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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Author Not Afraid Of Some Tough Research, January 26, 2006
Whether or not you like this novel, you do have to give the author credit for some gutsy research. She states at the end of the story that she spent 16 day aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley while it patrolled the Bering Sea in the middle of the winter. I only hope that she didn't get as seasick as I felt when reading about the exploits of the same cutter (renamed in the novel as the Sojourner Truth) during its patrol in the midst of an icy storm with 70 knot winds. Her onboard research enabled her to write plausibly about Coast Guard life at sea. Although I am a navy veteran, I had no idea until now that the Coast Guard has some fairly large ships. The one in the story is the length of a football field, displaces 3000 tons and has a crew of 100. Lieutenant Commander Sara Lange is the executive officer of the Sojourner Truth, and she is joined at sea with her CIA husband who has come upon information indicating that terrorists are about to make a missile attack on the United States. Sara's husband and a cohort obtain the plan of attack by torturing a participant in the plan. This, of course, is unrealistic as we know that the CIA would never torture anyone. Hmmm.This is essentially a chase thriller, and it is a well paced one. As other reviewers have indicated you won't be to surprised at how all this goes, but that doesn't detract from the fun read the novel provides. There is one point, however, where I said to myself, "Oh no, not again" when facing the trite situation where a bad person is about to shoot a good person, and the good person asks the bad person why he has embarked on his mission. Usually not one for lengthy conversations when dispatching those who get in his way, Mr. Bad Guy now decides to detail his plans. Of course you and I both know that when a Bad Guy decides to provide his victim with a speech the rules of thriller writing demand that the speechmaker be quickly done away with. There are some corny parts at the ending, but still I enjoyed this book, and hope Ms Stabenow will decide to write another thriller. I am sure that if she decides to write one about mountain climbing she will undoubtedly climb Mt. Everest before sitting down in front of her computer to spin her tale.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
action-packed, fast-paced, but very plausible international thriller, January 11, 2006
The dirt bomb set in a busy market street on Pattaya Beach, Thailand killed over a hundred mostly local shopkeepers and Japanese tourists, but some were American and other nations' military. No one stepped forward to claim the act. Just after the terrorist strike, two men calling themselves Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones meet with sea Captain Fang and maritime shipping expert Mr. Noortman. They hire the two maritime experts to deliver a special cargo to Alaska. CIA satellite technology catches the notorious Fang and Noortman with the two men in Thailand. Concerned that they were involved with the Pattaya Beach terrorism, which may have been a test run for something greater, CIA Agent Hugh Rincon is assigned to investigate and stop any incident from reaching American shores. He quickly realizes that he might spend quality time with his wife, whom he has been with the equivalent of one year in the decade they have been married, because Sara Lange is the executive officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Sojourner Truth patrolling the Maritime Boundary Line in the northern Pacific Ocean. That is quality time trying to stop the plot of Smith and Jones targeting 240,000 civilians in Alaska. Expanding from her wonderful Kate Shugak and Liam Campbell Alaskan mysteries, Dana Stabenow provides readers with an action-packed, fast-paced, but very plausible international thriller. The story line travels the globe until the climax off Alaska, which includes battling the nasty weather as much as a terrific sea and air maneuvers. Thriller fans will welcome Ms. Stabenow into the genre with this powerful tale that will be read in one enthralling sitting. Harriet Klausner
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Not a weapon of mass destruction....[but] a weapon of mass disruption.", January 17, 2006
A terrorist bombing in Pattaya Beach, Thailand, in October, 2004, is the prelude to this dramatic and exciting sea chase, as Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Sara Lange becomes engaged in much more dangerous activity than patrolling the Maritime Boundary Line between the US and Russia. Two brothers, known only as Smith and Jones, from Korea, have joined a Singaporean pirate named Mr. Noortman, and a Chinese pirate named Fang and have bombed Pattaya Beach as a dress rehearsal for bigger destruction. They have succeeded in obtaining cesium-137, usually used for radiation treatments in hospitals, and they plan to make a "dirty bomb" from it, firing it into Anchorage, Alaska, with its population of 240,000 people. Lt. Cmdr. Sara Lange is married to Hugh Rincon, a high-ranking official in the CIA, though their separate careers keep them apart for most of the year. Sara is on patrol, dealing with Russian incursions into US waters, a Greenpeace vessel which plans, on its own, to drive the Russians from the fishing sanctuary, and a mounting storm which soon results in twenty-foot seas, when she learns from Hugh that a major terrorist attack is planned on Alaska. A "dirty bomb" is believed to be aboard an unknown ship near her in the Bering Sea. As the narrative alternates between the Sojourner Truth, to which Sara is assigned, and the vessel in which the four terrorists and their small army are hiding, a dramatic chess game unfolds, just as the fierce winter storm develops to hurricane force. Author Dana Stabenow, who spent sixteen days aboard a Coast Guard cutter in the Bering Sea collecting information, fills this novel with details about Coast Guard life, giving it a verisimilitude which makes the action, behavior of the crew, and the dialogue come alive. Her insights into the problems of piracy, illegal arms sales, the impossibility of checking every container on every ship, the disregard of the Maritime Boundary Line by Russian fishing trawlers, and the complications created by well-meaning groups such as Greenpeace, give depth and high drama to the action as it unfolds. With broader characterization than one usually finds in an action thriller, the novel also provides personal information about Sara Lange, Hugh Rincon, their friend Kyle Chase of the FBI and his wife and children, and the terrorists themselves, personalizing terrorism and the fight against it by various forces within the US government. Filled with excitement as the storm, the terrorists, and the Coast Guard all come together, the novel provides much to ponder about our vulnerability to increasingly militant terrorist cells. n Mary Whipple
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