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Shadow of the Templar series - M Chandler
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I'm so glad you liked this series! It's one of my favourites. I posted some comments at the "Boys in Our Books" review under the name of Gaycrow here:
http://boysinourbooks.com/2014/03/11/...
Also, if you're interested, here are the tags from the Live Journal SoTT community:
http://teamtemplar.livejournal.com/tag/
Aussie54 wrote: "I'm so glad you liked this series! It's one of my favourites. I posted some comments at the "Boys in Our Books" review under the name of Gaycrow here:
http://boysinourbooks.com/2014/03/11/......"
Well Aussie - I'm impressed. Clearly from all that discussion you are our go-to-expert on all things SotT (see I already adopted/gleaned that acronym from your links). Thank you for providing them.
LOL ... those discussions were five years ago. Must admit, I haven't read the series recently, but I loved it to death back then.(Some of the out-takes were my favourite parts.)
Oh you mean all the hawt M-M sex which were 'faded to black' in the 4 main books LOL. I must admit the frottage scene outtake was impressive.
Yes, but I also liked the scene where Simon outed himself to his team, and his interactions with Ethan. Gee, I must re-read some of these, it's been a while.
My absolute favorite part is when Simon is given the opportunity to pose the question "what do you want from me" to Jeremy for the second time - what an amazing response from Jeremy. Sigh ...
Thanks for bringing this series to my attention. I have just ordered the first book for my Kindle. I read (and watched tv adaptations) Leslie Charteris' "The Saint" and John Creasy's "The Baron" books as a teenager a LONG time ago and have been hooked on the spy-crime caper genre ever since. An M-M version sounds good.
Cerisaye wrote: "Thanks for bringing this series to my attention. I have just ordered the first book for my Kindle. I read (and watched tv adaptations) Leslie Charteris' "The Saint" and John Creasy's "The Baron" b..."Oh cool. I look forward to your comments/review when you've read it Cerisaye.
The books can(guarded advice) be read in any order but I strongly recommend that they be read sequentially for maximum enjoyment of multi-book spanning plot arcs and for the growth/understanding/development for all main and secondary characters.
I guess the books can be summarized thus:
Book 1 - Crack FBI team chases master thief
Book 2 - Master thief helps crack FBI team to crack a case
Book 3 - Master thief steps in to save someone picking off FBI team members
Book 4 - Crack team combine forces to save master thief from big bad baddies
The A-list FBI team Templar consists of Templar, Springheel, Honda, Texas, Specs and Specs2. Together, their skills bases are are representative of all such crack FBI teams - the typical crazy-dare devil whiz-driver, the laconic sharp-shooting weapons expert, the McGuyver electronic and gadgetry techno-geek, the IT code-breaking hacker wunderkind, the bad-ass female better than the boys 2IC, the golden-eyed brave leader of the group who has the eye/ear of the big man upstairs. Pitted against this team is the slim, svelte, dashing, cool, debonaire thief on several international wanted-lists who so happens to have impeccably expensive tastes for the finer life and beautiful objects. He comes with his own smaller support group of aiders and abetters. Together - these folk make up the vast majority of main and secondary characters for the 4 books of the series (bad guys aside).
The plots are clever and the author gives very good details on all 'operations' to catch people, stalk people, bring down people, kidnap people, rescue people, fight and kill people. Across the four books you get espionage and double crosses, double agent/moles and deep betrayals, space-technology capable of world destruction, car chases, explosions, death and mayhem and opera! The locations range from Washington DC monuments to secluded English country mansions, Milanese hotels and streets to island beaches of the Caribbean.
The best things about these books are the banter that zing between all the FBI team members - these characters are so well developed by the end that I can hear their voices and 'see' their facial impressions as they 'speak'. I adore the character of Nate - want to hug him to death. The clandestine/secret 'whatever-you-want-to call-it' relationship between the head of the FBI team and the master thief is also brilliantly laid - no rushing into deep declarations of love folks. The complexity of these two men's feelings and the internal conflicts raised by their attraction/need for independence rivals those MCs from authors such as Marquesate or Manna Francis (but outworked in a significantly lighter and less tortured tonal hue thank God).
The author qualifies on her website that she relied on the internet for much of the technical detail and makes no guarantees that these are truly representative of how FBI operatives work. For me - the plots were plausible and I believed them.
I was riveted, intrigued, engaged. The bantering dialogue had me burst out laughing aloud regularly. There are moments of deep reflection to balance things and the book 4 ending was a truly AWWWW-worthy conclusion. I am amazed by the entertainment value provided by this quartet of book (book 2 and 4 could have done with editing to get rid of some drawn-out excessive passages) but they are well worth the price and I would be keeping these on my Kindle to-be-read again list. Bravo and thank you Ms Chandler.