Customer Reviews

Enemies Foreign and Domestic

5 star:		(112)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have several complaints about most thriller novelists. First, their protagonists are too often 100% virtuous with no humanizing flaws. Second, the protagonists let their enemies live when you KNOW the bad guys are going to come back and murder their kids etc. Third, everything the government does (hi-tech weapons, military & police tactics, criminal investigations, etc.) functions flawlessly. Fourth, too many stories have all the brilliant thinking and brave actions done by government employees (Special Forces, policemen, Intelligence operatives, etc.) Lastly, some novels have a basic premise that is just not believable. (Clancy's RAINBOW SIX is a prime example.)

Novelist Matthew Bracken has avoided these sins almost entirely in his excellent debut novel ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.

It is a challenge for any writer to come up with a plot that is at once plausible enough to have the reader accept it but also unlikely enough that it has not actually happened yet in real life. EFAD's dramatic concept is this: A lone mid-level ATF executive engineers (with one accomplice) a tragic mass shooting incident and successfully arranges for an addled, destitute veteran to take the blame and be killed in the process.

He does this to create an emergency that will encourage the President to embrace a plan he has put together: Forming a secret "hit squad" comprised of overaggressive ATF agents with disciplinary problems. This squad's duty is to be proactive: identify domestic terrorists ("militia members") and kill them during raids. The trial is in the media, when the cameras see the (planted) contraband retrieved from the slain terrorist's dwelling. The antagonist wants to have this hit squad for the obvious reasons: funding, power, and prestige.

Naturally, some of the victims drawn into the web of treachery decide they have no choice but to fight back.

At each point in the storyline, as the good guys and bad guys acted and reacted, I kept asking myself if what was happening was plausible. How would *I* rewrite it to make it more believable? In some cases I thought that I would have had the parties react a bit differently, but I had to admit my alternate scenario was not necessarily more likely.

The fact is that when you get into the realm of serious, institutionalized government abuse of power in an environment with lots of resourceful, angry, well-armed people and the near-instant information flow of the Internet, you're in uncharted waters.

One critic said the female lead was an adolescent fantasy (21 yo, beautiful, motorcycle rider, expert shot, virgin) and I would have given her more edginess, but hey, a lot of readers like their heroes untainted.

Anyway, EFAD is an action-packed read, with most of the skill and creativity being demonstrated by the private sector, which is IMO 100% realistic.

Send a copy to your favorite Senator or Congressman...

In the aftermath of a massacre at a football stadium, Congress passes emergency legilation banning all semi-automatic "assault weapons". American gun owners are instant pariahs, but respond to this violation of the constitution. This book accurately portrays what could happen if the portion of American society that desires to see all firearms registered, confiscated and eventually banned gets their way. This book shows how the "gun grabbers" could manipulate and shape events to spark a backlash against gun owners. In fact, it is not too differnet from the gun grabbers using tragedies such as school shootings to further their own political ends. The book also shows one possible response of the American gun owning public. American gun owners have been like a sleeping giant for far to long. Hopefully books such as this well help to awaken that sleeping giant before it is too late, and we become a nation of "sheeple" (to use one of the author's terms). The book is well written, the characters are believable, and likeable, and the book was very hard to put down.

I began reading "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" over the weekend and I still feel unsettled after finishing it in the wee hours of Saturday. I feel unsettled because this book pulls no punches. It is realistic in terms of its portrayal the cold-blooded murderousness of some of the thugs that the government employs. It's dead bang on in terms of its assessment of those politicians who would cheerfully dance in the blood of innocents in order to advance their agenda. It's a clear-eyed picture of the unholy alliance between those who live to kill and those who seek to rule the living.

What this book is not about are comic-book, unstoppable heroes. The author imbues his characters with the flaws that all of us posess to one degree or another - fear, doubt, uncertainty, the pull of the path of least resistance and the comfortable life versus the hard and often unrewarding road of the correct moral choice. Bracken uses his characters to explore some of the very real moral dilemmas that many of us will face when the lines between good and evil are not as clearly drawn as we'd like. Those moral choices become even more difficult with the realization that some of those who swore an oath to protect us against "all enemies, foreign and domestic" have in fact become those very same enemies.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this book is the authors unflinching take on the price that many of us will pay when civil disobedience turns to armed resistance. Freedom isn't cheap. In fact, if history's any indicator, it's going to get damned expensive.

Enemies Foreign & Domestic is a compelling, fictional novel about liberty and the 2nd amendment. It is packed with real life issues right out of today's headlines and it covers the political views and aspirations on both sides of the issue, while making it very clear that the unalienable right to self defense as enumerated in the 2nd amendment of the U.S. constitution, is endowed upon all citizens. That is something that every American should understand.

It is also just a good, old-fashioned, barnstorming novel that you can't put down. One that has very real characters, each with their own talents and deficiencies who are brought together in the story in extraordinary circumstances.

Matthew Bracken has hit one out of the park with this novel.

Through the first 3/4 of the book it was so real I found myself getting depressed ... I had to stop and tell myself it hasn't happened *yet*.

And I really mean it when I stress the "yet"; I remember reading Tom Clancy's "Debt Of Honor" almost ten years ago, and not really believing someone would fly a plane into a building as a way to commit murder.... and in his latest novel, he has terrorists wiping out the unarmed crowds in shopping malls. It hasn't happened - yet.
Then I look at the Democratic Underground, Handgun Control Inc., Senator Feinstein - yeah, this could really happen. There are people out there serious (or seriously deranged) enough to make this believable.
Good wakeup call for those not already aware of what's slowly but surely happening today in our country.

But treating it as a work of fiction - albeit an extremely important one - I'll give it 4.5 stars (I rounded up). The characters are as real as those in any other novel and the book itself is hard to put down. The author either did some serious research or else he's an expert in quite a few categories, I found very little technically to complain about. The use of thinly disguised real names and products added immensely to the enjoyment. It's more than good enough to read even without the underlying message.

If only we could find a way to get the gun fearing/grabbing portion of the population to read this. If you do enough research, you'll realize that this is why the 2nd Amendment was put in the Constitution. Unfortunately, I fear that only those who already support it will be reading this book - but I beg those who don't to read it, and try looking from a different point of view; the one held by 80 million Americans who realize guns are not evil, but some people are.

I'm anxiously awaiting a sequel.

Enemies Foreign and Domestic is the kind of novel that has the power to wake people up and make them think long and hard about just what America has become. Anti-gun "do-gooders" and the traitorous politicians they support have done a great job of splitting this country into two very different halves.

On one side are those who love the Constitution and who realize that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with skeet shooting, target shooting, or duck hunting. It recognizes our God-given right to keep and bear arms against thieves, murderers and rapists and against men who would oppress us, both foreign and domestic.

On the other side are those who would rather see every privately owned firearm crushed and sold as scrap metal. They are a mix of the apathetic, the "educated and cultural elite", people afraid of violent criminals, and people with money, power, and influence who are threatened by the idea of tens of millions of armed average Americans who will only take so much abuse.

Matthew Bracken's novel reads like it's been ripped out of the headlines of today's newspapers. Much of what he's written about has already happened. The rest of it is only one more hyped-up "gun massacre" away from taking place.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who values freedom and to those who are interested in learning about the real America.

This is a story written about very believable characters set in common surroundings. There are no Swartzeneggers or Stallones. Just ordinary people reacting to a government gone out of control taking liberties away on a daily basis. There are no rifles taking out tanks at seven miles or machine guns that shoot millions of rounds per minute out of bottomless magazines.

If you pay attention to your surroundings you can envision this story coming to life in your own hometown.

This is a must read for people who are ambivalent about their 2nd Amendment rights and don't really "care" about guns. I could not put the book down and would favorably compare it to a Clancy.

The book was so good, I read most of it Saturday and finished on Sunday morning. The plot is excellent and the story fast moving. The story became so real at points that I put the book down and went looking for up to date news on the internet before realizing those things weren't really happening (yet).

If you are a 2nd Amendment supporter, or just like good government conspiracy thrillers this book is for you. It reads like a John Grisham novel with a more important message. It's along the lines of Unintended Consequences, but without all the technical material.

The book is suitable for teenagers on up. The language is mild, a PG rating. The few sex scenes are implied, not graphic.

When you plan on reading this book, I suggest you set the time aside. Putting the book down will be difficult, and the plot will play through your mind until you can get back to it.

Enemies Foreign & Domestic is a compelling, fictional novel about liberty and the 2nd amendment. It is packed with real life issues right out of today's headlines and it covers the political views and aspirations on both sides of the issue, while making it very clear that the unalienable right to self defense as enumerated in the 2nd amendment of the U.S. constitution, is endowed upon all citizens. That is something that every American should understand.

It is also just a good, old-fashioned, barnstorming novel that you can't put down. One that has very real characters with their own deficiencies who are brought together in the story in extraordinary circumstances.

In his first at bat, Matthew Bracken has hit one out of the park.

This book stirs up my incipient paranoia (actually not paranoia because it's a justifiable fear)about the continuing erosion of the Bill of Rights, and especially the fragility of the 2nd Amendment under the unceasing attacks by the Left. If you've ever wondered what could happen if unprincipled individuals were given a green light to usurp the Constitution and send the country careening into anarchy, this will be a real eye-opener. The most disappointing part of the book was that it ended. It's the kind of tale that you hope will go on and on, and when you finish it you may fall into a sort of post lectito depression. But fear not - Mr. Bracken is hard at work on a sequel, Domestic Enemies, which will carry to story forward with more heart-pounding action, I'm sure.