lurking in the background protecting her boss. At the same time, the world’s intelligence agencies are puzzled as they are certain Pularchek is pulling many deadly strings but he always has a very public alibi. There always seems to be a Pularchek double at the scene of the crimes and many speculate the billionaire is cloning himself.
The main adversary to Pularchek, Skyler, and Lassiter is German intelligence operative Angela Wolff, granddaughter of a Nazi general who wasn’t prosecuted at the Nuremburg trials. In Angela’s view, she is due an inheritance from her grandfather that Pularchek now possesses. Angela is willing to destroy anyone or anything that gets in her way.
While we learn much about Wolff’s motivations and desires, there’s really nothing to redeem her actions. We also meet other reprehensible characters in governmental agencies wanting to keep secrets secret or profit from the Nazi treasures themselves. Perhaps it’s not surprising the main protagonists don’t just battle with Wolf and her German mercenaries, but with powerful higher ups that nearly derail all of Pularchek’s efforts to cut down on the number of international villains.
The story is one set in a variety of vividly described settings from Washington D.C. to Berlin to Warsaw to Vienna. The action is non-stop and gripping with no shortages of surprises, especially in the final chapters. In the novel, Marquis brings together many of his established tropes and interests, notably incorporating his in-depth knowledge of World War II. (Another of Marquis’s trilogies focuses on WWII with Bodyguard of Deception and Altar of Resistance, the first two volumes published to date.) The Fourth Pularchek, a very enigmatic title, is scheduled to come out on the anniversary of D-Day, June 6.
If you haven’t tried a Samuel Marquis novel yet, here’s a good one to get introduced. If you’re already a fan of the award-winning novelist, this one won’t disappoint.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 5, 2017:
goo.gl/C1s3kG
or
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...
Publisher: Mount Sopris Publishing (6 June 2017)
Sold by: Amazon Asia-Pacific Holdings Private Limited
ASIN: B071RH5WYH
https://www.amazon.in/Fourth-Pularche...
Reviewed for BookPleasures.com by Dr. Wesley Britton:
Back in Jan 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing The Coalition, book two in Samuel Marquis’s Nick Lassiter-Skyler Thriller Series. At the time, I wrote “novelist Samuel Marquis has accomplished something rather rare. In The Coalition, Marquis has injected fresh air into the often thread-bare genre of political conspiracy and assassination thrillers . . . only part of the saga deals with conspirators and killers and Machiavellian power moves. Much of the story deals with character regrets, guilt, and self-discovery on very personal levels that humanize even the villains.”
I could make the same claims for the Fourth Pularchek. This time around, the multi-faceted female assassin Skyler from The Coalition and Nick Lassiter from 2015’s The Devil’s Brigade become major characters together in yet another epic struggle. Again, the lines between good and evil, right and wrong are as blurry as any moral distinctions can be. Explorations into personal motivations, moral codes, and especially family history get even deeper in Marquis’s new novel.
For example, Nick Lassiter learns his biological father isn’t the man he thought but is rather the Polish billionaire and intelligence commander Stanislaw Pularchek. Pularchek heads an organization that hunts down and kills Islamic terrorists but more particularly ex and neo-Nazis, especially those connected to genocidal atrocities during World War II in Poland. Once Pularchek learns he has a biological heir, he does all he can to give Lassiter a full indoctrination into his family’s history which partially explains Pularchek’s series of vendettas against those he sees as pure evil.
One of Pularchek’s weapons is the female assassin Skyler who is fulfilling a promise to be a guardian angel for Pularchek while she hopes to finally retire from the sniper game. In fact, Skyler becomes something of a secondary character in the book, lurking in the background protecting her boss. At the same time, the world’s intelligence agencies are puzzled as they are certain Pularchek is pulling many deadly strings but he always has a very public alibi. There always seems to be a Pularchek double at the scene of the crimes and many speculate the billionaire is cloning himself.
The main adversary to Pularchek, Skyler, and Lassiter is German intelligence operative Angela Wolff, granddaughter of a Nazi general who wasn’t prosecuted at the Nuremburg trials. In Angela’s view, she is due an inheritance from her grandfather that Pularchek now possesses. Angela is willing to destroy anyone or anything that gets in her way.
While we learn much about Wolff’s motivations and desires, there’s really nothing to redeem her actions. We also meet other reprehensible characters in governmental agencies wanting to keep secrets secret or profit from the Nazi treasures themselves. Perhaps it’s not surprising the main protagonists don’t just battle with Wolf and her German mercenaries, but with powerful higher ups that nearly derail all of Pularchek’s efforts to cut down on the number of international villains.
The story is one set in a variety of vividly described settings from Washington D.C. to Berlin to Warsaw to Vienna. The action is non-stop and gripping with no shortages of surprises, especially in the final chapters. In the novel, Marquis brings together many of his established tropes and interests, notably incorporating his in-depth knowledge of World War II. (Another of Marquis’s trilogies focuses on WWII with Bodyguard of Deception and Altar of Resistance, the first two volumes published to date.) The Fourth Pularchek, a very enigmatic title, is scheduled to come out on the anniversary of D-Day, June 6.
If you haven’t tried a Samuel Marquis novel yet, here’s a good one to get introduced. If you’re already a fan of the award-winning novelist, this one won’t disappoint.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 5, 2017:
goo.gl/C1s3kG
or
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...
May 2, 2017
Book Review: Winterhawk's Land by Michael Dante
Winterhawk’s Land
Michael Dante
Publisher: BearManor Media (April 26, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1629331538
ISBN-13: 978-1629331539
https://www.amazon.com/Winterhawks-La...
Reviewed for BookPleasures.com by Dr. Wesley Britton
Winterhawk’s Land is a short 108 page novella with a very interesting backstory.
Back in 1975, actor Michael Dante starred as the title character in Winterhawk, a reasonably well-received film about a heroic Blackfoot Native American chief written, directed, and produced by Charles B. Pierce. Before this movie, Dante had built a very impressive resume starring in TV Westerns like Death Valley Days, The Big Valley, Bonanza, Maverick, Cheyenne, and non-Western series like Star Trek. Winterhawk’s Land has much of the flavor of such shows giving the new story a nostalgic feel including often stock characters and cinematic prairie settings that fans of the good old days will find comfortably familiar. With the exception of one moderately graphic scene, the story could easily serve as a drama suitable for prime time family viewing on any of those channels now serving up programming from the Golden Age of Television.
Naturally, the book opens with a synopsis of the film which dealt with Winterhawk trying to find a cure for smallpox for his people before he is betrayed by unscrupulous white traders. Dante then dives into his literary sequel, set more than a decade after the movie, which focuses on how railroad executive Arthur Penrose sends a squad of hired assassins out to kill Winterhawk. The Native American leader is standing in the way of Penrose’s railroad being able to freely cut through Blackfoot territory. Most of the plot is Winterhawk and allies outmaneuvering Penrose’s band of morally bankrupt if more than capable murderers-for-hire.
Like many of the now classic TV Westerns of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Winterhawk’s Land is full of vividly sketched characters from the band of colorful outlaws to Winterhawk, his white wife Clayanna and their young son, as well as many of the braves who help Winterhawk make his stand against Penrose. Of course, history tells us the Blackfoot tribes can only slow down the railroads but must ultimately lose. In this tale, the historical defeat doesn’t happen until the epilogue. Up until the last paragraph of the main text, Winterhawk and his people are noble, moral, wise, brave, strong, clever . . . in short, heroic paragons. To be fair, we do get good, decent white characters, but the story depends on good Indians outthinking and out-fighting bad white guys.
There’s no reason to think viewing the 1975 movie is a prerequisite for enjoying this short read. Like a one-hour episode of those good old classic TV oaters, Winterhawk’s Land is engaging but not deep, predictable and warm, easily digestible and suitable for reruns whenever you want to revisit the days of 19th century Old West legends. I have to admit, I can’t picture Dawn Wells (MaryAnn on Gilligan’s Island) as Clayanna, a role she played in the 1975 original. On the other hand, if you recall Michael Dante’s chiseled face and muscled limbs, picturing the author as the main character is no stretch. Anyway, like I said, seeing the 1975 Charles B. Pierce production isn’t required before reading this long belated sequel.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 2, 2017 at:
goo.gl/5e3PcS
or
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...
Michael Dante
Publisher: BearManor Media (April 26, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1629331538
ISBN-13: 978-1629331539
https://www.amazon.com/Winterhawks-La...
Reviewed for BookPleasures.com by Dr. Wesley Britton
Winterhawk’s Land is a short 108 page novella with a very interesting backstory.
Back in 1975, actor Michael Dante starred as the title character in Winterhawk, a reasonably well-received film about a heroic Blackfoot Native American chief written, directed, and produced by Charles B. Pierce. Before this movie, Dante had built a very impressive resume starring in TV Westerns like Death Valley Days, The Big Valley, Bonanza, Maverick, Cheyenne, and non-Western series like Star Trek. Winterhawk’s Land has much of the flavor of such shows giving the new story a nostalgic feel including often stock characters and cinematic prairie settings that fans of the good old days will find comfortably familiar. With the exception of one moderately graphic scene, the story could easily serve as a drama suitable for prime time family viewing on any of those channels now serving up programming from the Golden Age of Television.
Naturally, the book opens with a synopsis of the film which dealt with Winterhawk trying to find a cure for smallpox for his people before he is betrayed by unscrupulous white traders. Dante then dives into his literary sequel, set more than a decade after the movie, which focuses on how railroad executive Arthur Penrose sends a squad of hired assassins out to kill Winterhawk. The Native American leader is standing in the way of Penrose’s railroad being able to freely cut through Blackfoot territory. Most of the plot is Winterhawk and allies outmaneuvering Penrose’s band of morally bankrupt if more than capable murderers-for-hire.
Like many of the now classic TV Westerns of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Winterhawk’s Land is full of vividly sketched characters from the band of colorful outlaws to Winterhawk, his white wife Clayanna and their young son, as well as many of the braves who help Winterhawk make his stand against Penrose. Of course, history tells us the Blackfoot tribes can only slow down the railroads but must ultimately lose. In this tale, the historical defeat doesn’t happen until the epilogue. Up until the last paragraph of the main text, Winterhawk and his people are noble, moral, wise, brave, strong, clever . . . in short, heroic paragons. To be fair, we do get good, decent white characters, but the story depends on good Indians outthinking and out-fighting bad white guys.
There’s no reason to think viewing the 1975 movie is a prerequisite for enjoying this short read. Like a one-hour episode of those good old classic TV oaters, Winterhawk’s Land is engaging but not deep, predictable and warm, easily digestible and suitable for reruns whenever you want to revisit the days of 19th century Old West legends. I have to admit, I can’t picture Dawn Wells (MaryAnn on Gilligan’s Island) as Clayanna, a role she played in the 1975 original. On the other hand, if you recall Michael Dante’s chiseled face and muscled limbs, picturing the author as the main character is no stretch. Anyway, like I said, seeing the 1975 Charles B. Pierce production isn’t required before reading this long belated sequel.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 2, 2017 at:
goo.gl/5e3PcS
or
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...
Re-activating my blog today
After a long, long hiatus, Wesley Britton is now relaunching his Goodreads blog.
As some of you know, back in February, my wife was hit with a series of very dangerous heart attacks. She coded three times. For some time, we feared she wasn’t going to make it. Then we feared her quality of life might be greatly diminished.
Now, she’s home but the road to recovery is a long and painful one. Still, I now feel I can begin resuming some of my normal activities like reading books—now that I can concentrate on them—and reviewing new titles. I am also so hopeful I’ll soon have news on the Beta-Earth Chronicles.
For one thing, book one of the series, The Blind Alien, long available as an e-book, is set to come out as a paperback, well, any day now. The proofs have all been proofed, the revisions made, I’m just waiting for word from BearManor Media. Stay tuned . . .
At the same time, I’ve sent BearManor the text to book six of the story, Return to Alpha. It should come out as an e-book, well, I don’t know when. I presume one of my publisher’s editors is now going over the book to get the process started. Again, stay tuned . . .
Well, that’s an overview of where Wes Britton is at today. In a short, a new review—it’s been awhile. Too long—
As some of you know, back in February, my wife was hit with a series of very dangerous heart attacks. She coded three times. For some time, we feared she wasn’t going to make it. Then we feared her quality of life might be greatly diminished.
Now, she’s home but the road to recovery is a long and painful one. Still, I now feel I can begin resuming some of my normal activities like reading books—now that I can concentrate on them—and reviewing new titles. I am also so hopeful I’ll soon have news on the Beta-Earth Chronicles.
For one thing, book one of the series, The Blind Alien, long available as an e-book, is set to come out as a paperback, well, any day now. The proofs have all been proofed, the revisions made, I’m just waiting for word from BearManor Media. Stay tuned . . .
At the same time, I’ve sent BearManor the text to book six of the story, Return to Alpha. It should come out as an e-book, well, I don’t know when. I presume one of my publisher’s editors is now going over the book to get the process started. Again, stay tuned . . .
Well, that’s an overview of where Wes Britton is at today. In a short, a new review—it’s been awhile. Too long—
Wesley Britton's Blog
This just came in. My favorite two sentences of all time!
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
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