Excellent read. My first book by Brad Taylor and will definitely read another. ( )

An excellent outing with Pike Logan and his team chasing terrorists around the globe. The issue of boundaries on 'black ops', the operators, the supervisors, the administrators at all levels is dealt with extensively as well as the toll it takes on those who have to get down and dirty to accomplish the mission. This turns the thriller into something more, a view inside the minds and souls of those who go about the business of keeping America safe "outside the lines". The story runs smoothly with Pike, Jennifer, Knuckles and the newbies facing off against those initiating muslim terrorism. Well-done bu Brad Taylor, who seems as if he might have 'been there, done that' to one extent or another.... ( )

The Forgotten Soldier is the 9th book in the Pike Logan thriller series. This is the 3rd one in a row I’ve read and and I liked this one more than the other two, even though the start made me wonder if I’d like it at all! Great setup and finish. I was a little leary about this one with one of the ‘good guys’ going rogue and becoming his own Judge, Jury and Executioner. But they brought the story back to a Taskforce ending and while it was sad it was still a very good one. For those who like international thrillers this is still a good series to lose yourself in. Pike a bit of a dick, but he gets the job done.

A task force man, Guy George, had a brother in Afghanistan as part of a special forces op and the whole team was ambushed and killed. His belongings are shipped back and by special request, were not ‘scrubbed’. IE cleaned and filtered to spare the family extra hardship. It happened to have the packaged his brother had for the mission he was on. It had the pictures of 4 faces, his brothers last mission, and likely the ones who caused his demise.

At first Guy was taking it fairly stoically, and agreed to sit out his next mission helping research other targets. Then he identified someone he believed to be one of his brothers targets. Who happened to be the son of a powerful and influential man from Qatar. Once Guy learned that there wouldn’t even be authorization to look into the man and his friends, he decides to take the law into his own hands. He goes extralegal, from an already extra legal organization.

Once the Taskforce discovers this, Pike is sent after him to prevent him from causing an international incident. Only Guy has disappeared and no one knows where he is or where his targets are going to be. So they need to find him, before they can stop him. And it takes them on a race around Greece. ( )

OK - just OK. Not much character development and a lot of references to things that happened in earlier novels in this series. I guess the author assumes anyone reading his books would have read them all. Other, better, authors that write novels with re-occurring characters (Berry, Preston & Child, Silva, and Child) take the time to at least re-aquatint their readers with the characters and their backstories. I might have liked this much more if Taylor had used that approach. ( )