Customer Reviews

The Enemy Within

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have read a lot of books like this one while traveling and almost always I am pissed off when I finish. Dumb. badly written. Cliche filled. Boring.

Not this time. Noel Hynd has written a well-researched thriller (don't let his research turn you off - he integrates it seamlessly) that rocks down to the finish line. Nicely subversive but never preachy, it manages to have both a point of view and intelligence while staying true to the conventions of thrillers.

I would reccommend this book over just about any current best seller of its kind.
Certainly it is light years ahead of every book I picked up in various airports on several recent trips to Oklahoma. (Well I did see Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon" on one rack - buy that one as well even though it is SF).

You cannot go wrong with "The Enemy Within."

An excellent hard-hitting thriller! I had previously read Ghosts by the same author, which was great, but I actually prefer this genre. I loved the new heroine, Laura, who's a US Secret Service agent. Great story, great action scenes, terrific characters, intelligent writing. I read the whole thing in one weekend. This is how spy thrillers SHOULD be. I was sorry when it ended.

This was a very well-written book and very enjoyable. This particular genre can degenerate into sordidness but not this book. It had grit that wasn't gratuitous and great character development. Let's have more Laura Chapman - soon!

In 2009, because she is a female Presidential Protection Detail Secret Service Agent Laura Chapman is tasked to stop a paid assassin from killing the President. Little is known about the assailant except that he is male and a secret service agent.

Thirty something Laura begins her investigation by tracking down the source of the tip, a peson who used the name "Charley Boy". Laura learns that Charley Boy is actually hooker Anna Muang, who overheard a client explaining the hit on POTUS. As Laura continues to dig for the blond evil, she finds herself racing against time and not getting any closer. Who amongst her peers has the audacity to accept $10 million from an enemy foreign government to kill the president of the United States?

THE ENEMY WITHIN is an exhilarating thriller that never slows down from the moment that Laurua learns her gender gives her the assignment until the final showdown inside the White House. Though the action-packed story line contains too many sidebars that enable the audience to also better understand the motives of the heroine, the countdown threat to the assassination keeps the audience enthralled as increasingly it looks like the rogue agent will succeed. Noel Hynd provides an edge of the seat thriller to his many fans.

Harriet Klausner

This is a well-written and very enjoyable intelligence thriller. The basic story, that the president's life is threatened and the killer must be stopped before time runs out, is maybe nothing too original. But the mechanics of the whole situation are fascinating: the personal and professional circumstances of the agent put in charge of the investigation, a developing international crisis, the details of how the investigation is carried out. That the protagonists are so carefully drawn is part of what pulls you in; you know so much about their backgrounds that you need to know what is going to happen to them. Interestingly, the president is not a very sympathetic character or circumspect leader and the reader may wonder if the world would be better off if the assassin succeeds.

this is a good read not as good as some of Silva's or Flynn's but still worth a read.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. The pace is fast, the plot is interesting. The reader gets involved as the protagonist pursues a potential presidential assassin and/or her own ghosts. The author delivers a mostly satisfying resolution although the loss of innocent life is always painful, hence the 4 stars from me.

Having read quite a few books in this genre, I feel that seldom has a book been so engrossing, informative and brutally (and sometimes depressingly) honest in its coverage of the operations of secret service, CIA, FBI and the government spy business.

If that isn't enough it's all wrapped up in a story you can't put down.

The people and the situations are "warts-and-all" real. Those with limited knowledge and experience in these things will, I'm sure, prefer to think that what they read is exaggerated or strongly biased.

I found myself getting a interesting dose of Washington history and government operations that would have made my classes in school fascinating, not to mention much more realistic. Too bad they don't include this stuff in history books.

I generally have very little tolerance for seemingly needless exposition in fiction, but in this case I was not turned off by it.

If you haven't caught my drift by now: I definitely recommend this book. However, you might plan on losing a bit of sleep as you get toward the end.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It has a quirkiness to it and is loaded with insider information. I found it quite absorbing, but if a nasty word or two scares you away, you might like something else better. Hynd writes unorthodix novelswhich have a strange pace sometimes and he frequently goes off on diversions where other authors might not. I don't have a problem with that. Some readers might. Nonetheless, from beginning to end, this is a fast-paced, gripping tale, and a good read indeed.

I rarely give up on a book. I got to Chapter 49, still waiting to become interested in the book, and finally decided I was just too bored with the book to continue.