Spies, nuclear arms and a coup

11 Feb, 2018 - 00:02 0 Views
Spies, nuclear arms and a coup

The Sunday Mail

THERE are 2018 publications already in bookstores – and it is only February.

Of the several brand new books on offer, it is bestselling author Brad Taylor’s recently dropped latest installment of his Pike Logan series titled “Operator Down”, that has grabbed my attenetion.
With thrillers being my second favourite genre after court drama, I decided to make it my first read in 2018 and well, it jolted my reading enthusiasm, which had faded over the holidays.
Aaron Bergman, a former leader of an elite direct action team under the Mossad, disappears while on the tail of a diamond merchant in Soweto, South Africa. He is grabbed soon after discovering that the case he is chasing has nothing to do with diamonds but arms and militants.
The people who have captured Bergman suspect that he has been in communication with his partner, Shoshana, which means they have to travel to Israel to kill her. On the other side of the globe, the protagonist Pike Logan, who works with a counter-terrorism unit, The Taskforce, is tracking an American arms dealer who might be involved in the movement of sensitive nuclear weapons components.
With the arms dealer’s trail leading Logan and his team to Israel, their actions hinder Shoshana’s assassination.
The two parties end up working together as both the disappearance of an Israeli spy and the case the Americans are working on seem to be connected.
As the plot develops, it emerges that plans for a coup to topple the democratically elected government of Lesotho is at play.
While this is the 12th installment in the series, first timers will have no problem adapting to the characters and their attributes.
It might, however, be a good idea to go back and look for the previous editions so as to get a grasp of where these interesting individuals are coming from. One of the characters people can easily get addicted to in this story is Shoshanna, a lethal assassin who is described as a supernatural predator, who caused fear in anyone who crossed her path.
It is no surprise that the writer is able to create explosive action scenarios, having served in the US Special Forces for over two decades. The moment before Bergman is kidnaped, you can easily get goose bumps from the way that scene develops as the writer cleverly makes sure that you anticipate an attack.
“In that millisecond, Aaron realised that he was no longer the hunter. He was the hunted. They had been led here for a reason. He bolted upright and saw men appearing like wraiths from the dilapidated buildings, an anthill kicked over, running toward the car,” goes one of the paragraphs where the Mossad man realises he has been trapped.
It is clear that the writer did his research well, with the way he details the setting for his story, exploiting significant landmarks such as the historical houses of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu in Soweto’s Orlando West or the SCAD free-fall at Orlando Towers, among other recognisable features.
From the beginning of the book, you can see the development of an interesting storyline and while it might take a while for a newbie to the series to piece together the connections between the main characters, it does not spoil the fun.
If you are a fan of special ops and military stories, this is one of the books you should definitely have on your bookshelf.

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