- Thor, Brad.
State of the Union.
New York: Pocket Books, 2004.
ISBN 978-0-7434-3678-6.
-
This is the third in the author's Scot Harvath series, which began
with
The Lions of Lucerne (October 2010).
How refreshing to read a post-Cold War thriller in which the
Russkies are threatening nuclear terror to reassert a strategy
of global hegemony which only went underground with the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
Whatever happened, anyway, to all of those
suitcase nukes
which multiple sources said went missing when the Soviet Union
dissolved, and which some Soviet defectors claimed had been smuggled
into caches in the U.S and Europe to be used as a last-ditch deterrent
should war be imminent? Suppose a hard core of ex-Soviet military officers,
with the implicit approval of the Russian government, were to attempt a
“Hail Mary” pass to win the Cold War in one masterstroke?
I have nattered in reviews of previous novels in this series about
Thor's gradually mastering the genre of the thriller. No more—with
this one he's entirely up to speed, and it just gets better from here on.
Not only are we treated to a Cold War scenario, the novel is written in the
style of a period espionage novel in which nothing may be what it appears,
and the reader, along with the principal characters, is entirely in the
fog as to what is actually going on for the first quarter of the book.
Quibbles? Yes, I have a few. In his quest for authenticity, the author often
pens prose which comes across like Hollywood product placement:
… The team was outfitted in black, fire-retardant Nomex
fatigues, HellStorm tactical assault gloves, and First Choice
body armor. Included with the cache laid out by the armorer,
were several newly arrived futuristic .40-caliber Beretta CX4
Storm carbines, as well as Model 96 Beretta Vertex pistols,
also in .40 caliber. There was something about being able to
interchange their magazines that Harvath found very comforting.
A Picatinny rail system allowed him to outfit the CX4 Storm with
an under-mounted laser sight and an above-mounted Leupold scope. …
Ka ching! Ka ching! Ka ching!
I have no idea if the author or publisher were paid for mentioning
this most excellent gear for breaking things and killing bad guys, but
that's how it reads.
But, hey, what's not to like about a novel which includes action scenes
on a Russian
nuclear powered icebreaker
in the Arctic? Been there—done that!
February 2011 