The Arctic Event: A Good Choice!

Book Review: The Arctic Event by Robert Ludlum
Version: Library ebook borrow

I have a new Kindle Fire 7 to access cloudLibrary from my local library, and to test out this new ebook resource, I chose The Arctic Event. It's the seventh book of the Covert-One series by Robert Ludlum (best known for the Jason Bourne series) released in 2008. It was a good choice!

The 2008 world of The Arctic Event is much different than our world today. In it, the United States and the Russian Federation are cooperative. Russia is still reeling from the effects of its Soviet past and hasn't yet begun to try to influence elections in the U.S. and Europe. In this story, an old Soviet aircraft accidentally downed unnoticed in the remote Arctic during the Cold War is discovered by a Western scientific expedition, and a U.S. team of covert military assets, accompanied by a cooperating military officer from the Russian Federation, travel to the far northern Canadian frontier to investigate. Details slowly emerge that the downed aircraft was on a secret mission carrying a tank of anthrax to disperse over North America, and the question is, when the crew knew they were about to crash did they ditch the tank of anthrax or is it still on the plane? On the way to the crash site, the team's helicopter is attacked from the air, and as they finally make landfall and seek out the crash site by foot, they find the science lab has been attacked and now the team is under attack by hostile forces. Meanwhile, the Americans aren't sure they can trust the military officer from Russia. Someone else wants the tank of anthrax and suddenly the Russians don't want the world to know the truth about the mission of the downed airplane. It's up to the American team to thwart the enemies, whoever they are.

Ludlum is a great writer and his stories rarely fail to satisfy. In this instance, The Arctic Event is a well-crafted spy thriller with well-rounded characters and a nicely plotted story line. His descriptions are keenly written, as well, giving you a vivid scene of the setting and the action and making the story play out before your eyes. I wouldn't say you will be riveted to your seat, but you will be captured by the drama and the events and you will want to get to the end to find out how everything plays out.

Don't let this being a 2008 release or the almost quaint historical perspective of positive U.S.-Russia relations put you off. It's still a good story. And if you are put off by long waits at the library for a current Robert Ludlum book, I would think a 2008 book wouldn't have that problem.

So, do consider reading The Arctic Event. As a Robert Ludlum book it's a good read!

The Accountant: Part Slick Spy Novel, Part Skillful Detective Page Turner

Movie Review: The Accountant (2016)
Version: Library Borrow

Christian Wolf is in the cross hairs of the Treasury Department, so this is a mystery. Bad guys are in Christian Wolf's cross hairs, so this is a thriller. But The Accountant is so much more than a mystery thriller. It's a deep exploration into Christian Wolf as a character that led up to these cross hairs in a complex plot line that switches back and forth over decades exploring his childhood growing up severe autism and his life as an accountant for average Americans but more importantly for gang lords and international money launderers.

Dana Cummings is the special agent for the Treasury department tasked by Director Ray King to track down Wolf. Cummings has a questionable past, which she lied about on her security application, but she turns out to be as good a field agent as the analyst she's been hiding as, and King blackmails her into pursuing Wolf to save her job. Part of the mystery is why.

Wolf is played deftly by Ben Affleck as a quiet, socially awkward accountant with amazing math and pattern-recognition skills. Anna Kendrick is excellent as Cummings, the unsure analyst thrown into field work with the threat of discovery hovering over her head. J.K. Simmons is the consummate brash lead investigator begging for a comeuppance. Then we are introduced to Lamar Blackburn, a billionaire prosthetics developer played by John Lithgow, who can play a bad guy as deliciously as a good guy, so you don't know till it's too late which his character is, and his brash body guard Brax, played by Jon Bernthal. And the plots thicken and twist.

What's remarkable about this film is the way it interplays between slick spy novel with tones of superhero mythos, skillful detective page turner with tones of urgent FBI manhunt, and caring romantic study of the life of an autistic child who is forced to grow into a productive life. Wolf's father is a military man who hires martial arts experts to train his sons in self defense because he fears they may be abused or taken advantage later in life, then encourages them to street fight bullies who have made fun of them in school. The result is that Christian Wolf is still autistic but he can handle the world but the world isn't ready for Christian Wolf.

There are lots of amazing scenes of Wolf's early years that demonstrate severe autism and its effects on children and their families. In one early scene, Wolf is working a jig saw puzzle with the picture side down and nearly completes it by pattern recognition alone, but one piece is missing and he goes ballistic. He must complete the puzzle! It takes another autistic child watching him to calm him down. This scene is key to later in the film as Wolf requires closure on the things he starts and deals with the people in his life. If you have ever wondered about people with autism, this film is an interesting exploration of their world.

This is one of Affleck's better movies. He doesn't come off wooden in it. It paces well for two hours and eight minutes. And the ending is full of surprises. I can highly recommend The Accountant for audiences teen and older. There are some scenes that may be a bit scary for kids, not to mention lots of martial arts and gun shots to the head.

True Faith and Allegiance: Gets a Hearty "Pick it Up!" From Me

Book Review: Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance by Mark Greaney
Version: Library Hard Cover

True Faith and Allegiance is the fourth Tom Clancy novel (Jack Ryan series) by Mark Greaney, and maybe the best. It's certainly the longest. It follows Command Authority (written with the late Tom Clancy), Full Force and Effect, and Commander in Chief, involving the same set of characters. The previous four involved Russian intrigue; True Faith and Allegiance involves ISIS attacks on America through Romanian and Saudi Arabian subterfuge, and it's written with the same realism and backdrop of today's national security headlines.

In these series, Jack Ryan is a former CIA analyst (but often turned operative) who is now the president of the United States, and each of these stories could be pulled from today's news headlines. If you want to know what's going on inside Russia, read these stories. Much of the intrigue behind the 2016 presidential election could be explained in them. If you want to know what hackers could do with a breach of our national intelligence and how ISIS could profit from it, read True Faith and Allegiance. Greaney is a master of using research to bring detail to his work and build authenticity in his stories, making each book a riveting read. Although, I found the action didn't get really exciting until chapter 57. Still, building up to chapter 57 was an interesting and intriguing read!

While Jack Ryan is president, most of the stories involve his son, Jack Ryan, Jr., an intelligence analyst (but often turned operative) who works for a private consulting company that aids the CIA, State Department, FBI, and Homeland Security to keep the nation safe. Part of the tension comes from the worry the president has for the safety of his son. The other part comes from the pace and action throughout the novel, sandwiched between intel you receive as a reader between the good guys and the bad guys as plots play out, actions are taken and countered, and lives are endangered. You as a reader are brought along as a close observer, watching the whole affair unfold in vivid detail. And it's hard to put the novel down once you are engaged.

Jack Junior is accompanied by a host of likable supporting characters who keep him safe or help him solve puzzles and mysteries and the dangerous situations he inevitably gets himself into. And you're right there with him, in the thick of the fight.

I said I thought this was the best of them so far. Perhaps it's because the thick of the action actually takes place in America. It involves place we can all associate with, cities we know or have heard about. And if we've read the other books in the series, characters we've come to know and care about. In the end, the bad guys get what's coming to them, too, which is always satisfying.

A good spy novel is always worth a read, and Truth Faith and Allegiance gets a hearty "Pick it up!" from me.

Command Authority: Third Great Book Out of Three

Book Review: Command Authority by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney
Version: Public Library

Command Authority is another great read and in times with today's headlines, published in 2014.

This is the third Jack Ryan character-driven book I've read, which dates before Full Force and Effect  (2015) and Commander in Chief (2016). The latter two were written by Mark Greany after the passing of Tom Clancy (2013). Command Authority was written by Tom Clancy with the assistance of Mark Greany.

This story takes place during a Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Crimea, with Valerie Volodin as the prop character representing Vladimir Putin. It is as real as fiction gets, shadowing the actual Ukraine conflict of 2014. The Russian espionage set up in the story is totally believable when you consider the recent Russian hacking of U.S. political resources and disinformation campaign and a purported attempted Russian hacking of the U.S. electrical grid through a portal in Vermont. Tom Clancy and Mark Greany write with great authenticity, using everyday detail and current events to bring vivid clarity to their plot and settings.

Command Authority also takes us back to events during the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet Union, and how it led up to the creation of the Russian Oligarchs, who ostensibly run Russia now.

Along with accurate historical and current event details, Clancy creates likable characters in Jack Ryan, president in this and the other two books, and Ryan's son, Jack, Jr., and others with whom these main characters work. These all meld together to make the story readable and enjoyable, and propel the reader into a story line that is hard to put down once you become engaged. So it is with Command Authority. As with any story of substance, these characters face dangers and conflicts you can see vividly in your mind as you read, and you care that they succeed or whether they fail, taking you along their journey through to the end of the book not daring to leave the story lest you leave them hanging. It's well written and time well spent traveling along with the characters on their adventure.

Tom Clancy is a dominant writer in this field of suspense and thriller spy writers, and in this series of books you can see why. Mark Greaney ably picks up Clancy's baton and runs well with it, continuing the saga of these well-established characters. Well done, Greaney!

I would rate this and the other two novels five spy daggers out of five.

The next Tom Clancy novel by Mark Greaney is True Faith and Allegiance, out now.

Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect: Relevant Riveting Read

Book Review: Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect by Mark Greaney
Version: Public Library

Tom Clancy novels have a habit of ringing true to the events of the day. As I read Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, the North Koreans were testing more ICBMs and nuclear weapons, and here these very actions were appearing in the words I was reading in this excellent novel from October 2015, written by author Mark Greaney. (Note: Tom Clancy passed away in 2013.)

The main plot is a young North Korean dictator who wants to exert power and enhance his own prestige by building a bigger, better nuclear missile program. To do so, he must break through world economic sanctions and blockages of ships delivering parts, and he needs a new source of income to afford it all. His Chinese neighbors help him discover a wealth of rare earth minerals buried in the North Korean fields, and the dictator moves heaven and earth to extract it and refine it, with the help of a North Korean intelligence leader and a new minerals management official - both under threat of death by attack of hungry dogs, including their families, if they fail. U.S. President Jack Ryan knows he must thwart this effort at any cost to protect the U.S. West Coast from North Korean missile attack, and with the help of the CIA and a private consulting company of ex-CIA agents, including the president's son, they expose the dictator's scheme and foil the dictator.

This is one among several Tom Clancy novels in the familiar theme of CIA analysts and operatives living a life of danger preventing world chaos and imminent danger to American interests. They are good quick reads, well paced, and thoroughly believable owing to their detail and how closely they track to current events. In this case, it was a Tom Clancy franchise novel written by author Mark Greaney.

It isn't one of those thoughtful, feel-good books or even something you will leave thinking a great deal about afterwards. But it is a relevant, riveting read that, given free time, you can knock off quickly. I enjoyed what is likely a very good look at life inside North Korea and the thrill of the chase.