Adventure Archives - Page 2 of 3 -

“The Heist” by Daniel Silva

Adventure, Bestselling Author, Suspense, Thriller

Israeli top spy/art restorer, Gabriel Allon, would rather be working on a major art restoration in Italy, but a blackmailing member of the Italian Art Squad is able to tear him away from his project with a threat. In “The Heist,” a corrupt British spy who had been selling stolen artwork to an anonymous art collector winds up dead and a famous painting has gone missing. Enter Gabriel with his special expertise. In order to get an art dealer friend and associate cleared of suspicion for dealing in stolen goods, Gabriel must agree to do the impossible.

A plan is devised to lure the real thief (and murderer) into the open in order to find and recover a masterpiece that has been missing for decades – Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. But, Allon, next in line for the job as the head of Mossad, has friends and enemies in high places and it will be tricky to keep all the parties, himself included, alive and focused on the end game.

As we expect in Silva’s riveting series, the stakes in Gabriel’s personal and professional lives are higher than ever. In “The Heist,” Gabriel bends the laws of more than one country, enlists the assistance of men that specialize in assassination and special ops, and adds an additional layer of danger in order to help a survivor of a brutal attack years before in Syria. Returning characters create continuity for the series and keep the pages turning in true Silva fashion.

Silvia’s books give the reader a look at the world of politics and spies from an Israeli understanding, but we are always presented with multiple views of each of the conflicts addressed. “The Heist” is no different. This is a serious novel that tackles the Syrian turmoil, the effect of a country at war with itself, and its place within the context of the larger Middle East complexity.

As Gabriel is called upon to help his old friend, he is torn between duty to country and the price he has paid for it over the years. The excitement of the caper unfolds on the pages, but there is also a more cerebral feel to “The Heist ” – perhaps a nod to an aging Allon looking back over his life and taking stock. The action is less physical than in the previous book, “The English Girl,” as we are enmeshed in the worlds of art restoration, high finance, bank transfers, and politics, but there is plenty of action nonetheless.

“The Heist” is the fourteenth title in the sixteen book (so far) Gabriel Allon series.

Please visit www.danielsilvabooks.com for more information about Daniel Silva and his work.

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“Cuff Lynx” by Fiona Quinn

Adventure, Military, Paranormal, Romance, Suspense, Thriller

Lexi Sobado is back in Fiona Quinn’s fourth book in the Lynx series, “Cuff Lynx.” Lexi has mostly recovered from her last mission and on the first day back at the Iniquus office, senses something is not quite right with the headquarters of her top secret world. Iniquus is under attack and she needs to figure out how and why even though she’s not yet 100%.

Lexi’s regular role at Iniquus is to ‘puzzle’ the plans and tactics of field missions. She has the unusual skill of ‘knowing’ when something isn’t what it should be. She has a sixth sense, a psychic sense that becomes heightened well beyond the norm in the presence of evil.

Her skills are put to the test when she hears that Ops are failing, the founder of Iniquus, General Elliot, is in a coma, clients are losing confidence, valuable art is involved, and to top it off, Striker Rheas, Lexi’s heart’s desire, is teamed up with a gorgeous woman with few scruples. What else could go wrong? In “Cuff Lynx,” quite a lot.

Lexi has out-of-body experiences that help her gather Intel about the location of other people without having to leave the office or use a computer, and when she goes ‘behind the Veil’ at great risk to herself, we believe it. Quinn’s descriptions of those psychic missions are absorbing and keep the pages turning. The concept underpinning the use of the ‘Veil’ raises questions about how intelligence is gathered in the real world. If fact-gatherers were able to use this technique, would the Intel be of better quality or be obtained more quickly? Fascinating futuristic talking points.

The problems multiply, the evildoers abound and in “Cuff Lynx,” we’re not sure if the good guys (including her lover) are on Lexi’s side. Our heroine is a mix of sweetness, naiveté and single-mindedness unusual for an average person her age and that mix is what makes Lexi Sobado so refreshing as a central character in a thriller. The supporting characters are dedicated Special Ops professionals and Lexi’s softer character makes an intriguing contrast to the hard-core military types.

Over the course of the series, she is widowed, stalked by a killer, held in captivity, chased, scarred, loved, and trained in special skills that not even her Iniquus team can know about – all at a break neck pace.

“Cuff Lynx” can be read as a stand alone, but it’s much more fun if you read them all to experience the development of Lexi’s character and her relationship with the various members of her team. Quinn told me recently that she plans to feature the other characters in their own books. Cool.

Please visit www.fionaquinnbooks.com for information about the rest of Quinn’s work in fiction and non-fiction.

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“Circling the Sun” by Paula McLain

2 Comments / Adventure, Bestselling Author, Historical

Paula McLain’s “Circling the Sun,” is the story of horse trainer/aviator/writer, Beryl Markham. It recalls the remarkable accomplishments of this under sung woman far ahead of her time in Colonial Kenya and explores her relationship with renowned Denys Finch Hatton, safari hunter, and Karen Blixen, author (as Isak Dineson) of “Out of Africa.”

Beryl’s father sold everything in England in order to buy a farm in Kenya, but Beryl’s mother could not cope with the stark cultural differences and returned to England with son, Dickie, leaving Beryl behind to be raised by her father.

Her father, ill equipped to raise a young girl, was always busy with the hard work of running a farm, so she was frequently left alone and spent a great deal of time with members of a neighboring tribe. She learned their languages and customs and made friends that would be with her for life. The realities of African living shaped Beryl's character and 100 years ago, forged a strength and determination in her that would be unusual even for a woman of today.

“Circling the Sun” tells us that Beryl’s freedom to do what she wanted came with an incredible price. The standards by which she lived in Africa, coming and going as she pleased, affected all her relationships and her view of the world. She was a natural at training horses, but had to battle at every turn to be recognized and accepted. Nothing was ever easy.

Interacting in polite Colonial Kenyan society was beyond her understanding. She had no wish to be judged and yet, she was targeted unfairly merely because she was a female. Her casual disregard of the conventional separation of men and women caused her great pain when she attempted to navigate the minefields of marriage, society, and motherhood, even when Royals were involved.

Markham is remembered as the first woman to fly non-stop across the Atlantic from East to West, but “Circling the Sun’ spends most of the book on her time as a horse trainer and her interactions with Blixen and Hatton. They played an incredible part in shaping the woman she would become and the choices she would make that placed her in the history books. They were a complicated threesome. Hatton never married either of the women, but had a relationship with both.

The colors and sounds of Africa are a major character in the book and give us a sweeping sense of the majestic nature of the continent and the customs of native Africans. McLain paints a fabulous landscape that keeps us enthralled and gives us a peek into why so many English expats were drawn to the place: Money to be made, worlds to experience, the excitement/danger of safaris, creating something permanent out of the untamed land.

Circumstances and the people in her life shaped her, but Markham could not have become the bush pilot or transatlantic pilot she did, without that incredible setting that set her free.

A work of historical fiction not to be missed.

Please visit www.paulamclain.com for more information about McLain, “Circling the Sun,” and her earlier acclaimed bestseller, “The Paris Wife.”

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“Signal” by Patrick Lee

Adventure, Bestselling Author, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Marnie Calvert, FBI agent in Patrick Lee’s “Signal,” smells the bodies before she sees them. A trailer is burned to a crisp, with not much left except a cage holding the corpses of four children. The owner of the trailer is missing.

Sam Dryden’s background includes special ops training with the military. He has left that life behind and now flips houses. His ordinary, peaceful evening is interrupted by a call from trusted former colleague in the military, Claire Dunham. She makes an urgent request of Sam: get in the car immediately and meet her in a spot that is two hours away. Once together, they drive to the trailer at breakneck speed and keep the owner from burning it and everyone in it. When Sam and Claire leave the area, the only corpse is the owner’s.

Yes, you read that correctly. Calvert, Dryden and Dunham have arrived at the same crime scene – just not at the same time and with very different results. The race against, through, and with time, begins.

Patrick Lee’s paradigms of time travel/time shifting are intriguing and part of what compels me to return to his books. Not every book uses time as a plot device, but I love the way Lee’s mind works. In his Travis Chase series, people traveled through a doorway in time to the future and back again. In “Signal,” Lee’s main characters listen to a radio frequency on a device that streams what is reported on the airwaves from the future – a very specific period of time in the future. In this world, time is fluid and actions can be changed before they happen.

Imagine if that power was held by people with decades to plan and reshape the future for their own agendas? Nothing good could come of it. Murder, kidnapping, torture? They’ll do anything to get the device that led Claire to the trailer.

In “Signal,” Lee deftly handles the time paradox challenges of adjusting actions in response to hearing the consequences. Any modification in events affects everyone in the timeline continuum for all time, and Lee uses that effectively to keep us absorbed. He gives us just enough information about how it all works without too much science-speak or theory that might take us out of the story.

Whose reality will control the tale? Can this knowledge ever be used for good? If your “enemy knows your mistakes before you make them,” how can you survive the battle? The answers will keep you turning the pages all night long, because “Signal” is flat out stay-awake reading. And not just because of the time-travel component or the pulse-pounding action. Lee’s characters have depth, a back story, and believable reasons for what they do, be it for good or very questionable motives.

Clear your schedule, turn off the computer and the phone (gasp), and be prepared to read straight through to the perfect finish.

I was lucky enough to meet Patrick Lee at a recent writer’s conference and he graciously signed my copy of “Signal.” He signed “Ghost Country,” from the Travis Chase series as well and you can read that review here.

For information about Patrick Lee, the terrific first Sam Dryden book, “Runner,” and his other series, please visit www.patrickleefiction.com

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“The Martian” by Andy Weir

4 Comments / Adventure, Bestselling Author, Debut Author, Sci-Fi

Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” has received a tremendous amount of positive hype since it was first published in 2011, and lots of great reviews, even from scientists and astronauts.

It’s all well deserved. Instead of being a boring, techy tome (sorry, but some science based fiction bogs down in the science and forgets to entertain) it is a riveting, barnburner of a story.

Mark Watney is an astronaut that has been accidentally left behind on Mars after a sandstorm threatens to strand the Ares3 crew millions of miles from home. He has been seriously injured and the other crewmembers think he is dead, so they leave the surface under orders from Control.

When he comes to, he assesses his situation and declares that he is in deep trouble. Two words come to mind: ingenuity – the quality of being clever as well as inventive, and resilience – the capacity to recover quickly from hardship. Watney never blames the crew for abandoning him, and instead, attacks his problems head on.

The best sci-fi throws real people into a strange world where they must use skills from their own world to cope and/or deal with the new. “The Martian” is a cross between the TV shows MacGyver and Survivor. As if just being alone on the planet isn’t challenging enough, he has to work out his oxygen supply and food supply and somehow let Earth know that he’s not dead yet. Being the first and only Martian is not as much fun as you might think.

Watney knows that the next mission to Mars won’t arrive for another four years and that he has to travel 2000 miles to get to the rendezvous point. He has to find a way to stay alive that long. That is, if he doesn’t blow himself up before the food runs out. Anything can go wrong, including explosions and leaks and not having access to the guys at NASA. Yes, even computer access goes down. Imagine being cut off from the guys that keep thousands of possible solutions to any given dilemma only a keystroke away.

Complete silence outside the Habitat. Isolation. Like every other pioneer in the wilderness, every decision Mark Watney makes is about life and death. We groan at his harrowing setbacks, gasp/laugh at the outrageous solution to growing his own food, admire his ingenuity at solving space/sleep/water issues. “The Martian” is a celebration of man's resilience in the face of intolerable hardship.

When Weir (an actual scientist and software engineer) wrote “The Martian,” he worked out planet positions and shuttle orbits to support his storyline. Andy Weir tested many of the decisions made by his astronaut so that Watney could realistically work his way through the challenges. If the science wasn’t right, it didn’t go onto the pages.

Weir gives Watney a belief system in “The Martian” that makes it all work. Watney has an outrageous sense of humor and an “I can fix this” attitude, no matter what is thrown at him. If he’s alive, he has another chance to get it right. If he can get past listening to old disco songs left behind by his crew mates, and do without even the fake coffee, he can survive anything.

Of course, Watney has the right credentials (engineering and botanist degrees) to do the job, making the book that much more successful. There is no high school student solving the complex problems in this book just by virtue of being a computer whiz. But, duct tape – that heavy, cloth backed, silver tape that plumbers and electricians use so often – plays a great role in the book. Gotta love that legitimately, a low-tech item could save expensive equipment from complete failure.

There is strong language in response to some of his situations, so don’t read “The Martian” if you are offended by four letter words. It’s not pervasive, but it’s there, and appropriately used.

A movie based on the book, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, was released in 2015. Happily, it was astounding.

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“Divergent” by Veronica Roth

Adventure, Bestselling Author, Dystopian, Young Adult/Teen

Dystopia: “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives” (Merriam-Webster) OR “a community or society that is in some important way undesirable or frightening.” (Wikipedia)

It used to be that everywhere I turned in the YA section of the bookstore, vampires were front and center. Now that the Hunger Games Trilogy has proven to be wildly successful, vampires seem to have been edged out – at least in product placement – by books with a Dystopian theme. Veronica Roth’s Divergent series is the latest of the genre to be a hit with teens and have a movie tie-in.

Beatrice Prior and her brother are 16 and they will soon take a test to see which faction in their society is a suitable match for their particular strengths. Each of them is in some way unhappy about the idea of staying with the family’s faction, Abnegation (a selfless group) and they seek out other factions (Dauntless=brave, Erudite=intelligent, Candor=honest, Amity=peaceful) after their test results come in.

The choice Beatrice makes in Divergent changes her in ways she doesn’t always understand or embrace, and may destroy her as she uncovers the truths behind the exciting hype of the Dauntless. And, when secrets are revealed about her test, she faces danger from the very faction she chose.

Beatrice renames herself Tris and is like many real-life teens – she doesn’t appreciate the support system that surrounds her until she needs it, she takes her parents for granted, she’s insecure in her physical appearance, she searches for something beyond the life she has in hand, she feels unworthy when in fact she’s better than her peers – in other words, she’s growing up painfully as most teens do.

Roth writes Tris as having a conflicted moral compass, and angst about doing the wrong thing. During training, her hands shake when faced with something new, but when protecting a friend, she performs unflinchingly. She is small for her age, so outdoes her competition by using her brain. She has an excellent trainer, a mysterious ‘Four’ who seems intimidating in his coldness and yet perfect in so many ways. Roth reveals the layers of the young man’s background as the relationship develops.

Divergent features an interesting mix of sixteen year olds with varied flaws and positive attributes, and their range of personalities and skills keep the plot moving and the action believable within the Dystopian world. There are loyal friends and nasty instructors, psycho initiates, desperate people who live outside the faction compounds, evil adults who plot and scheme for control, and, of course, a way for the teens to outsmart the evil adults. A few of the action scenes that involve incredibly difficult physical tasks, would lend themselves to great FX in the movie version if there is a big enough budget.

Young Adult fiction is a playground for vampires, martial arts experts, archers, unexpected heroes, magicians, and werewolves in the sci-fi/paranormal/fantasy realm. Partly because parents are curious about what their offspring are reading and partly because of all the media hype, full-fledged adults are now big fans of YA as well. I read the Twilight series, the Hunger Games trilogy, and now the Divergent series, and am happy to be numbered among the followers.

Please visit www.veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com to find out the latest about Roth and her projects.

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“Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell

2 Comments / Adventure, Bestselling Author, Historical

Set in the 1400s, “Agincourt” delivers a graphic account of one of the most important battles of the age. Underfunded, overconfident and thoroughly lucky, the English king, Henry V, decides he needs to conquer Agincourt in order to claim the French crown and maintain his dominance of the Normandy coast. He must overcome formidable odds and expensive, incredible losses on hostile foreign soil, and yet he marches on. Any real battle strategy is thrown to the wind as the French forces keep outwitting the English. If you don’t already know the actual story of Agincourt, the book will keep you guessing until the end.

The tale is told from an archer’s viewpoint. It’s not a new storytelling technique to have a warrior relate the action, but interesting in this case because the skill of English archers was feared throughout the world. If you had a few hundred archers on your side, you would most likely win the battle. They were the early medieval equivalent of our modern day artillery, yet their quivers only held about twenty arrows at a time. Think about it. Twenty ‘shots’ before having to be resupplied from a packhorse shared by other archers. Survival depended on having quick, deadly aim and well-made arrows that flew true.

As always, “Agincourt” is meticulously researched, and Cornwell accomplishes a literary feat few authors can claim – he makes a battle fascinating, while at the same time never letting us forget about the violence. From the description of exhausted men slogging through muddy tracks to the subplots of personal bickering over lands, women and food, war is depicted as grim, hard work accomplished for the glory of the nation and king.

Body armor and weapons of the era are discussed in terms of their merits for particular campaigns, and in very human terms – “armored men on foot were less vulnerable to arrows than horses…”

I keep coming back to Cornwell for more, wishing that my school history books could have made the events of that century come to life in the way he does. If Cornwell ever gives up the mighty pen for the more prosaic life of an ancient history professor, his classes would be standing room only.

For more information about Cornwell and his work, please visit www.bernardcornwell.net

Read the review of Cornwell's "Sword Song" here.

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