Realistic Action in Mayer's 'Eyes of the Hammer'
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Eyes of the Hammer by Bob Mayer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A drug cartel’s assassination squad ambushes a Columbian judge and his U.S. Marshal bodyguards on an American street. The U.S. is powerless to respond until the Columbian president, eager to break the grip of the cartels on his country, secretly authorizes the U.S. to send covert forces into his country to destroy the cartels' biggest drug labs. A small force of Special Forces soldiers led by Chief Warrant Officer Dave Riley become the "eyes" for the covert air attacks – i.e., the "hammer" – sent to destroy the labs.
In Eyes of the Hammer, Bob Mayer's first entry in his The Green Berets series, the author proves his ability to write military thrillers laced not only with adventure, but with authentic detail, too. The thrills come from the writing talent processed by this best-selling multi-genre author (he also writes science fiction and political thrillers), but the authenticity comes straight from his own experience. A West Point graduate, Mayer served as a Green Beret officer, leader of an elite A-team, with a long career of missions under his belt.
Mayer takes the reader through the detailed process that goes into planning a covert mission from the original mission brief to the final mission back brief, and the amazing amount of inter-service and inter-agency organization needed to execute a minutely timed operation. He also shows how such a precisely planned operation can fall apart in minutes. Moreover, he shows how the compartmentalized nature of special operations can lead to misuse.
Of course, minute details do not a military thriller make. Plot and characters do. Mayer's plot is ripe with twists and turns, betrayals and failures, and enough action to satisfy the most ardent literary thrill-seeker. Best of all, his characters are not two-dimensional super heroes often found in this genre, but real human beings – highly trained and highly skilled people, true – but humans nonetheless.
View all my reviews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A drug cartel’s assassination squad ambushes a Columbian judge and his U.S. Marshal bodyguards on an American street. The U.S. is powerless to respond until the Columbian president, eager to break the grip of the cartels on his country, secretly authorizes the U.S. to send covert forces into his country to destroy the cartels' biggest drug labs. A small force of Special Forces soldiers led by Chief Warrant Officer Dave Riley become the "eyes" for the covert air attacks – i.e., the "hammer" – sent to destroy the labs.
In Eyes of the Hammer, Bob Mayer's first entry in his The Green Berets series, the author proves his ability to write military thrillers laced not only with adventure, but with authentic detail, too. The thrills come from the writing talent processed by this best-selling multi-genre author (he also writes science fiction and political thrillers), but the authenticity comes straight from his own experience. A West Point graduate, Mayer served as a Green Beret officer, leader of an elite A-team, with a long career of missions under his belt.
Mayer takes the reader through the detailed process that goes into planning a covert mission from the original mission brief to the final mission back brief, and the amazing amount of inter-service and inter-agency organization needed to execute a minutely timed operation. He also shows how such a precisely planned operation can fall apart in minutes. Moreover, he shows how the compartmentalized nature of special operations can lead to misuse.
Of course, minute details do not a military thriller make. Plot and characters do. Mayer's plot is ripe with twists and turns, betrayals and failures, and enough action to satisfy the most ardent literary thrill-seeker. Best of all, his characters are not two-dimensional super heroes often found in this genre, but real human beings – highly trained and highly skilled people, true – but humans nonetheless.
View all my reviews
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