Customer Reviews

Cobraville

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

 

 

A secret mission to the Phillipines, the perfidious French and Germans, Islamist militants, a U.S. Senator, his somewhat estranged son, a mysterious D.C. insider, a handpicked assault team, a venomous Jesuit, Secret Service and other agents . . . wow, everything you need for a party.

And a party is what Carsten Stroud delivers in "Cobraville."

Senator Drew Langan, a member of Intelligence Oversight Committee, meets with Gunther Krugman, who passes over a blue envelope containing an intercept from the National Security Agency --- that Langan is not entitled to read. On the same evening, an intruder apparently seeks to murder the Senator.

Thus begins the adventure. The plot takes one twist and turn after another. Unbeknownst to Langan, his son is a member of a team carrying out a sensitive mission in a region of the Phillipines occupied by Islamist militants. Gunther Krugman is missing.

This is one of the best crafted suspense thrillers I've ever read. Stroud's characters are richly developed and his scenes are persuasive: you can practically smell the stink of the jungle and the bouquet of the fine wines in the D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania countryside.

Ultimately there is cross, double-cross and triple-cross and one hell of a fine read.

Jerry

"Cobraville" is one of those books that you start reading then decide to put everything else aside until you finish. It has a strong, fast moving, intriguing plot with a diverse cast of characters. There are good guys, bad guys and some that fall in between. The plot keeps you guessing to the very end and the real villian is revealed in a surprise twist. Mr. Stround just gets better and better. I highly recommend this book.

See storyline above.

Carsten Stroud, one of my favorite spy thriller writers, delivers yet another exciting adventure involving both politics and terrorism. This novel will keep you on the edge. The story and writing style, both solid, will keep thriller fans happy. The only bad thing I noticed was the editing. If there are three or four mistakes I usually won't mention it, but there are at least twice this many.

Highly recommended.

Good action in two hemispheres. But a little too tricky. A simpler conspiracy might have been more believable, but this is a well done tale by a very good author.

Usually I enjoy this type of literary tripe. Easy reading without much effort. However a simple wikipedia search would have greatly helped the author.

The most egregious bits of misinformation were:

1. The description of the USS liberty incident. The author give the number injured as the number killed.

2. When the protagonist (an aging US senator) blithly hops into a UH-1 iroquois helicopter (yea sure he has 3-4 hours a month to stay current in this beast) and is being chased by a Bell Jet Ranger he says that the Jet Ranger can do 300mph. Acutally it has max speed 139mph the same as the UH-1. If he wanted to get away he could climb since the UH-1 has a service ceiling of 18,000 ft and the Jet Ranger 13,000 ft.

I CHOSE THIS BOOK FOR TWO REASONS. ONE WAS THAT IT WAS RECOMENDED BY H. COBEN WHICH IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS, AND THE OTHER REASON IS FOR THE DEDICATION TO THE USS.LIBERTY.I KNOW THE LIBERTY INCEDENT, AND THE WAY THAT IT IS WRITTEN AND DISCLOSED IN THIS BOOK IS COMPLETLY CHILDISH. THE AUTHOR HAS A COMPLETE CONCTIPATED IDEA AND A DIARRHEA OF WORDS, THAT WITH A LITTLE RESEARCH AND A LITTLE MORE EFFORT WOULD HAVE PUT THIS SUBJECT IN PROSPECTIVE. (SHIP WAS SUNK WITH ALL HANDS???? REALLY)

AFTER THAT FALSIFIED STORY THAT THIS BOOK IS DEDICTED TOO, I HAD TO STOP READING.AS WAS COMENTED BY OTHER READERS, THINGS HAVE TO MAKE SENSE, AND THIS BOOK DOES NOT. IT FALLS SHORT, AND THEREFORE NOT WORTH THE READ.

I bought Cobraville based on the blurb on the back cover. It promised an action story involving a top-secret CIA team, and included this text: "... they will uncover a conspiracy that snakes all the way through the corridors of power, to the very highest level ..."

I'm disappointed, very disappointed.

To start with the positive aspects, Carsten Stroud definitely has a way with words. I found many of his descriptions very appealing, and he is good at writing action scenes. The irreverent smart-ass dialog between the CIA team members is very amusing.

The general story line, with two main characters and two inter-related stories, is quite satisfying. In Washington and New York we have Drew Langan, U.S. Senator and member of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee. In the Philippines we have Drew's son, Cole Langan, leader of a heavily armed CIA team sent to replace a secret communications relay device.

The story constantly switches back and forth between Drew and Cole, with both of them getting into deeper and deeper trouble. Very exciting.

But now come the negative aspects.

The story is indeed exciting, with obvious bad guys and shadowy bad guys and several characters who tantalize by acting as if they might (or might not) be bad guys. But way too many things are done that simply don't make any sense, except as artificial suspense-inducing elements. And artificial suspense-inducing elements fall flat as soon as you realize that they are artificial.

For example, why was Drew Langan given coordinates hidden in the paper ring on a cigar instead of just on a piece of paper? Why was a PC programmed to display a self-destruct countdown message, creating an artificial race-against-time situation? Etc, etc.

Then there are the characters themselves, and a surprising amount of intolerance towards foreigners that I found off-putting.

"Cole disliked the Canadian flag almost as much as he disliked Canadians." pg 15.

Regarding a member of Cole's team: "you only asked him for his views on the French and the Germans if you wanted to see all the veins in his neck and forehead pop out." pg 47

"'F**k the Frogs and bugger the Krauts.'" pg 55

Not surprisingly, Cole's team gets into a serious firefight with a UN / German peacekeeping force in the Philippines, with casualties on both sides. Not surprisingly, Cole's team is so good and the Germans so poor that there are almost 10 times as many German as American casualties. To top it off, the German and French UN peacekeeping forces are portrayed as barbaric and dumb.

The obvious bad guys are the Moslem terrorists, and they are portrayed as not just bad, but as disgusting monsters. One of them points his gun at a German co-conspirator and tells him to strangle his eight-year-old son - and the German complies! Another Moslem is a pedophile who, after the successful bombing of a café with dozens of deaths, is described as being sexually aroused by the deed and sating himself with a child.

Personally, I have no sympathy for Moslem terrorists, but I don't see any purpose in portraying them as monsters.

Meanwhile, back in the USA Drew Langan is discovering that almost all of the bad guys at the top level are Germans (surprise, surprise).

As a final criticism I'll mention that I didn't particularly like either of the two main characters. Cole Langan comes across as intolerant and obsessed with doing what he sees as his duty. Drew Langan is more flexible, but he's having amorous ideas regarding a female Secret Service agent young enough to be his daughter.

First Drew makes an (unsuccessful) pass at her. Later, during a discussion of the disfiguring (both mental and physical) scars that she bears from having been burned, she blurts out, "Would you like to see it Drew? Is that what this is about? Because I can show you it right now."

"'No,' said Drew. 'Please don't.'" pg 415

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

In summary, I liked the writing and I liked the excitement. What I didn't like was that much of the excitement was due to plot elements that made no sense, that parts of the story and many of the characters displayed an intolerance towards foreigners, and that the two main characters didn't appeal to me.

Rennie Petersen