Customer Reviews

Dead Headers

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The British Intelligence organisation "Executive Support", nicknamed "Dead Headers", does not exist officially. Its aim is to terrorize the terrorist and eliminate them before they can act. They are more or less free to act - the result is all that counts. The brutal mortar attack in Paris is only the beginning for a global spanning act of terror. In Europe and the Middle East the Dead Headers try to solve the riddle and prevent a possible nuclear disaster...

The complexity of the story and its style has similarities to Tom Clancy and Frederick Forsyth. But there is a big difference between Clancy / Forsyth and this author: Lack of skills!
The story itself is cryptic - a lot of times I had no idea where it was leading to. And the longer I read the more it annoyed me.
This book features way too many flashbacks and background information about various characters - even for those who only play a minor role in the book. With so many names and information it is almost impossible to keep track. This only slowed down the story and as a result I was more confused than thrilled. And it also bored the hell out or me.
Furthermore the author constantly uses strange dialogues ("spy language"?) that made me wonder what the characters are talking about. Some passages had to be read several times and still did not make more sense. I really doubt that one should be working for CIA or FBI to understand this book!
To make matters even worse James H Jackson obviously likes to use very long sentences, with quite a lot of commas in there. This makes reading difficult and even more boring.

Bottom line:
This book gave me a new meaning of "kept me guessing until the very end" - I am still wondering who was who, who did what and why and how did they find out.
The author might have written a complex, well researched book with a interesting basic idea ("to terrorize the terrorist"). Unfortunately he botched it up by his bad / inadequate writing style and way too much superfluous information. I value a good, fast paced story a lot more that ample facts and background information which in the end only contribute to slow down the fun.
Since this is his first book Jackson might learn for the future. But I sure will not read any further books from this author.