Target Pendergast Uncovered by Ian Welch

Target Pendergast Uncovered by Ian Welch

I picked up this story as a free book when I first started reading novels electronically and I recently reread it. It’s a fun little tale of a surfer dude who gets pulled into an effort to stop thousands of people from being murdered in a terrorist attack.

 

The story opens with a rather chilling scene of a former IRA terrorist murdering a police inspector with VX nerve toxin, setting up the threat. The action then switches to introduce the totally likable surfer dude, Brad Pendergast, who prevents a robbery and in so doing comes to the attention of the CIA and British MI6. They rather unethically recruit him to penetrate a group of ex-IRA (now called RIRA) terrorists by using his charms with the ladies to win the heart of the head terrorist’s daughter, Cara. The problem—Brad is really not a devious sort. He wears his heart on his sleeve and very quickly, the two actually fall in love.

 

This greatly disappoints her father and one of his men (Liam) who wants Cara for himself and they move to break the two apart. Then the story takes a turn for the worst. Brad, having learned just a little of the terrorist’s efforts to buy more of the nerve toxin, goes all James Bond and pretends to be a rival arms dealer trying to buy the toxin himself. This is really unfortunate. Brad as a persistent love-interest of the daughter was believable. Having him play arms dealer just didn’t work for me. And it takes up most of the book. It’s enjoyable, but in no way credible, if that makes sense.

 

Then the bad guys get the toxin and Brad gets sent to Ireland by MI6 to try and lean from Cara what the plan is. That was slightly more credible than the last part, but still not as well done as the first third or so of the book.

 

Overall, I enjoyed the story, although I really don’t understand why Cara kept telling her father she wanted to talk about Liam’s advances towards her (a conversation her father didn’t want to have) instead of saying—Dad, Liam raped me—which I believe would have gotten Liam doused with nerve toxin in about two-and-a-half seconds. Then again, perhaps that’s why she never used the direct approach. The author would have lost one of his most important bad guys.