- Thor, Brad.
Foreign Influence.
New York: Atria Books, 2010.
ISBN 978-1-4165-8659-3.
-
Thanks to the inexorable working of
Jerry Pournelle's
Iron
Law of Bureaucracy, government agencies, even those most central
to the legitimate functions of government and essential to its
survival and the safety of the citizenry, will inevitably become
sclerotic and ineffective, serving their employees at the expense
of the taxpayers. The only way to get things done is for government
to outsource traditionally governmental functions to private sector
contractors, and recent years have seen even
military operations farmed out to private security companies.
With the intelligence community having become so dysfunctional
and hamstrung by feel-good constraints upon their actions and
fear of political retribution against operatives, it is only
natural that intelligence work—both collection and
covert operations—will move to the private sector, and in
this novel, Scot Harvath has left government service
to join the shadowy Carlton Group, providing innovative services
to the Department of Defense. Freed of bureaucratic constraints,
Harvath's inner
klootzak (read the book) is
fully unleashed. Less than halfway into the novel, here's
Harvath reporting to his boss, Reed Carlton:
“So let me get this straight,” said the Old
Man. “You trunked two Basque separatists, Tasered
a madam and a bodyguard—after she kicked your tail—then
bagged and dragged her to some French farmhouse where you
threatened to disfigure her, then iceboarded a concierge,
shot three hotel security guards, kidnapped the wife of one
of Russia's wealthiest mobsters, are now sitting in a hotel
in Marseille waiting for a callback from the man I sent you
over there to apprehend. Is that about right?”
Never a dull moment with the Carlton Group on the job!
Aggressive action is called for, because Harvath finds himself
on the trail of a time-sensitive plot to unleash terror attacks
in Europe and the U.S., launched by an opaque conspiracy where
nothing is as it appears to be. Is this a jihadist plot, or the
first volley in an asymmetric warfare conflict launched by an
adversary, or a terror network hijacked by another mysterious
non-state actor with its own obscure agenda? As Harvath follows
the threads, two wisecracking Chicago cops moonlighting to investigate
a hit and run accident stumble upon a domestic sleeper cell
about to be activated by the terror network. And as the action
becomes intense, we make the acquaintance of an Athena Team,
an all-babe special forces outfit which is expected to figure
prominently in the next novel in the saga and will doubtless
improve the prospects of these books being picked up by
Hollywood. With the clock ticking, these diverse forces
(and at least one you'll never see coming) unite to avert
a disastrous attack on American soil. The story is nicely
wrapped up at the end, but the larger mystery remains to be
pursued in subsequent books.
I find Brad Thor's novels substantially more “edgy”
than those of Vince Flynn or Tom Clancy—like Ian Fleming,
he's willing to entertain the reader with eccentric characters
and situations even if they strain the sense of authenticity.
If you enjoy this kind of thing—and I do, very much—you'll
find this an entertaining thriller, perfect “airplane book”,
and look forward to the next in the series.
A podcast
interview with the author is available.
July 2010 