357 ( )

Andy's second book. It's nice to see that he isn't the super soldier that Dick Marchenko thinks he is (more on that later), however, in this book he makes some terribly stupid mistakes. Still, the fieldcraft is good. It is nice to see what the approved method is, then to see the variables that can mess up the approved method, and then the fix for the variable. I can also see that his goddaughter is going to continue to be the leverage used on him probably for the rest of the series. I'll try another to see if it pulls up from here. ( )

The author is a former SAS guy, fairly high up in the organization, so I thought this would be a particularly good read. And it was, for the most part. The action was swift and well rendered. I especially liked all of the techniques described. Like sealing your crap up in cling film when you’re doing an extended surveillance job outside. And hiding in large bush is more complicated than you would think – you can’t just crawl in there because you’d be moving the branches around by getting caught on them. This would definitely alert someone, so you have to cut out a hole in the branches that is big enough to accommodate you. I also liked the rules & regs surrounding how you make an alternate identity for yourself.

What was bad was the (unconscious) humor of the author’s writing came out at entirely the wrong time and made me laugh inappropriately. Like when a police German Shepard is attacking Nick. He says that he grabbed the dog’s rear leg and it tried to shake him off – and he used Michael Flatly the Irish dancer to describe the dog’s leg action. I cracked up.

And the characterizations were only so-so. Nick was trying alternately to be the tough guy, the country hick and the compassionate father and neither persona suited him well. Sarah was nothing but a caricature with no motivation or other guides to her personality. She’s first shown as the leader of a mission that she has secret orders about and can’t share with the rest of the crew. So then the mission goes wrong and they blame her. Then she’s portrayed as a renegade agent who can’t be found.

That’s when Nick is sent to find her. It seems that during one of their past missions they got very close and posing as a couple wasn’t too hard for them after a while. When the mission was over, she dumped him saying that it was only the mission and he didn’t think it was real did he? He did. Dope. So at the end of this book when it turns out that Sarah is really with the terrorists and plans to kill the Israeli President and Arafat, he is surprised that he fell for her again. Once a dope, always a dope.

The one thing that was really eerie about reading this now is that the terrorist organization she was part of was Osama Bin Laden’s. It talks about his change of heart after the US helped him get the Russians out of Afghanistan and how he wants to kill any US person who is in Saudi Arabia or other Moslem nations. It talks about his plans to strike at the US in such a way that they will never feel safe again and that will show the world how powerful he is and how stupid the US is. Creepy since he has done just that. I can imagine how Andy McNab must have felt on September 12, 2001. ( )

Continuing saga, Slow, not as special as the other books by McNab. ( )

SUMMARY: He was ordered to track down a rogue colleague. Now British Intelligence agent Nick Stone and "runner" (and former lover) Sarah Greenwood have become the hunted, racing deeper into a dark, deadly conspiracy that will change the course of world events - and the lives of millions.With seventeen years of active service in the elite SAS force, Andy McNab writes from his own harrowing experiences. Packed with authentic procedural details, as relentless as a fast-burning fuse, Crisis Four is a thriller so gritty and real that you won't know where fact ends and fiction begins.