Helpful Score: 2
An exciting thriller that comes hauntingly close to today's headlines from the Middle East.
Helpful Score: 2
An American aid worker is kidnapped from a refugee camp in Azerbaijan. Since she is a senator's daughter, many forces with different agendas converge. Lt. Col. Evan Burton, assigned to the embassy in Baku, starts searching for the girl and discovers that there is more at stake than his, or her, life. Among the more enchanting characters are an Azeri general who betrays everyone but his own conscience, a warlord and heroin producer, a beautiful German spy, an honorable American ambassador, and the most revolting collection of Big Oil and diplomatic elite scum ever assembled. In the end, the kidnapping is trivial compared with a billion dollars of oil, but Burton has principles. Peters, a U.S. Army officer and author of seven geopolitical thrillers has an eye for the grubby realities of life in the Third World, and his portraits of desperate men pushed by events beyond their cognizance are more convincing than one finds in most thrillers.
Helpful Score: 1
An engaging military/diplomatic/third-world yarn. Those who like Peters' other works will not be disappointed. Good characters, good mix of action and narration.
Helpful Score: 1
You must like Peters to get through this one.
I'm a big fan of Ralph Peters's non-fiction and enjoy his fictional work (like this one) because I get to see how much of his "real world" thinking he projects into his fictional characters.
the headstrong daughter of a prominent u.s. senator came to a forgotten corner of the earth to make a difference, but now she has vanished into the heart of a lawless, oil, rich, nation.
Relief worker Kelly Trost, the headstrong daughter of a prominent U.S. Senator, came to a forgotten corner of the world to make a difference. But now she has vanished into the dark heart of a lawless, oil-rich nation struggling through a violent rebirth. Only one American, Lt.Colonel Evan Burton, has the courage and the local expertise to track the missing young woman down. But it will be the most brutal and difficult mission he has ever undertaken...a desperate search that will plunge the disillusioned career soldier into the lethal chaos of a war-torn country controlled by gangsters, religious zealots,warlords, oil executives, mutinous generals and foreigh spies.
For an innocent young woman has become a bargaining chip in a cold and ruthless global game in which the fate of nations comes down to the fate of two human beings..Harrowing reading..well written and riveting!
For an innocent young woman has become a bargaining chip in a cold and ruthless global game in which the fate of nations comes down to the fate of two human beings..Harrowing reading..well written and riveting!
