Tag Archives: international

By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two Concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

What I Liked

Long before there was Clancy, there was DeMille. This book takes the international realm and stands it on its ear — there are (excruciating) details of the relations between the characters on both sides of the peace conference who are forced to work together to fight the terrorists. In addition, the battle tactics are first-rate, the writing is almost perfect, and the story is superb as the “hostages” fight in small groups with every weapon they have — gas bombs from the plane’s fuel tanks, sounds from a war movie blasted over speakers to simulate larger weaponry, etc.

What I Didn’t Like

There are a LOT of characters at the start of this book and it is hard to keep track of them all. Up until the end, there are too many small sub-plots — some are good, and necessary to flesh out the experience, but not all of them. There are fewer characters by the end though and it helps speed up the plotting. However, the ending is a little over-the-top, resembling a scene from a Die Hard movie more than keeping with the slightly more realistic tone of the rest of the book. As well, there is a meeting between the hostage-leaders and the terrorist-leader that is absolutely surreal. The likelihood of both parties treating it like a military battle with truces, etc., is virtually nil but it was at least interesting to read.

The Bottom Line

DeMille is the master of the game.

Deathright by Dev Stryker (1993) – BR00006 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
January 21 2001

Plot or Premise

Amelia Pearce has a normal enough life, but with a soon-to-be ex-lover, she heads home to her parent’s house to heal her ego and ease the transition. However, she finds her life shattered by the truth about her father — he is not a simple journalist, but an operative for “The Network”, an ultra-secret organization of operatives on loan from the major intelligence agencies of the various countries with one goal: combat terrorism. It’s like James Bond and his counterparts working for Interpol, with only one person knowing all the agents. The father is killed by an assassin, as is Amelia’s mother, but Amelia manages to escape and starts using all the skills her father taught her as a child (through a long-running series of “survival” games).

What I Liked

The book was written by Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran, two of my favourite authors whether they use their own names or the “Dev Stryker” nom-de-plume. So, the style, the dialogue, the plot tools…all are superb, but I’m a little biased. This book is also unique in the field — the main character (Amelia) doesn’t even make an appearance until several chapters into the book. And seemingly-major characters keep getting killed off! There are not a whole lot of people left by the end of the book, so it becomes somewhat easier to follow. And killing off major characters does keep the reader guessing all the way through.

What I Didn’t Like

The bad guys are mostly one-dimensional except for the assassin, with the plot revolving around plans for Libyan terrorists to poison the water supply of America. And Amelia has the added problem that she can’t seem to trust anyone, even the head of the Network. Yet as much as I liked the writing, and as much as I liked the plot twists with the death of major characters, it made it very hard to care about some of the characters — why bother if they are killed off halfway through the book? As I said above, Amelia is the main character but doesn’t appear until several chapters into the book. Her father seemed to be the main character for the first few chapters, and then he dies. Four other key characters bite the dust before the end of the book too, nicely spread out through the book so you lose a character every couple of chapters. Too bad if you care about one…but after the first two check out, it’s hard to keep your interest.

After the death of the father, you find out that Amelia isn’t quite the helpless person she is initially portrayed as, because her father taught her survival skills — and yet she never wondered about her father? She always wrote him off as a small CIA bureaucrat or journalist, yet in the next breath talks about him with almost superhuman qualities? The collaboration between Murphy and Cochran is usually excellent — in this book, it reads more like they disagreed about the characters and maybe wrote chapters on their own. Kind of like the classic writing game where one person writes one chapter with twists and turns, and then asks the next person to pull the next chapter together, mesh the various elements, and give their own spin to it.

The Bottom Line

Too many plot twists, too many deaths.

Fools, Knaves and Heroes: Great Political Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer and Simon Bainbridge (Editors) (1989) – BR00080 (2000) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 12 2000

Plot or Premise

This is a collection of short political stories from various famous authors dating back to the 1800s.

What I Liked

The best story of the collection is by Mark Twain, entitled The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (an interesting story of greed that corrupts an incorruptible town, prompted by a man wronged by the town). James Thurber’s story, The Greatest Man in the World, is a slightly different take on flying around the world, as a man flies non-stop while the media and public scramble to meet him and the government tries to hide the fact that his character isn’t that great. L.E. Jones’ story, The Bishop’s Aunt, focuses on occupied Eastern Europe during the war and questions of sacrifice, faith, martyrdom, and strategy. And Jeffrey Archer’s own story, The Coup, has two business rivals stranded in Nigeria during a coup, and having to resolve their differences.

What I Didn’t Like

Three stories were good, but not as good as the rest. Charles Dickens story, The Election for Beadle, tells the tale of an election for church Beadle, and two men fighting to elect their choice. Rudyard Kipling’s tale of The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat has a fight between a man and his buddies against a town that had a speed trap set to catch speeders. Finally, Saki’s tale of Ministers of Grace is a really strange tale of turning political animals into actual animals, and letting angels take their place.

The Bottom Line

Interesting collection, but uneven.

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains by Louis L’Amour (1999) – BR00050 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
August 11 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of ten short stories.

What I Liked

  • Crash Landing — A great twist story, about a crashed plane and the man who takes charge to get everyone off before the plane slips off the edge of the snow-covered cliff.
  • Sideshow Champion — A brawling boxer gets the championship fight of his life, but he knows the ones backing the champion are all crooked and will stop at nothing to bring him down. And he knows he has to get out of the limelight to train, so he goes back to the circus as a sideshow boxer to practice for the weeks before the fight.
  • The Money Punch — Another boxing story about a kid who’s up against the rackets and an ex-trainer who is more than a little crooked. Add in a missing new trainer, and the fact that he needs training — he’s got a great right but his left needs to be developed so he can be a better fighter. Oh, and he wants the girl who owns the fight farm.
  • Roundup in Texas — A typical western story where cattle rustlers are lowering cattle estimates, and the foreman looks to be a chump who simply over-estimated. Gun battle at the end, and lots of story in a short timeframe.
  • Under the Hanging Wall — A private-eye story about a man hired to go to a town and find out why his brother would have killed a mine owner. The Sheriff is no help, and there’s a woman who belongs in the big city, not in a bus-stop town along the highway. Set in the early 20th century.

Other stories include: By the Waters of San Tadeo (town bully holds village hostage on island); Meeting at Falmouth (ambushing a traveling gentleman); and Beyond the Great Snow Mountains (woman taken prisoner in Chinese mountains by a tribe).

What I Didn’t Like

Two stories weren’t that great — Coast Patrol (WW II story about a freighter captured by Germans and an Allied pilot) and Gravel Pit (thief gets extorted and wants to kill the extortionist).

The Bottom Line

Decent but eclectic bunch of shortstories.

The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00057 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
June 5 1999

Plot or Premise

Connor Fitzgerald is an assassin for the CIA. Black ops at its best. But when the CIA director orders a hit, and then wants to hide her involvement from the President, she tries to send Fitzgerald on a one-way futile assignment to Russia to prepare an assassination of the Russian Premier. Fitzgerald’s ex-mentor gets involved and figures out the plan, but too late to save CF from getting caught. A couple of twists later, however, and Fitzgerald is back in the States with the same mission — kill the Premier while he sits next to the President.

What I Liked

The storylines were inventive and well done. Not quite at the level of Clancy or De Mille, but well done still. The writing is first-rate and the story moves along at a good clip.

What I Didn’t Like

The relations between the CIA and Fitzgerald, and between the CIA and the Oval Office are not sufficiently fleshed out, leaving the story as having a little too light touch for the genre. Also, a couple of the twists are too well-telegraphed and you see them a mile off. And a small twist at the end, although expected, is handled far too lightly for the likely reality of the situation.

The Bottom Line

The story moves along at a good clip.