Customer Reviews

Diamondhead

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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

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.

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.

I normally enjoy Patrick Robinson's books but this one is too much. The way he continually expresses his far right wing politics just gets boring and makes it hard to read.

Plus, the way he describes the physique and power of his central character borders on homoerotic and gets a little creepy.

The book, while certainly entertaining in places, presents the reader with three problematic areas; the plot is so implausible as to border on the ridiculous; at least some of the technical detail is clearly wrong; the insertion of the author's (increasingly shrill) right wing views is offensive and unprofessional.

The plot, which is fairly silly and implausible, can for the most part be overlooked although it is worth noting that Robinson apparently is incapable of perceiving the notion of depth; literally everyone in his novels is either a wonderful, infallible, strong, admirable person OR they are the scum of the earth. There is no in-between and as a result his characters seem more like painted wooden puppets than real people.

The story starts with a missile that is manufactured in France and is capable of "burning alive soldiers in their tanks", and has therefore been banned by the UN. Well yes, the truth is that almost *every* anti-tank weapon in fact burns people alive - inside the tank. The U.S. uses a very unique one consisting of a rod made of depleted uranium that not only incinerates the tankers, but also leaves a lot of low-grade radioactive contamination around the dead tank. There are literally a myriad of weapons that burn people to death, including napalm, flamethrowers, and probably a bunch of things we don't even know about. So the premise that the UN has banned this weapon is simply ridiculous.

Even I, a non-writer, can be a little more creative - how about a weapon that releases a burst of nerve gas into the tank, or one that shoots a jet of intense gamma rays that is so strong everyone in the tank dies 12 hours later (I think this last has real dramatic potential)? These are weapons that really WOULD be likely to be banned. But all Robinson can come up with is something that burns people up. Yawn.

The first 30 pages or so of the book contain what can only be described as Robinson's offensive right-wing propaganda which, in my opinion, has no place in a work of fiction. Robinson is absolutely entitled to his opinions and is definitely entitled to state them, but I think he would do well to leave them out of his novels. Perhaps he should simply write a non-fiction book stating his views, and be done with it. The propaganda occurs again later in the book, but it is milder and consists mainly of a comparison of FOX News to CNN.

Finally, having said all this, I will admit that the journey of the assassin to France and his subsequent escape is just great reading with all of the elements of suspense and peril that make for what turns out to be a first rate chase scene. It is very difficult to believe that the same individual who made so many blunders could also write something as good as the bulk of this book.

If you can tolerate the mistakes, inaccuracies, and propaganda, buy the book for the chase scene alone - it's worth it.

I am about 30% into the book right now, and I feel like banging my head against a wall. I've always heard that its impossible to get published. Writers can spend years and years having their manuscripts bounced around, and not get noticed. Yet here is Patrick Robinson - the man who defies them all! He can wake up his monkey one morning, give him a typewriter, and off goes the draft! The editor looks at the return label - Patrick Robinson! Yes!! To the presses! Who needs editing - the monkey has delivered every time!

Oh how I miss Ravi Rashood! Does he make a cameo in this book later? Somehow I wouldn't doubt the ability of Mr. Robinson's monkey to bring him back from the dead.

So this is supposed to be my "review?" Here it is: don't even bother.

I had never read anything by Patrick Robinson before I read Lone Survivor, which he co-authored with Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. After reading, and enjoying, that book I assumed that I would probably enjoy other works of his. I picked this book as a starter specifically because it had a fairly high star rating on Amazon and I have to say I have been terribly disappointed in it.

To first comment on the positives the book offers; Mr. Robinson obviously has some strong patriotic feelings and it comes through in the story, but even that doesn't rescue the book enough to make it worth reading. He does a very good job of clearly illustrating some of the very real issues facing our military, both at home and abroad. Unfortunately that is really about all I can say that I enjoyed from this novel. The writing is not very creative nor is the dialogue, or the entire story for that matter, even realistic. The plot is very thin and all too convenient. The dialogue is atrocious in my opinion, and that is being somewhat kind. Character interaction can make or break a novel and in this case, it has been all but impossible to get past how unrealistic so much of the character interaction is. Honestly if he rewrote the story and lost the entire bit about the wife, kid and shipyard, he might be able to make an entertaining read, but trying to create a reluctant hero and then have all these overly convenient plot vehicles that push him toward an action, just does not work at all. Maybe if it was just focused on action the less than plausible aspects of the story could be overlooked.

I made it through about two thirds of the book before I finally decided I had read as much as I could. I think the basic idea of the book is an interesting one but there were just too many specific things that ruined the story for me.

I've never read so much right wing propaganda in my life. When "Fox News" was being quoted as the top news source in the world I stopped.

This book was being offer for $1.16. It is not worth that.

A few discrepancies: Sig doesn't make revolvers; even if they did the guns would not have "safety catches." A
SEAL would know this.
Sometimes the prose is plodding and slow compared to other authors of this genre.

I have read my share of poorly written books before but this reads as if an eighth-grader wrote it. The subject matter may be great, but the style turned me off immediately. I couldn't finish it because the style was so distracting.