Customer Reviews

America (Jake Grafton Series)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Stephen Coonts does it again! America takes you for a wild ride. The Navy's new stealth submarine is stolen from under their noses and escapes to the depths of the Atlantic ocean. Marine General Flap Le Beau saddles Jake and Toad with the task of finding the missing sub. First a lost military satellite, now a hijacked nuclear submarine. A hopeless situation turns desperate as the missles rain from the sky up and down the east coast of the US. The action is non stop and the plot will keep you guessing. Jake Grafton gets down and dirty in America.

As a mystery author with my first novel in its initial release, I admire Stephen Coonts and his work. In AMERICA, Coonts is working at the top of his talent. If you like plenty of action, a courageous lead, an ominous villian, some sexy women, and the continued existence of Western Civilization as we know it being on the line, you'll enjoy AMERICA too. U.S.S. America is the ultimate submarine. It vanishes in a hijacking on its maiden voyage, and Jake Grafton must find it. The book opens with satellite going missing, and that fact also plays into a plot that takes several unexpected twists and turns. This novel is also full of loads of technical scientific and engineering information, and it comes close to being the perfect techno-thriller.

Stephen Coonts does less character development than Tom Clancy. His hero Jake Grafton is thoroughly two-dimensional. He's a regular guy with a nice wife, neither of them drawn with any interesting quirks or depth. He doesn't have notable hobbies or interests. He doesn't have soaring ambitions, having made some bureaucratic enemies who keep him from rising above Rear Admiral. He dreams vaguely of the stereotypical middle-class retirement with his lovely wife. Little attention is paid to what he eats or drinks. A gourmet meal for him is steaks on the barbie. Grafton's jobs always seem to be intricate bureaucratic positions where he's a liaision from someone to someone else, which puts him in place to get into a technothriller plot involving the usual CIA and foreign spy types.

But that's half the book's appeal. Grafton strikes you as an Everyman who rises to the occasion through the qualities he's amassed as a good career Naval officer. His flurries of action are low-tech and plausible; he is resourceful without Coonts' pushing the limits of believability. And he wears well, like an old shoe. His low-key character recedes into the background, allowing you to enjoy the technological marvel of the state-of-the-art American sub that is hijacked, as well the complexity of the plot. Coonts' writing is never flashy or annoying, but quite even. I enjoyed the twists and turns of this one's plot, particularly the complexities created when arch-hacker Zelda Hudson masterminds the sub's hijacking while selling its services to two unrelated crooks for two different reasons at cross purposes with each other.

One of the other reviewers pans Coonts for making the hijackers' captain somewhat sympathetic despite his dastardly mission. I disagree. We spend a whole lot of time with him and would tire of a stereotypical tyrant or megalomaniac. And the novel is more plausible with a captain confronted with convincing his gang - through a combination of strength, logic and violence - to follow him after the fact on a much more dangerous mission than the one they'd signed on for. As a former Soviet sub captain, and as someone originally hired by the CIA at the plot's outset to hijack a sub for him, he would not have been convincingly drawn as a psychokiller or screwball. This is a leader of men who History, in the form of the Soviet Union's fall, has cast upon the streets - his last job was cab-driving in Paris - and who is now given a chance to use his hard-earned skills in a challenging, albeit criminal, mission. We see the action on the sub through his eyes, and so naturally Coonts must make him logical and smart enough to succeed in the sub long enough to make the plot work. Other colorful supporting characters are the knife-throwing Marine commandant, the slick Russian agent Janos Ilin, and my favorite Coonts character, the CIA cat-burglar Tommy Carmellini. I found myself liking hitman Myron Matheny, an aging, meticulous ex-CIA guy who drifted into killing for hire, a guy who can't wait to get out of the business but is forced back into it for one more hit. He comes off as a fiftyish accountant type, all planning and plodding and caution - the reason for his survival so long in a dangerous game. I found myself rooting for him to succeed or at least survive long enough to escape into the crime-free, smell-the-roses life he longs for.

One aspect of the book seems weirdly timely: how Washington and New York are paralyzed by missiles designed to knock out electronic systems. I read this book a week or two after Hurricane Katrina and that resonated significantly with me.

An entertaning book and nicely paced. Until the end that is. The last 100 pages or so are written as if the author got tired of working on the story and simply put a bunch of disjointed, action bites together so the book could be rushed to the publisher. I have read just about every "Grafton" book and this one is the most disappointing. Would not recommend it.`

The next line in the song is "she says his bowtie is really a camera," and throughout this latest novel from Stephen Coonts I couldn't stop thinking about these lyrics from the old Simon and Garfunkel song. This novel reminds me that we have not travelled very far from the days of the sixties when the cold war was at its peak. Sure Coonts has thrown in a bunch of new technological gadgets to make the story contemporary, but it's the same old story - we have it, they want it. The "it" this time is the USS America, the latest, high-tech, ultra-expensive, nuclear submarine that the Navy has just commissioned. It's loaded with the best sonar, the best electronics and the most recent high tech gadgetry that Uncle Sam can buy, including "Flashlight" Tomahawk cruise missiles that release an energy pulse on detonation capable of disabling all things electrical, including automatic doorlocks on cars, commercial airliners' electronics and the White House communications systems; and to the chagrin of the USA, the sub gets hijacked. The hero in all of this is once again Jake Grafton, the naval officer who is connected in all the right places and written about in other Coonts' novels. Jake's character should have been expanded more in this book because if the reader is unfamiliar with Jake from previous novels, then his credibility as someone whom the USA would rely upon at a time of crisis is questionable. Other characters in the story making a return appearance from previous novels like Tommy Carmellini, the CIA operative whose irreverence at the bureaucracy seems believable, cry out for a bigger part. Coonts does, however, move the story along with his concise writing style and plot lines and before you know it, you'll be finished reading this book. If you liked "Hong Kong" and "Cuba" by this author, you'll certainly like this one.

A Star Wars satellite that disappears on launch, a state-of-the-art sub hijacked on its maiden voyage, deliciously evil baddies motivated by lots and lots of money, Washington's circuits fried by EMP and the White House hit by a cruise missile, this one's a delight from start to finish. Don't know if all the technology described is possible, but Coonts made me believe it 100% (unlike the ridiculous "York" robots he invented in the novel Hong Kong). Way to go, Mr. Coonts. Keep writing!

This time Stephen Coonts really let me down! I was getting ready to give "America" five stars until I hit the third-last chapter, at which point the action moves to a luxury cruise ship, and the good guys take their wives along for the jaunt!

When the going gets tough, the tough guys (and their wives) go for a luxury cruise? No way!

Until the last three chapters I really liked "America". OK, the plot is a bit farfetched, involving hackers meddling with the launch of a super-advanced military satellite and a CIA-trained team of Russians and East Germans stealing a likewise super-advanced US Navy submarine named "America". But if you can swallow the plot the story is very exciting, and the characterizations of the people in the book is fairly good.

The submarine "America" and its advanced equipment and weapons are the real stars of the show. I especially loved the descriptions of the havoc created by the Tomahawk cruise missiles with new EMP (electromagnetic pulse) warheads, the attempts by two F-16 Fighting Falcons to shoot down the cruise missiles, and the underwater battle between "America" and two Los Angeles class submarines. At times like this Stephen Coonts is even better than Tom Clancy.

There is also a whole array of bad guys who you can love to hate. The one who's presented best is the Russian captain Vladimir Kolnikov, the leader of the team that steals "America" and then inflicts major damage on the USA. Zelda Hudson, the American hacker who finds it only slightly challenging to re-program a satellite launch or to get into any of the Pentagon's weapons systems, is also a cool customer whose services are available to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately, the two top bad guys, the Frenchmen Antoine Jouany and Willi Schlegel, never get much coverage, remaining simply "the nasty Europeans" who want to challenge the dominance of the USA. It would have been nice if they got to play a larger role.

But then comes the last three chapters, and major disappointment. Willi Schlegel happens to own a luxury cruise ship and decides to use it to rendezvous with "America" off the coast of Portugal. This is totally crazy - what bad guy in his right mind would involve hundreds of paying passengers and hundreds of non-combatant crew members in his criminal activities?

Even crazier, the good guys then decide to get aboard the luxury cruise ship pretending to be ordinary passengers and they bring their wives along to provide cover. Of course the bad guys are on top of the situation and the next thing we know the good guys and their wives are being held at gunpoint! Is this dumb or what?

I don't know how you feel about your wife (or husband), but deliberately and unnecessarily putting her (or him) in harm's way when going up against cold-blooded killers is not my idea of proper behavior.

In summary, an exciting techno-thriller that's great until it breaches the reader's credulity when the action in the last three chapters moves to a luxury cruise ship and the good guys bring their wives along for the final confrontation. That twist in the plot is too much to swallow, and spoils the whole book.

Rennie Petersen

The "America" of the title is the newest nuclear sub, the USS America, an advanced class of deep-sea hunter killers. With it's revolutionary sonar systems, and armed with warheads capable of unleashing EMP, America has the power to bring any modern power to its knees. The America is barely out of port when the sub is hijacked in a daring (and bloody) daylight assault. The impact of the successful theft compounds a bad month for the US government, one already spoiled by the fiasco of the botched launched of an SDI system - after the ruined launch, the remains of the SDI platform are missing. Soon, the America's hijackers use the sub's high-tech weaponry to level Washington and New York. Using EMP warheads, the big cities are left intact, but darkened - as if thrust back into a pre-electric age. The economy verges on collapse (good news if you bought Euros) and only Admiral Jake Grafton can do anything about it. With the help (or perhaps hindrance) of an ex-KGB spook, the Marine Commandant (Flab Le Beau, introduced in the novel "Intruders") and a CIA employed safecracker named Carmellini (Introduced in "Cuba"), Grafton races against time to link the hijackers with the missing SDI satellite and various shady types including some European businessmen and the beautiful owner of a NJ-based dot-com that weathered the e-collapse by diversifying into hacking secure government computers.

Better than "Fortunes of War"? Sure. And it was the first techno-thriller I'd picked up in ages (missed "Hong Kong"). So what's wrong? Coonts doesn't really solidify the complex story which includes a three-way conspiracy and plenty of techno-stuff. Also, the pirate crew of the "America" never really come together to form their own subplot (no pun, really!). They're a bunch of eastern types led by Kolnikov, an ex Red Navy sub commander reduced to driving a Parisian cab, and Heydrich, a cold-blooded assassin. The crew is frequently at odds with each other, but there's nothing more about them - they could have as easily gotten their own story but didn't. Coonts never does anything with the spectacle of the nuclear submarine commander reduced to shuttling tourists out of Orly Airport and around the Eiffel Tower, or even into the history of a guy who played "Blind Man's Bluff" thruought the cold war. The biggest problem with the novel is trying to understand what the massive conspiracy is even about - it's never clear why the plotters need the sub, and only the sub, to recover the missing satellite once Admiral Grafton concludes that salvage was the idea. Grafton argues that it's the satellite itself that needs to be recovered, even though those responsible for the crime could have easily stolen the plans for it, and wouldn't have had to go to the trouble of hijacking a nuclear sub to get them. (In the late 1960's to produce their own fighter plane, the Israelis resorted to an elaborate plan to steal a warehouse-full of blueprints for an airplane they already had). "America" lacks any fun characters like those in "Intruder" or even "Cuba" and Coonts' writing moralizes endlessly about bureaucrats (all the unpopular characters are compared to bureaucrats) and left-wing politicians. There's one great flying scene - with F-16's chasing Tomahawk missiles at low altitude - that doesn't so much make up for the rest of this boring book as much as remind us what a better book it could have been.

Stephen Coonts must be one of the most inconsistent technothriller authors writing today. He has produced one true classic in the genre - "Flight Of The Intruder" - and ever since, the ride for the reader is one of ups and downs. His track record has been to pen one or two so-so or outright bad novels, then get serious and fire off a gem. So, in between good reads such as "The Red Horseman" and "The Intruders", we are also served clunkers such as "Final Flight" and "Cuba". It has become such that a "buyer beware" tag should accompany every Coonts novel, just to be on the safe side.

Fortunately, after the debacle that was "Cuba" and the tepid "Hong Kong", he got down to business and wrote "America", which turned out to be a pretty darn good story. The plot that Mr. Coonts lays out - that of a hijacked, top-of-the-line sub and the havoc it wreaks on the Eastern Seaboard - is unique in this genre that has grown to be jammed with Tom Clancy-lookalike plots.

After a prologue that will eventually tie into the main plot, Mr. Coonts doesn't waste any time diving headlong into the action, leaping right into a gripping opening sequence in which the submarine "America" is hijacked. Enter hero Jake Grafton, tasked to find out who the bad guys are and to figure out a way to get the sub back. Grafton begins his sleuthing amidst the missile attacks, and deals with a Russian operative who may not be all he seems to be. The pages fly by as the plot unfolds, leaving the reader wondering how everything will tie up in what is sure to be a riveting conclusion.

Except that the conclusion sort of fizzles out. I would echo the sentiment of another reviewer in that the final 100 pages seemed to be written as if Mr. Coonts had run out of gas and was coasting the rest of the way home on vapors. Suddenly the pace slowed, and some of the side stories are mostly wrapped up in an all-too quick and "tidy" way as a means of falling into the solution of the main plotline. This is followed by the climatic confrontation with the bad guys, which is curiously set aboard a cruise ship and leads to a "happily ever after" sort of ending that seems all too clean and sterile, given the story that had led to this point. The cruise ship element felt way out of place, and only seemed to serve the purpose of making sure the characters of Callie, Toad, and Rita had some print space in this story where they were otherwise largely ignored (and not missed by this reader).

I wavered back and forth on rating this at three stars or four; it really could have gone either way. In the end, though, I gave "America" four stars because - conclusion aside - it was an entertaining book. Additionally, when evaluated with his other work, "America" was a far better effort by Mr. Coonts.

I can only hope that his next book is as good or better, but given his track record over the years, we'll have to wait and see. The good ones tend to be few and far between.

After the dire 'Hong Kong' this is a vast improvement.
Jake Grafton investigates a submarine hijack that snowballs into a significant attack on the US with warheads that detonate an EMP pulses that melt down power capability.
Fast moving and with some interesting ideas this is a return to form for Coonts. This is not up in the Clancey league but it is an entertaining novel non the less. It would have been interesting to see more of a focus on the aftermath of the city meltdown (you get the impression that "and then everyone lived happily ever after") and the plot device towards the end that has some senior navy types (and assorted women) going all SAS to get the bad guys was a little weak!
While not perfect, still worthy of your time...