This is the first for me — and probably the last. The story telling was TOO SLOW.
An un-Thriller.
Phantom Orbit is his 2024 book. And it is very much up-to-date in terms of technology. The detail, relevancy, and realism are impressive.
Threats to the American GPS system and satellites, especially from Russia and China, is the main thread.
It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing …
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov.
After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who’d been too tough on corruption, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA.
He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own…Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south…If you are smart, you will find me.
Any other writer would have broken it up into 3 books.
It’s LONG.
BEST consider it 3 books.
… an epic espionage thriller filled with wrath and retribution, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice, love and loss, all in the name of an almighty being.
It’s a mind-bending story of one man’s evolution from spy to savior when the world descends into “utter darkness.”
Hayes has constructed the plot as a quest narrative, taking Kane to the ends of the earth and back to save humanity from a person who has earned his place in the “pantheon of terrorism.” …
In the novel, Hayes takes us on a deep dive into the workings of the CIA and the National Security Agency when Kane prepares for each stage of his journey. The settings are immersive and the historical details remarkable.
From Afghanistan to Pakistan, from D.C. to Russia’s deep state and so many places in between, each landscape where Kane journeys is described in rich geographic detail with compelling backstories that contextualize each region’s cultures and values. …
At close to 800 pages, this is a really big book with really big themes and chapter after chapter of blockbuster action (and graphic violence), often ending in foreshadowing that cranks up the suspense.
The first three-fourths of “Year” definitely is the book many readers of Hayes’ first novel, “I Am Pilgrim” (another allusion to sacred texts), have waited 10 years to read. When the final part of the novel shifts into sci-fi territory, the sudden syncopation in the plot lines may throw some readers off. It’s bonkers and breathtaking.
Impenetrable. Well protected. Secure. Home to the most valuable jewels on earth. But once a year, the Metropolitan Police must execute the most secret operation in their armoury when they transport the Crown Jewels across London.
SCOTLAND YARD…
For four years, Chief Superindendent William Warwick – together with his second-in-command Inspector Ross Hogan – has been in charge of the operation. And for four years it’s run like clockwork.
THE HEIST…
But this year, everything is about to change. Because master criminal Miles Faulkner has set his heart on pulling off the most outrageous theft in history – and with a man on the inside, the odds are in his favour.
Gideon Crew—brilliant scientist, master thief, intrepid adventurer—is shocked when his former employer, Eli Glinn, vanishes without a trace, and Glinn’s high-tech lab Effective Engineering Solutions shuts down seemingly overnight.
Fresh off a diagnosis that gives him only months to live, Crew is contacted by one of his former coworkers at EES, Manuel Garza, who has a bead on one final treasure hinted at in EES’s final case, the long-awaited translation of a centuries-old stone tablet of a previously undiscovered civilization: The Phaistos Disc.
What lies at the end of the trail will either save Gideon’s life—or bring it to a sudden, shocking close.
Crew once again faces incredible odds—but as Gideon has proved again and again, there’s no such thing as too great a risk when you’re living on borrowed time.
Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant.
Because no official record of the man’s presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city’s far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim.
Curiously, he had been living in a small house on the grounds of a palazzo owned by a university professor, in which Brunetti discovers books revealing the victim’s interest in Buddhism, the revolutionary Tamil Tigers, and the last crop of Italian political terrorists, active in the 1980s.
Easy reading. A slow burn.
The personal life of Brunetti and his wife are equally as interesting as the murders.
Camino Ghostsis Grisham’s 50th novel. And as good as ever.
It combines his interests in writers, the justice system, and good winning over evil.
This is a feel good read.
AND might just get banned in Florida, increasing sales. Ron Desanctimonious doesn’t want to hear about mistreated African slaves.
… story is about Dark Isle, a sliver of a barrier island not far off the North Florida coast.
It was settled by freed slaves three hundred years ago, and their descendants lived there until 1955, when the last one was forced to leave.
That last descendant is Lovely Jackson, elderly now, who loves her birthplace and its remarkable history. But now Tidal Breeze, a huge, ruthless corporate developer, wants to build a resort and casino on the island, which Lovely knows, deep down, is rightfully hers. …
Definitely listen to the audio book. Whoopi Goldberg is the perfect reader.
I was laughing out loud every 2nd page. It’s been compared with Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
I downloaded because I was in Scotland, en route to St. Andrews.
Tom Coyne is the editor of quarterly, The Golfer’s Journal.
In 2010 he published A Course Called Ireland, where he WALKED around the perimeter of the Republic and Northern Ireland, without the use of any transportation, playing the courses en route: 36 courses, 648 holes, over 2,000,000 yards.
Reluctantly — urged by his drunken best friend — he wroteA Course Called Scotland, 111 courses in the home of golf.
Tom chose mostly LINKS courses, hoping to learn the secret of golf in Scotland.
Courses in Scotland were originally set-up on the worst coastal land — no good for farming. Golfers shared the space with sheep and rabbits that kept the foliage down.
He did include some links courses in England and Wales, as well.
The 4th book in the Gideon series is best yet. In fact, each seems better than the last.
This thriller reminded me of the film Alien. It could be categorized science fiction.
Gideon’s Sword
Gideon’s Corpse
The Lost Island
Beyond the Ice Limit
The Pharaoh Key
[Warning: BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT is the sequel to THE ICE LIMIT.
While BEYOND is a stand-alone novel, we want to warn potential readers that the copy below contains serious spoilers for THE ICE LIMIT, for those who wish to read that book first.]
That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now …
With these words begins Gideon Crew’s latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth.
Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite–the largest ever discovered–from a remote island off the coast of South America.
The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic Sea and broke apart, sinking—along with its unique cargo—to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed.
But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.
Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface—and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed.
There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon’s expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the “meteorite” has a mind of its own—and it has no intention of going quietly…
The Women (2024) by Kristin Hannah is one of the most popular books of 2024.
Intense.
I’d forgotten just how IDIOTIC was the Vietnam War.
The tragedy that befalls Frankie is multilayered, though all of it can be traced back to the moment she impulsively volunteers to be an Army nurse in Vietnam.
Before she knows what’s happened, she’s 2nd Lt. Frances McGrath, arriving at a 400-bed hospital 60 miles from Saigon.
… Frankie has no understanding of what horrors await her.
Her first full day in-country, after helicopters swoop in carrying dozens of gravely injured men, a medic hands her a boot and, when Frankie realizes a foot is still inside, she vomits and then tells anyone who will listen that she’s made a huge mistake.
