Customer Reviews

The Assassin: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Stephen Coonts is a pilot and a novelist. This book had me stumped for a while as the narrative just kept plodding along. I have read a lot of accounts lately of the Eighth Air Force in England during WW2 and this book reminded me of the long take off roll of a fully loaded B-17 on the way to Germany. Gathering speed slowly, all engines straining, the bomber leaves the air strip with little to spare and slowly forms up with its mates and heads to the target.

For what seemed like the longest time, I wondered if this book was ever going anywhere. The plot line has been explained by others and maybe it is necessary to take so much time to wind this story up, however once we get to the point where the bodies on both sides start droppping like flies, things get very interesting.

This author has given us a lot of very readable novels in the past and while this one isn't his best, there is still some bite in his writing and I am glad I stuck it out. That may not be the highest praise, but it is honest.

I've read nearly all of Coonts' novels and would call myself a tepid fan of his work. Coonts can range from absolutely terrific to pretty bad. "The Assassin", however, is the first Coonts novel I've ever set aside without finishing. In fact, I gave it up at page 75.

Why?

Because there is not a smidgen of credibility in the book. Coonts draws on recent headlines for his plot line and that becomes a part of the problem. Coonts uses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium-20 as the weapon. Not a good thing to do since anyone who followed the news of that truly unique act knows that Coonts is simply borrowing it for the story. There is no credibility to Coonts' back story. To be believable, Coonts should have invented his own narrative from the same base.

The main characters, Jake Grfton and Tommy Carmellini, are back again - and frankly they have beome threadbare. Grafton, the retired Admiral and intelligence czar, was at one time a formidable character. Now, frankly, his dialog bounces mercurially from all-knowing to stuck on stupid. Carmellini, who speaks to us in the first-person while everyone else uses third-person, needs help with his sex addiction. The plot device of a privately financed, government executed campaign against Muslim terrorists is unbelievable from the very first words describing it.

The Abu Qasim character, supposedly the world's most feared terrorist, whom no one can identify by sight is - here's that word agsain - unbelievable. His alleged daughter, who is now a French socialite (and, of course, rich and stunningly beautiful) is also unbelievble.

All of this mind numbing, silly nonsense comes in the first 62 pages. Then Coonts unloads on his technically literate audience with the introduction of Robin Cloyd. The stereotyped description is enough to cause teeth grinding: "Robin was a technical genius, a tall, gawky young woman who lived in jeans and sweatshirts because the rooms where she spent her working life were filled with computers and heavily air conditioned. She also wore glasses, large, thick ones . . . "

Coonts needs an advisor. Being intelligent and even a "geek" doesn't mean you look weird. Also, most people who do what are soon described as Robin's work, would not be in a computer room. Coonts obviously doesn't understand what computer networks are all about.

Within moments, however, Coonts goes from awful to horrible. Robin is described as a "data-mining exert who had been working for NSA. She had been temporarily transferred to the CIA and assigned as Jake's office assistant." Office assistant? Coonts obviously is clueless as to what data-mining is, which he demonstrates in the very next sentence: "One of the many things she did for the admiral [presumably including coffee fetching?] was to hack her way around the Internet, which was, of course, illegal."

Of course, Coonts doesn't know what hacking is. Coonts doesn't know what the word Internet means. Coonts not only doesn't know what he is talking about, he insults those who do.

Coonts has his "office assistant" on a moment's notice "hack" into the computers of the three of the richest people in the world, all leaders of large businesses. No problem. Takes only a few seconds. Nonsense.

But Coonts keeps right on going. Having cracked these systems in seconds, Robin isolates their email accounts, saying "They're using a fairly sophisticated encryption code . . ." Of course, she cracks it in seconds.

You can get free encryption programs that are essentially invulnerable to cracking. Coonts is not only apparently unaware of that, but thinks everyone else is to.

At that point, I lasted another 13 pages as the plot and characters went from dumb to dumber.

This is not Coonts at his prime. Far from it, this is Coonts approaching rock bottom. Avoid this turkey.

Jerry

This novel has a very clear theme: fighting the never-ending anti-terrorist war.
What's different from the reality is that the momentum behind the war is not the will and strength of the American government and its allies, but several billionaires and dignitaries.
Coonts weaved certains plots of contemporary news into his novel, e.g. the poisoning of a Russian dissenter. The novel is entertaining to some extent but not beyond expectation at all. In fact, you'll soon find that the twists and turns of the protaganists' fates are within your easy imagination, thus reducing the fun of reading.
Have you every watched the movie, True Lies? This novel is just something like that.

The Assassin is the first book i have read in years... I am hooked on Coont's writing now. The book did leave you jumping around a bit, but it was very good. Since then I have read The Traitor and Liar and Thieves. They both kept me busy every night. The wife was getting alittle upset... I just ordered Cuba, America and Liberty. Now i am waiting to read the rest of his creations.

This represents the first novel by Coonts that I have read. On the objective side, I am not a fan of changing narratives. I believe it adversely affects the fluidity of the reading. The dominant character is done in first person. He is a young intelligence operative who muses through thoughts that sound as though they came from an older person(say someone of Stephen Coonts age).
Criticisms aside, the writing is very good and the suspense is even better. I admire, even gravitate to writers that do not stand on politically correct ceremony. This book is a candid, no apologies look at a religion that is responsible for many of the world's woes. The blending of real-life characters,(would-be dictator Putin), as well as real-life events(the poisoning of a Russain operative) with Coonts fiction creates a more realistic story line.
I would not consider it a waste of time or resources to read other work from the author. This, in fact, would probably make for an entertaining movie. However, Hollywood is more interested in trying to make the intelligence agencies out as the bad guys. Some of us are chanting the media mantras in goose-step fashion, homeland security compromises my civil rights, or "Change we can believe in".
It is our common human struggle and our peripheral distractions that marginalize the insidious lunitic fringe and when our distractions include Hollywood fantasy, we are all the more ripe for manipulation. On the fiction side(because art does imitate life), it is novelists such as; Silva, Thor, Rosenberg and Coonts that will help to move the discussion back where it was just after 9/11. So if the movie producers are interested in reality(and profit) then explore the likes of this novel and its ilk.

I'm a fan of Coonts and I've tried to like this book. It gets off to a great start and the overall concept is good, but the writing takes an experimental twist that I can't warm up to. The reader is in the dark for far too much of the narrative.

Jake Grafton, whom Coonts's readers have come to know over many novels, is a distant and cold enigma. Tommy Carmellini is presented in the first person while the rest of the book is in the third person. Characters are introduced just long enough to make us want to know them better (a sniper team in the Hindu Kush, an undercover agent hiding in Rome) but then killed off before we develop sufficient attachment for their deaths to mean anything.

I tried. This one just left me cold.

As an avid audio listener and having read all of the reviews I couldn't wait to hear this novel. What a disappointment - a good book spoiled!
Whoever did the review for Audiofile must have listened to a totally different audio book than I did. Suffice to say that I do not agree in any way with this review. In my opinion this has to be the most dull, boring and monotonous narrative I have ever listened to.

While I enjoyed this book for the realistic way in which it portrayed the difficulty of fighting against determined terrorists, the author unfortunately skimped on realism when it came to the characters. The worst case of this is the support character Robin. I actually began paging back to find if I was reading about the same person as her abilities seemed to change dramatically and incongruously everytime she reappeared!

Characterisation aside, the book kept my interest; there are plenty of casualties on both sides, with luck a strong determining factor on how engagements eventuate. The course of the book wasn't predictable either; right up to the end of the book you're kept guessing. It seems that the author gained experience on this series which he put to excellent effect when writing the Deep Black series.

If nothing else, this book really brought home to me how difficult it is for a democratic country to protect its citizens against terrorists and highlighted one of the major downsides of being a head of state.

SYNOPSIS

Arguably good story-telling -- provided you are the kind of reader who wants your "good guys" to be so stupid and so professionally incompetent that they end up being fodder for an omniscient, virtually omnipotent pair of terrorists.

On the other hand, if you are more realistically inclined, you will find the gun-fodder characters in this book to be insults to the professions they purport to represent.

CAVEAT

Read what follows, only if you do not plan to read the book.

ABSURD PLOT

As other reviewers have pointed out, the novel's organizing theme is absurd.

A group of wealthy business CEOs approach a "maybe" CIA official to guide them in financing a plan to eliminate Islamic terrorism by impeding its access to money. Inexplicably included in this group of good guys is an abrasive, loud-mouthed, and obviously untrustworthy journalist, who periodically threatens to blab the arrangement to the public.

COONTS' CURIOUS IGNORANCE OF THE PROFESSIONS HE DESCRIBES

Since I come from a parallel occupation, the egregious incompetence of the book's CIA and Special Operations personnel irritated me. Here is a sample selection:

Two Special Ops counter-assassins are themselves assassinated because they are too obtuse to take precautions against being followed after eliminating a terrorist in his homeland. One of these operatives is so witless that he doesn't bother to warn his girlfriend that she might become a target for the pursuing jihadists.

Similarly, a Special Operations sniper team shoots a target terrorist (who is visiting a jihadist village), while knowingly being observed by an enemy counter-sniper, whose movements they lose track off during their hit.

After completing the assassination (and unrealistically re-finding the counter-sniper), the pair blows up their 50-caliber rifle, rather than pack it out. Though I can see circumstances in which that might be necessary, Coonts' explanation does not justify losing the range advantage that the supreme sniper weapon would have given the pair as they try to outrun the target's jihadist "brothers."

Professionally worse, the sniper team inexplicably splits up during the villagers' pursuit. And one of them is too incompetent to recognize that the point man for the pursuers, whom he lets go by him, will double back to kill him, after he engages the rest of the villager group. The other of the sniper team is too far away to prevent his death.

In a similar "how stupid can one get" vein, four Special Operations folk are assigned to protect a house, which they know to be the subject of a coming jihadist attack. Two of these gems go to sleep in the hay loft of a barn, without first setting up a perimeter warning system. Both are easily killed. One of their comrades, sensing that something wrong is afoot, dumbly goes into the barn through the main door. Natural selection has no empathy for him, either.

First-person protagonist, Tommy Carmellini, is a mediocrity of such proportion that one wonders how ex-Admiral CIA operative, Jake Grafton, could possibly consider him to be up to performing the ridiculously difficult tasks that he is assigned. Even one of the book's main characters tells Grafton what an incompetent Tommy is.

Carmellini, for example -- in addition to getting shot a couple of times because he is obtusely unaware of his surroundings -- shoots an innocent man. Though assigned to protect a houseful of people, he apparently does not recognize that one of these same people might trip over the booby trap bottle he plants on the stairway. When he hears the person trip over the bottle, Tommy blasts him to death. The blast-ee turns out to be the chauffeur for one the main characters.

Jake Grafton, himself, is such an arguable bonehead that he puts some of the people he is supposed to protect inside a multi-story apartment house that even the most ignorant of readers would recognize can't be protected. What happens next is so ridiculously improbable that experienced military and police will cringe in reading it.

COONTS EVEN SCREWS UP "ARREST" PROTOCOLS

Grafton tells Tommy Carmellini to make sure that driver for the four-man team of jihadists who attack the indefensible apartment house is captured.

Coonts, of course, doesn't tell us how Tommy is supposed to kill the four-man team (who are inside the building) and catch the driver (who is on the street outside the building) at the same time.

Tommy brilliantly dashes out onto the street, dives headfirst into the driver's car, seizes the car keys from the ignition with one hand, and beats up the driver with the other elbow. (I've been in similar car-seizing situations, and it doesn't go the way that Coonts describes.)

Tommy then leaves the driver unconscious, but unsecured. Naturally, when Tommy leaves to deal with the four-man team of killers inside the building, the driver he was supposed to capture runs away.

EVEN THE CIVILIANS IN THE NOVEL ARE UNBELIEVABLY AIR-HEADED

Author Coonts is no better on the non-professionals' side of the equation.

The anti-terrorist CEOs that Grafton leads are too brain-dead to take precautions against being murdered, even after repeated warnings. They are "offed" one-by-one in a tedious exposition of the Darwinian principle of "survival of the fittest" by "elimination of the stupidest."

For example, after his colleagues are murdered one by one of, one of this CEO group eventually decides that he does need two body guards. But he foolishly rides around in an "unhardened" limousine that he apparently left parked somewhere where bad guys could plant a bomb on it. Guess what happens.

And Grafton's own CIA-recruited Arab anti-terrorists are equally careless. One is assigned to give poison to a terror-plotting imam. He does, but he foolishly allows some of the imam's followers see him dispose of the poison bottle in a dumpster just outside the spiritual center. Oops.

CONTENT-LACKING CONVERSATIONS

Coonts, not understanding how professionals actually interview and interrogate, inserts numerous purposeless conversations in the book. These often revolve around suspected double-agent "Marissa." Carmellini and Grafton both have aggravatingly airy conversations with her that lead nowhere. The talks aren't even interesting for the irrelevant content that Coonts does include in them.

The author apparently adopted this "nothing happens" conversational style, so as to preserves Marissa's mystery to the end. But, given the law enforcement and anti-terrorist nature of the plot, real professionals would never have let Marissa skate untouched for so many pages.

UNBELIEVABLE BAD GUYS

There are only two central bad guys. This apparently unsupported pair manages to put the entire American intelligence and counter-terrorism elite on the defensive.

The shadowy one of the two operates independently and knows everything that is going on, even inside the American intelligence community. He supervises a non-jihadist mercenary killer, who also knows more than anyone could know and, thanks to the incompetence of his targets, has no trouble introducing numerous folk to the Great Beyond.

IF YOU CAN SUSPEND DISBELIEF, YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS BOOK -- OTHERWISE AVOID IT

The novel's preposterous plot and professionally disrespectful characterizations of counter-terrorism professionals trivialize painfully "real" reality.

That's not my cup of tea. But it might be yours. Whatever Coonts' foibles are (when it comes to unrealistic depictions) he is a good story-teller.

The Assassin unfortunately proves a disappointing follow-up to the events of the previous Carmellini novel, The Traitor. While that was a suspenseful novel of espionage whose only major shortcoming was the soap oprah-ish twist involving the title character(not who you think, though he was the main bad guy), this is more of a chase-type novel which initially involves protecting people wanting to kill the main villain. That wouldn't be such a thing if Coonts still had the ability in him to maintain a tense air throughout. Unfortunately, despite that several people are murdered, it's far too easy in advance to know what's coming. There's one moment where you'll be astounded by a particular character pair's stupidity(they both end up dead)

Not to mention that Coonts completely ruins the villain. His past few novels have had an anti-Islamist direction, so I'm not surprised. However, the former idealist from the last novel has transformed into a stereotypical rhetorical-spouting terrorist who's better off on a Internet videotape than the pages of a novel. The harsh and unloving way he treats his daughter is probably the most indicative of this, because he seems to think that she's "unworthy" of her affection or something. Speaking of her, the subplot involving her *possible spoiler* husband's murder is so ridiculously generic, it should never have been included.

About the only thing good I can say about this novel would have to be the character of Tommy Carmellini, who's still as charismatic and witty a Sangamon Taylor-esque protagonist than ever. He's a far easier guy to root for than the "planner" Grafton. Unfortunately, his insights and point of view aren't enough to save this book.

If you're looking for a good beachside read, you can probably find better alternatives. Unless you absolutely love Tommy Carmellini however, you're better off not bothering.