Customer Reviews

Deep Black (Deep Black 1)

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The first book in a really fast paced, high tech series. If you like futurist technology and spy novels then you'll love this book.

This first installment of the "Deep Black" series, although published seven years ago, still seems to live on the crackling edge of high tech. An NSA team races around Siberia, first to inspect the wreck of a top-secret spy plane, then to free a prisoner - and finally back to Moscow, where an attempted coup is about to start. And which side is the US on?

The agents constantly pull futuristic gadgets out of their bags and pockets - any number of video cameras, sensors, explosives, handheld computers, futuristic guns, even electronic lockpicks. Backing them up are the whole array of NSA technology, including robot planes and satellite-launched probes - some of them actually controlled by near-teenagers back in Washington using all their video game skills as music pounds through their ear buds. You can't tell how much of this is real, and we don't know where Coonts and DeFelice get their inside dope, but it all feels real.

What's really good about this novel, though, is the characterization. The sharp edges of these new characters really come through.

Charlie Dean, once a Vietnam-era Marine sniper, now finds himself working with young tech-savvy agents half his age. He's from the era of tough guys with guns, endurance and smarts. They're from the era of the Internet and ever-evolving rapid circuitry. Dean doesn't trust it much, or trust the kids' trust in it, and meanwhile they resent this dinosaur from the 20th century thrust upon them as an observer on a sensitive mission.

Lia DeFrancesca is such a bitch on wheels her extreme attractiveness must be the only reason the men around her don't kill her. That - and that she's a good man in a tight situation.

Team leader Tommy Karr laughs his way through dangerous moments in the way only a 23-year-old can - all the while making the right calls in split seconds.

Back in Washington, NSA mathematician Johnny Bib hovers on the brink of insanity as he cracks codes and tries to tease out the deeper meanings.

It's his big boss, William Rubens, who gets the best ride here. The authors do a superb job showing the NSA's deputy director posturing and infighting as he tries to advance his unit while anticipating and heading off the flank attacks of his bureaucratic rivals. Coldly brilliant, on the fine line between intuition and an almost reptilian paranoia, Rubens must stay one step ahead of the plots, and plots within plots, both abroad and at home.

The characters' rough edges and the breathless pace of the new technology surrounding the spy game combine to make this a fine, fine book.

am about half way through the book, I like the charcters but the story is kind of slow compared to the Jake Grafton series.

Fantastic book!!! Well written and interesting! Vince Flynn like action with more technological innovations. Deep Black: Dark Zone