After reading The Defector by Daniel Silva, I thought I was ready for Blowback by Brad Thor. Like the former, Blowback was the first novel I read by the author and like the former, I’m ready for more. Both are action-packed spy novels with pulse pounding excitement.
Since I’ve been turned onto spy novels, a new genre for me, only I thoroughly enjoyed Blowback. Compared to Gabriel Allon in The Defector, Thor’s main character Scot Harvath is tougher, less suave and much less subtle.
However, Scot’s playing with a different set of rules. While trying to apprehend a notorious terrorist in Afghanistan, he is caught on tape beating a seemingly innocent market vendor. An ambitious senator with her sights on the White House tries to serve his head from a silver catapult to oust the current president. The commander-in-Chief has no choice but to ask for Harvath’s resignation.
With his next breath, the president hires him back in secret. A strange virus has decimated all but the Muslim population of a small village in north Afghanistan and Harvath is the person best qualified and now, most expendable to find out what’s going on.
The repercussions from this virus are staggering. The West suspects Al-queda may have a terrifying weapon at their disposal. But how? The terrorist group and their sympathizers don’t have the capability to engineer a virus or a plague that affects only non-Muslims.
Harvath finds that there is a connection between the lethal illness that turns its victims’ brains into a black goo and the discovery underneath a glacier in the French Alps. Since Harvath is officially ostracized from Washington, he has to rely on his own resources with minimal help from the very few who are in-the-know about his situation.
Still he manages to bounce all over the globe, where money is no object and avoiding ID checks at border crossings, since he is wanted for murder in a number of countries.
Thor includes plenty of cliffhangers but what really stretches the imagination is Harvath’s near-indestructibility and extreme luck. He gets out of more scrapes and close-calls than Indiana Jones. Nevertheless, it’s all in good fun.
To me, Blowback is a terrific book that I couldn’t put down. Even readers who aren’t fans of thrillers and spy novels may enjoy this.
Since I’ve been turned onto spy novels, a new genre for me, only I thoroughly enjoyed Blowback. Compared to Gabriel Allon in The Defector, Thor’s main character Scot Harvath is tougher, less suave and much less subtle.
However, Scot’s playing with a different set of rules. While trying to apprehend a notorious terrorist in Afghanistan, he is caught on tape beating a seemingly innocent market vendor. An ambitious senator with her sights on the White House tries to serve his head from a silver catapult to oust the current president. The commander-in-Chief has no choice but to ask for Harvath’s resignation.
With his next breath, the president hires him back in secret. A strange virus has decimated all but the Muslim population of a small village in north Afghanistan and Harvath is the person best qualified and now, most expendable to find out what’s going on.
The repercussions from this virus are staggering. The West suspects Al-queda may have a terrifying weapon at their disposal. But how? The terrorist group and their sympathizers don’t have the capability to engineer a virus or a plague that affects only non-Muslims.
Harvath finds that there is a connection between the lethal illness that turns its victims’ brains into a black goo and the discovery underneath a glacier in the French Alps. Since Harvath is officially ostracized from Washington, he has to rely on his own resources with minimal help from the very few who are in-the-know about his situation.
Still he manages to bounce all over the globe, where money is no object and avoiding ID checks at border crossings, since he is wanted for murder in a number of countries.
Thor includes plenty of cliffhangers but what really stretches the imagination is Harvath’s near-indestructibility and extreme luck. He gets out of more scrapes and close-calls than Indiana Jones. Nevertheless, it’s all in good fun.
To me, Blowback is a terrific book that I couldn’t put down. Even readers who aren’t fans of thrillers and spy novels may enjoy this.
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