20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fabulous action-packed thriller, May 29, 2009
This review is from: Diamondhead (Hardcover)
In Central Iraq, insurgents fire internationally outlawed Diamondhead missiles at an American tank convoy. Several men die in their fried tanks. Outraged Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander Mackenzie Bedford rejects the surrender of the dozen or so culprits who killed his men; instead he executes the unarmed enemy.
Following a court martial in San Diego, the navy discharges Mack, but does not pursue homicide charges. In Dartford, Maine, his wife Anne informs Mack that their ailing son Tommy is dying from a rare disease similar to leukemia that will cost at least one million dollars for the experimental full bone marrow operation, which is the only chance to save his life. To help pay the tab, Mack accepts a commission from the local shipbuilder Remson to assassinate right-wing French politician Henri Foche who is running for President of France; Mac has an added incentive in killing Foche; a major stockholder in the company that develops the banned Diamondhead missile.
Over the top of Mt. Katahdin, DIAMONDHEAD is a fabulous action-packed thriller from it opening sequence in Iraq to the military trial in San Diego to coming home in Maine and finally to France. Mack is terrific as an obstinate hero with a mission that takes him on a linear path while not allowing any adversary to get in his way. Ignore the plausibility as this is a fun tale of a dad on a quest to save his son.
Harriet Klausner
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
It's hard to believe Patrick Robinson wrote this., May 14, 2010
This was a surprisingly weak offering from an author I have really enjoyed reading. At times the dialogue was stilted and unbelievable. I was groaning barely a third into the book. For example, the hero just returns from a recon trip and, over dinner with his wife, asks if their ill son was going to die. And what kind of a hero, Seal or not, rationalizes killing a head of state so that his employer's business will survive? Please! There was a big buildup to the climax, but it just fizzled. I honestly wondered whether Robinson let a family member or friend take a shot here.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very Faulty Foundation, September 13, 2010
This novel has so many holes in it, I almost don't know where to start. I wonder if the author bothered to do any research at all.
I won't go into a synopsis here as other reviewers have done so, but it is a standard thriller and could have worked. Instead, I was thrown off by right-wings rants (like CNN being too busy trying to criticize a Republican president to catch onto a huge breaking story--really, does that add anything to the plot?) and numerous, numerous, numerous factual errors.
The author is highly enamored of the US Navy SEALS. Fair enough. But he can't even get their school correct. It is "BUD/S," not "BUDs." He has all SEALS, SAS, and French Foreign Legion Paratroopers being super-human hand-to-hand killers, able to take out bodyguards without breathing hard, able to outshoot anyone, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. It just isn't true. While SEALS are highly trained and generally in superb physical condition, they just aren't trained that way.
In this story, SEALS might as well be the only troops in Iraq with the Army, barely mentioned, being in a supporting role. He even calls the SEALS the heavy hitters of the effort, something far from the truth. Somehow, in his Iraq, SEALS get transported by tanks for secret missions, despite the fact that tanks cannot carry passengers, nor are they very stealthy.
And in a mission, after two SEALS carrying tanks get hit, the protagonist just happens to see the front runner for the French presidency hobnobbing with the insurgents and actually viewing the damage done by the missiles his company makes(how no one in France notices that he is in Iraq is rather curious.) Yet when the insurgents set up for another shot, he idly stand by while two more tanks are taken out. I guess proactive action is not something in which his hero believes?
And the errors pile on. He lauds a sniper rifle which has a 20 cm spread at 600 meters. Twenty cm's? A simple M16 can beat that. He has his hero perform a "difficult" shot at 123 meters. At that range, Marines can hit a paper bullseye from the standing position with an M16. A good sniper would be firing at a much greater distance. He has the hero perform a "death-defying leap of 63 feet" into a river. Pretty much all service recruits in the Marine Corps and Navy, and least, do this in training. And they don't point their toes with their feet together, either, as the hero does. Toes are crossed to keep the legs together on impact. He had an F-18 take out a ground target with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile instead of a more probably Hellfire. He also had the hero, a SEAL with 13 years service who quits still have pension which also provides medical.
I could go on in this vein, but point made. I had an even harder time empathizing with the hero. The author keeps pointing out that the hero is an honorable man, only doing this to save his child (cue tears). Yet this man did gun down surrendering men (men he chose not to engage when they were fighting.) He accepted an assassin contract to keep a shipyard working. He killed two bodyguards (scum, but he didn't know that.) He felt that killing three French policemen was an "inconvenience." Despite the author's attempts to make the hero a figure of respect, I thought he was merely a criminal thug himself. I had no sympathy for him at all.
The book had so many improbabilities that I just could not get into the flow. Even the premise that a missile is banned because it burns? Many, many weapons work like that, especially anti-armor weapons. The French government cannot track down where these missiles are made? As I mentioned, the front-runner for the French presidency is able to slip away to Iraq and meet insurgents? Only Switzerland performs bone marrow transplants?
I hate to be so critical, but this book was simply bad. I have not read any of the author's other books, but certainly, to get published the first time, they cannot be so bad.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
