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Oracle: A Jeff Trask Crime Drama
What do you do when your dream vacation collides with a plot for a new holocaust?
That’s the question faced by history buff and federal prosecutor Jeff Trask and his wife on what was supposed to a bucket list getaway to Athens. They meet an old friend who warns them that the cradle of democracy—along with two other capital cities—has been targeted for nuclear destruction by the Islamist regime in Iran, and that the bombs—purchased from Putin’s stockpile in Russia—are set to go off in days. Trask has to decide if they will stay and try to locate the bomb in Athens, or try to escape from Greece before it’s too late.
Author Marc Rainer adds another volume to the award-winning Jeff Trask Crime Drama series with this foray into the realm of international espionage.
That’s the question faced by history buff and federal prosecutor Jeff Trask and his wife on what was supposed to a bucket list getaway to Athens. They meet an old friend who warns them that the cradle of democracy—along with two other capital cities—has been targeted for nuclear destruction by the Islamist regime in Iran, and that the bombs—purchased from Putin’s stockpile in Russia—are set to go off in days. Trask has to decide if they will stay and try to locate the bomb in Athens, or try to escape from Greece before it’s too late.
Author Marc Rainer adds another volume to the award-winning Jeff Trask Crime Drama series with this foray into the realm of international espionage.
239 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 8, 2023
9 people are currently reading
5 people want to read
About the author
Marc Rainer
12 books48 followersMarc Rainer is a former prosecutor in the federal and local courts of the District of Columbia and the Western District of Missouri (Kansas City), and a former circuit prosecutor for the US Air Force's Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. A graduate of the US Air Force Academy, he has more than thirty years eperience in the prosecution of major cases. He is married to a former Air Force OSI Special Agent, and lives in a suburb of a major American city. The first book in his Jeff Trask crime drama series, Capital Kill, has been ranked #1 in Amazon’s kindle store’s mystery series sales rankings.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 23, 2023
Don't miss Marc Rainer's chilling new international thriller.
Marc Rainer is one of my favorite authors. He writes the Jeffrey Trask courtroom dramas have a Law and Order feel blending the investigations with the final courtroom drama. His latest novel is an edgy international thriller which gave me chills.
Former CIA operative Howard “Buck” Buckley has been assigned as the Special Activities Officer to the American Embassy in Greece. There is no doubt that the country is beautiful and that the food is only surpassed by the kindness of the Greek people. Buck would enjoy his reassignment if it wasn’t for his incompetent, bureaucratic boss. While that incompetence would normally only be annoying, it becomes life threatening when Buck receives a tip from an old acquaintance, Yuri Gilfoy of the Israeli Mossad.
Yuri is bending the classified information orders of his bosses to let an old friend know that Israel received information from an informant--code named: Oracle--that Iran has purchased three old Soviet suitcase nukes. These bombs being so dangerous due to their small size which allows them to be easily smuggled across borders. Yuri can only guess who Iran will be targeting. They believe one of them will be used against Israel, Iran's biggest nemesis. Iran has also been offended by recent actions of the United Arab Embasies and they think Dubai will be their second target. So why is Yuri coming to Buck? Even though their informant hasn’t named the third target, Yuri is certain that their third target will be Athens, the birthplace of democracy.
Yuri needs Buck's help to make sure that these bombs are intercepted before they can be activated and kill millions of people. Knowing that his boss won’t listen to what may be considered a vague, possible threat, Buck is on his own. That is until an old friend makes the mistake of picking Greece as his first post-covid vacation stop. Buck will enlist the help of former U.S Prosecutor Jeffrey Trask, to stop the terrorists from destroying the oldest monuments to democracy and the millions of casualties living around them.
THOUGHTS:
Sometimes when I read a novel like this, I fear whether this story is the creation of an author with a twisted mind or whether someone knows some frightening information that the rest of us were thankfully unaware of. Then we have actual events overshadow the horrors that even any author can dream up.
Oracle brings a potential nightmare of political dirty deeds to light and while, hopefully, this is just a creative idea, it is based upon a real possibility that there is some cold war storage locker filled with horrific toys of mass destruction, and the only thing keeping them locked up is someone's very shaky conscience. There are things that still exist that once upon a time no one would actually use but kept "just in case," and presently all it takes is a large pile of money for someone to dust those somethings off and pretend that the horror someone else is willing to create, is not their fault. Here someone in Russia is willing to sell these very deadly bombs that no one actually dared to use during the Cold War simply because they need to fund their current war, and they don't seem to have any concerns that the Iranians actually plan to use them against human beings.
Oracle takes us away from the usual Law-and-Order style story that is the Jeffrey Trask series, but this new story focusing mainly on Buck is an exciting thriller which mimics real life politics and shows the deadly repercussions once political goals outweigh human lives. But is also shows that the there are people who will risk their own lives in exchange for millions of innocent people.
I love the Jeff Trask series but would equally enjoy this new espionage series featuring Howard Buckley, and I hope we build a new group of trusted spies and former spies that we can count on to keep our world safe.
Received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Marc Rainer is one of my favorite authors. He writes the Jeffrey Trask courtroom dramas have a Law and Order feel blending the investigations with the final courtroom drama. His latest novel is an edgy international thriller which gave me chills.
Former CIA operative Howard “Buck” Buckley has been assigned as the Special Activities Officer to the American Embassy in Greece. There is no doubt that the country is beautiful and that the food is only surpassed by the kindness of the Greek people. Buck would enjoy his reassignment if it wasn’t for his incompetent, bureaucratic boss. While that incompetence would normally only be annoying, it becomes life threatening when Buck receives a tip from an old acquaintance, Yuri Gilfoy of the Israeli Mossad.
Yuri is bending the classified information orders of his bosses to let an old friend know that Israel received information from an informant--code named: Oracle--that Iran has purchased three old Soviet suitcase nukes. These bombs being so dangerous due to their small size which allows them to be easily smuggled across borders. Yuri can only guess who Iran will be targeting. They believe one of them will be used against Israel, Iran's biggest nemesis. Iran has also been offended by recent actions of the United Arab Embasies and they think Dubai will be their second target. So why is Yuri coming to Buck? Even though their informant hasn’t named the third target, Yuri is certain that their third target will be Athens, the birthplace of democracy.
Yuri needs Buck's help to make sure that these bombs are intercepted before they can be activated and kill millions of people. Knowing that his boss won’t listen to what may be considered a vague, possible threat, Buck is on his own. That is until an old friend makes the mistake of picking Greece as his first post-covid vacation stop. Buck will enlist the help of former U.S Prosecutor Jeffrey Trask, to stop the terrorists from destroying the oldest monuments to democracy and the millions of casualties living around them.
THOUGHTS:
Sometimes when I read a novel like this, I fear whether this story is the creation of an author with a twisted mind or whether someone knows some frightening information that the rest of us were thankfully unaware of. Then we have actual events overshadow the horrors that even any author can dream up.
Oracle brings a potential nightmare of political dirty deeds to light and while, hopefully, this is just a creative idea, it is based upon a real possibility that there is some cold war storage locker filled with horrific toys of mass destruction, and the only thing keeping them locked up is someone's very shaky conscience. There are things that still exist that once upon a time no one would actually use but kept "just in case," and presently all it takes is a large pile of money for someone to dust those somethings off and pretend that the horror someone else is willing to create, is not their fault. Here someone in Russia is willing to sell these very deadly bombs that no one actually dared to use during the Cold War simply because they need to fund their current war, and they don't seem to have any concerns that the Iranians actually plan to use them against human beings.
Oracle takes us away from the usual Law-and-Order style story that is the Jeffrey Trask series, but this new story focusing mainly on Buck is an exciting thriller which mimics real life politics and shows the deadly repercussions once political goals outweigh human lives. But is also shows that the there are people who will risk their own lives in exchange for millions of innocent people.
I love the Jeff Trask series but would equally enjoy this new espionage series featuring Howard Buckley, and I hope we build a new group of trusted spies and former spies that we can count on to keep our world safe.
Received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.
November 9, 2023
Jeff Trask takes a vacation
Jeff Trask takes a vacation. But what a vacation! Off to Greece with his wife but finds himself in the middle of a terrorist plot. Oracle shows that Marc Rainer is just as good writing an international thriller as a courtroom drama. What a talent. This novel is not to be missed!
Jeff Trask takes a vacation. But what a vacation! Off to Greece with his wife but finds himself in the middle of a terrorist plot. Oracle shows that Marc Rainer is just as good writing an international thriller as a courtroom drama. What a talent. This novel is not to be missed!
December 23, 2023
Certainly not as good (in my opinion) as the previous books of this series. Entirely too much time spent on the tourism narration and the story line was a little weak. If I wanted to know so much about the Greek history and architecture, I would have gotten such a book for that 🫤.
April 8, 2024
If only
Can you imag5thine if we were
Actually able to pull off things like this under the present administration?well, actually, we might be able to with them being a sleep At the switch
Can you imag5thine if we were
Actually able to pull off things like this under the present administration?well, actually, we might be able to with them being a sleep At the switch
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews