Book Review: Tsar by Ted Bell

Tsar explodes into action when in the 1960s, the father of English espionage agent Alex Hawke’s father, himself a British spy, is killing some time before his next assignment when an assassination attempt on his life is foiled. This sets the blazing pace for the rest of the book.

Vladimir Putin is locked away in a prison built on the site of a former nuclear waste dump. Somewhere in Russia, the Dark Rider, the true man in power is hell bent on bringing all of the former countries of the Soviet Union back under the control of Mother Russia. He has the power and gumption to shut down the European economy and bring blood to the enemy Americans if need be.

Hawke is, by agreement of the U.S. and British governments, the only man who can stop the madness of the new Russian leader. He is on holiday and enjoying a secluded beach in Bermuda where he meets artist Anastasia Korsakov. She is the beautiful and witty daughter of the Dark Rider. Sex, murder, and bombs leveling a Mid-western town bring the story to wire-tight tension.

There are some holes in the research but, as a fictional title, that’s not a problem for me.
The character development and detail to setting are great, though they drag somewhat in some places. The alpha male character of Alex Hawke is a great in-your-face character that you’ll love. If Russia invading Georgia within the last few weeks leads to a new Cold War, we can only hope we have people like Hawke out there thwarting the real threat of terrorism, communism, and the new Russia.

Tsar is the first espionage thriller and book by Ted Bell I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Most of the book is lightning-fast paced, with the bells (no pun intended) and whistles you’d expect from a spy novel. You can’t go wrong by throwing Tsar in the basket on your next trip to the bookstore. I’ll definitely pick Bell again for my entertainment reading.

Book Review: The Roswell Legacy by Jesse Marcel

Do extraterrestrials exist? Are there otherworldly visiting earth now? Do we have alien craft invading our airspace?

These questions have been around since the 1940s. According to author Jesse Marcel, Jr. the answer is yes. In his book, The Roswell Legacy - The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site, he documents the events leading up to and after the alleged crash of a spacecraft found by a ranch hand near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. There has been an ocean of speculation of what actually crashed on the ranch back then, but one thing still remains constant: The U.S. Government to this day claims the recovered debris from the crash site are either from a weather balloon or a top-secret device for detecting pressure waves from a nuclear blast in the Soviet Union. In either case according to Marcel, the debris from the wreckage do not match the materials from either a weather balloon or pressure detector would have been made of.

When he was eleven, Jesse’s life took a turn down the road to strangeness. One summer night his father Major Jesse Marcel, Sr., excited, brought in a box of debris, and scattered them on the kitchen-floor, claiming a flying saucer had crashed 75 miles northwest of Roswell. That night Jesse Jr. had the privilege of handling and inspecting the pieces of something that would forever change his life.

Major Marcel is an officer in the Army Air Force, successfully trained in radar, worked as an S-2 Intelligence Officer assigned to the 509th Composite Bomb Group in Nevada. He briefed and supplied intelligence to the flight crews before the missions to drop the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. To say the least Major Marcel had the credentials to identify whether or not the wreckage was a balloon or part of a secrete piece of equipment.

According to Jesse Jr. the superior officers of Major Marcel forced him to pose for pictures with a radar target, which had some resemblance to the actual wreckage but was not the actual debris.

The Roswell Legacy is a great fast read and will keep the reader hooked from the first page to the end, especially if they have an interest in UFO’s and government cover-ups. One thing for certain is Major Marcel knew what he saw and thought it came from somewhere else other than Earth.

I am convinced there is something that happened near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and the government did cover it up. Even if nothing happened there the City of Roswell has benefited from the story for over 60 years in the tourist industry. If you visit there today you can’t go anywhere without bumping into some sort of alien paraphernalia. I visited Roswell last year and had a blast. If you are planning a trip there pick up this book for a great companion and who knows who or what you might find.

Audio Book Review: Wild Fire by Nelson DeMIlle

What would the U.S. Government do if a Muslim terrorist group some how smuggled a couple of suitcase bombs into the United States and managed to detonate them in heavily populated cities? That’s where project Wild Fire comes in.

The central thesis of the novel is that if there is an attack on U.S. soil by Muslim terrorists with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. will respond to pre-selected Middle Eastern cities, hitting them with nuclear warheads.

John Corey of the A.T.T.F (Anti Terrorist Task Force) a post 9-11 government agency, and his wife/boss Kate Mayfield of the F.B.I. are lured into a maze of deception, danger, and corruption of government officials at the highest level. While investigating the disappearance of one of their co-workers while he was on a covert assignment at a right-wing compound, they stumble onto a plot by a private oil baron and top government officials to wipe out Muslim countries via nuclear attack.

Corey and his wife are on the run from their respective agencies so they can dig to the bottom of what’s going on at the Custer Hill Club. When they figure out what the future holds, they are pitted against the clock and nuclear destruction of two major U.S. cities and the Middle East.

Being a kid of the Cold War I found this book to kind of spooky. With the fall of the Soviet Union bringing an end to the Cold War, it also opened the door to a new type of war with an invisible enemy. The idea is plausible that a terrorist group could get hold of a suitcase bomb and smuggle it across our borders. Where would they get it? Information from an interview from Nelson DeMille at the end of the book said that there are around 40 of these bombs missing from the former Soviet inventory. This scares the crap out of me.

Since I’m in outside sales I get to listen to books instead of read them on occasion. This one turned out to be a great one too. It is read by Scott Brick, who brings complex dimensions to Corey’s character. At 18 hours - 46 minutes on 15 compact disks, it is a marathon listen.

Great job DeMille!