The Hellfire Club, by Jake Tapper ~ 2.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction, Political Thrillers

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now

352 Pages

Synopsis: The debut political thriller from Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent and the New York Times bestselling author of “The Outpost”—-1950’s D.C. intrigue about a secret society and a young Vongressman in its grip.

Charlie Marder is an unlikely Congressman. Thrust into office by his family ties after his predecessor died mysteriously. Charlie is struggling to navigate the dangerous waters of of 1950s Washington, DC , alongside his young wife Margaret, a zoologist with ambitions of her own. Amid the swirl of glamorous and powerful political leaders and deal makers, a mysterious fatal car accident thrusts Charlie and Margaret into an underworld of backroom deals, secret societies, and a plot that could change the course of history. When Charlie discovers a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of governance, he has to fight not only for his principles and his newfound political career…but for his life.

I have a confession to make. Jake Tapper is not only one of my favorite journalists, but I also have a secret crush on him. Plus he has my eternal admiration for the way he interviews Kellyanne Conway without ever losing his cool when she’s spouting her “alternative facts”. So, when I heard that his first foray into fiction was coming out I knew I had to request it. 

The Hellfire Club starts out very strong and immediately grabbed my attention. I love the time period of the early 1950s and Tapper, not surprisingly knows his stuff when it comes to politics during the McCarthy era. All the big political players are here: Jack and Bobby Kennedy; Joe McCarthy and his legal minion Roy Cohn; Senator Estes Kefauver who led a highly publicized investigation into organized crime, and many other well known personalities of the time. Dropped into the Washington swamp is the young and naive Charlie Marder. I liked a couple of the characters, but most of them were a little two-dimensional.   The plot turned into something so convoluted it further spoiled my enjoyment. There are too many subplots that cover everything from juvenile delinquency, to comic books, to farm bills, to Puerto Rican revolution, and even wild horses. If Tapper had just focused on the secret society and conspiracy angle, I think this would have been a great political thriller. I love conspiracies much as the next reader, but there was so much much going on my head was spinning. There were also too many parallels to what’s going on with Washington politics today and they came across as forced and contrived. 

It breaks my heart to give The Hellfire Club a poor review. The concept and premise is wonderful, but for me the characters and contrived storyline just never meshed. I’ve read a couple of  Jake Tapper’s nonfiction books—The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (2012) and Down & Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency (2000). The first book detailed one of the deadliest battles between U.S. troops and the Taliban. The second was an intriguing breakdown of the Florida election debacle that took place in 2000. Both were meticulously researched and captivating, and I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t read a lot of nonfiction. If Tapper decides to try his hand at another fiction book, I’ll probably try it, but I’m hoping he won’t because I suspect it’s just not his forte. The Hellfire Club is receiving mixed reviews, so if you’re interested by the premise, as always I encourage you to check this out for yourself.

The Long Game (The Fixer #2) ~ By Jennifer Lynn Barnes – 5.0 Stars

Tags

Mystery, Political Thrillers, Suspense, Terrorists, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA Children’s for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: For Tess Kendrick, a junior at the elite Hardwicke School in Washington D.C., fixing runs in the family. But Tess has another legacy, too, one that involves power and the making of political dynasties. When Tess is asked to run a classmate’s campaign for student council, she agrees. But when the candidates are children of politicians, even a high school election can involve life-shattering secrets. 

Meanwhile, Tess’s guardian has also taken on an impossible case, as a terrorist attack calls into doubt who can–and cannot–be trusted on Capitol Hill. Tess knows better than most that power is currency in D.C., but she’s about to discover first-hand that power always comes with a price.

Phew! I just finished this last night and I feel like I just got off a roller coaster! I really loved The Fixer, but I have to say I think Jennifer Lynn Barnes has really outdone herself with this sequel. I think I described the first book as a combination of the tv series Scandal and Veronica Mars. Well The Long Game moves a little away from that, and after a somewhat humorous beginning, segues into much darker territory, culminating in a shocking and brutal turn of events which leaves not only our spunky heroine Tess reeling by the betrayal of someone close to her, but the reader as well.

What the author has done is to take the events from the first book and build upon them, creating an intricately woven story that throws Tess, Henry, Vivvie, and Asher into a terrifyingly dangerous situation where it’s not clear if they’ll all come out unscathed. Trust is the prevailing theme in this book and it impacts every relationship in this story. Tess still doesn’t trust her mother due to the revelations in the previous book, yet her friendship with Henry and Vivvie is put in jeopardy because of the secrets she’s keeping in the interest of protecting them. And then there’s the rather complicated relationship Tess has with her grandfather. This man could have competed with the Machiavelli family as far as hidden motivations and secret agendas go! All this adds to an already tension-filled plot, with the suspense building to a fever pitch. And once the revelations begin it’s like a stack of dominoes falling. Everytime I thought I had figured everything out, WHAM! Something new and mind-blowing would be revealed!

Barnes made some pretty gutsy choices regarding character and plot development in this, but never more so than with the ending. It’s not your stereotypical happy ending, and it leaves me wondering where things will go from here in the series. I honestly don’t have a clue because Barnes has proven that absolutely nothing is off the table!

The Long Game is not a nice relaxing read. It’s a high-octane thriller in every respect. It’s a story that will touch all of your emotions and leave you exhausted at the end. Here’s how I felt when I finished:

 

One cautionary note: there’s a lot of violence in this book. It’s never gratuitous and always serves to further the plot, but because of it I wouldn’t recommend this to younger teens. That said, I think it’s a brilliant follow-up to The Fixer and I cannot recommend both books highly enough, especially if you’re a fan of political thrillers!

Evening Wolves ~ By Luke Taylor – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Mysteries, Political Thrillers, Romance, Spy Thrillers, Techno-Thrillers

Thanks to Luke Taylor for sending me his book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Homicide detective Michael Erland passes through the gates of the opulent Fircrest Mansion to solve the murder of a woman with no fingerprints, and finds himself in the middle of a brutal struggle between Homeland Security and a domestic terrorist known as Jupiter, a hacker and criminal mastermind who steals information to sell it to the highest bidder and will stop at nothing to make the biggest transaction of his career and end the lives of those who would try to stop him. The agent who’s pursuing Jupiter, the enigmatic and stunningly beautiful Sierra Marland, conscripts Erland’s help as the only one she can trust, and as Marland and Jupiter lock wits and wills in a fiery chess game of death and consequence, Erland is forced to walk the tightrope between justice, vengeance, and love.

The man in the brown dining chair awoke from the murky depths of unconsciousness to find himself bound and gagged. Blinking sway the fog, painful shafts of light pierced his eyes. His skull echoed with the thick, dull pain of medical narcosis and felt like a blacksmith’s anvil at day’s end.

Where was he? What happened? Why was there nothing to recall but a few seconds of memory?

And with that opening, the action NEVER lets up in this first book in Luke Taylor’s Wolves and Leopards series. This has a huge cast of characters but the three major characters are Erland, Sierra, and the sinister Jupiter. I absolutely loved Sierra who’s a kickass yet vulnerable agent desperately trying to to bring down her twin sister’s murderer as well as saving the country. stymied and betrayed at every turn by traitors and bureaucrats, there’s only a handful of people she can trust, yet she never gives up. Erland is an honest and hardworking cop who gets pulled into a fight between government agencies and the terrorist organization run by Jupiter. He’s completely over his head yet he manages to not only keep up, but also to become an essential asset in stopping the terrorists. While there’s definitely some instant chemistry between them, the romance develops slowly mainly due to all the chaos around them. As they start to have feelings for one another, there are some lovely and touching scenes, which is pretty hard to do in a book such as this. Jupiter is a villain that rivals any depicted in Bond books/movies. He’s a man devoid of a conscience, only caring about power and money. Because he’s such an interesting character I wish there had been a little more of a backstory,  but with all the other characters it’s obvious why there wasn’t room. There are too many supporting characters to list, but they’re all extremely well written and fully developed. One word of warning: the author is not afraid to kill off his characters. Two of my favorites perished and it’s a credit to Luke Taylor’s talent that I got quite emotional over their deaths. But in a way, never knowing who was going to make it out alive made the reading experience even more exciting. The ending was absolutely perfect and it has me looking forward to the second book in the series Shatterpoint Alpha. 

Evening Wolves is a mammoth book clocking in at over 700 pages, and while there’s a lot of descriptive phrasing, the plot never dragged, and I found myself reluctant to put it down when real life intruded. After finishing it I wasn’t surprised that the novel was a Finalist in both the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Awards and the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Awards. The entire time I was reading I was thinking of my dreamcast if this was ever made into a movie. If you’re a fan of authors like David Baldacci, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, and the late great Tom Clancy, and you’re looking for a new author to add to their venerated ranks, I highly recommend this.