Customer Reviews

The Osiris Alliance

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"The Osiris Alliance" is an action-packed legal thriller with a historical twist: equal parts Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Dan Brown. Author Jack Ford is a real insider into the worlds of politics, law, and crime. His debut novel is packed with the details you never learned in history class.

Federal prosecutor Adam Stark is leading an investigation into an underground smugglers' ring, which is supplying nuclear weapons material to the former Soviet Union. Stark uncovers evidence that points to the shadowy Osiris Corporation, but the case goes cold as witnesses disappear one by one. The biggest clue only deepens the mystery: a stolen diary with shocking revelations, going back as far as the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Can Stark solve the murders, stop the smuggling, and unravel one of the greatest conspiracies in American history?

This is the perfect beach read that you won't put down until the end.

This book draws you in on page one and doesn't let up. It's hard to put down, but luckily, you won't have to, because it moves along with the intensity of a train speeding down the track. You'll try, but you won't be able to figure out the twists and turns.

There is a lot of real crime history throughout, integrated into a satisfying political - and crime - thriller. Prosecutor Adam Stark is unravelling a mystery as old as the Lindbergh kidnapping but new as modern terror plots. Stark's unlikely pairing with TV reporter Megan Delaney, and their chemistry, leads to an adventure with the pace and excitement of a Patterson or Grisham novel with the historical context of Dan Brown.

I recommend this book for readers who love thrillers that make you feel like an insider.

Federal prosecutor Adam Stark, former Army Ranger, and Megan Delaney, lawyer turned TV journalist, are two highly intelligent people with the street smarts to meet just about any problem they confront. But there are some life and death challenges that try the patience and skills of the sharpest of even experienced lawyers. The story centers around the prevention of someone from smuggling nuclear arms components, called "yellowcake," to someone in an independent Russian state. Everyone and anyone's involved it seems, an arrested drug dealer/thief, a lawyer catering to the poor who are facing conviction and jail time, a fellow friend serving the law, an attorney seeking the Governor's position, a Judge headed toward a nomination to the Supreme Court, and maybe a very old man connected to the highest people in the American government. Who can Adam and Megan to trust and who to investigate? Can they even trust each other?

In between the action-packed pages of this conundrum, the reader finds a seemingly unrelated account of the notorious kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby son in 1932. There are plenty of clues even within there that should set off warning bells to the astute reader - if one catches them and doesn't forget them with the switch back to the high stakes action of the main story including several untimely and brutal murders.

Jack Ford's first novel demonstrates he has widely read in the mystery/law thriller genre. While some parts of the book might seem a tad contrived, the basic two stories keep the reader wanting more and rapidly turning the pages of this novel that finely resembles some of the best of its type! A writer to enjoy and watch for further development, to be sure!

Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on June 18, 2009

The book kept you guessing and not wanting to put it down....as much as it is fiction I do believe that it could be true....there is so much that goes on in the government that we don't know about.
I look forward to another book by Jack....I'm a fan of him on True TV and know a fan of his writing.

I was a classmate of Jack Ford's at Fordham Law School. We often sat next to each other. Now I know what all that note taking was about during class. He was writing a book!

If you know anything about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, you will enjoy the way Jack weaves it into his nuclear threat adventure. You will be especially rewarded with a surprise ending that ties his current adventure to the Lindbergh case. It is an original and ingenious idea. You will not figure it out beforehand.

I thought Jack did a masterful job for his first book.

An exciting read for a new author. I hope that Jack Ford has more of these in him.
Really enjoyed it.

This is Jack Ford's first novel and it is good. He weaves a famous case from history (The Lindbergh Kidnapping) into a crime happening today. The mystery also involve a crime of national importance and stolen journal that the owner desperately wants back, since it ties him to both crimes. The thief is being tracked down by thugs, a prosecutor and a reporter following a story are also trying to find this journal since they believe it will answer several key questions about a modern day smuggling operation. The thugs will kill to get the journal back, and someone is leaking information to them.

I liked this book because although you didn't get slammed into the action in the first few pages, the author didn't take forever to get to the heart of the story. The going back and forth in time and from setting to setting was done skillfully, you never had a 'Huh? Who's talking here?' moment.

The ending was a minor disappointment to me, things seem to tie together a little too neatly, but it wasn't a totally unbelieveable ending, it followed the story line. I would recommend this book to people who like thrillers and suspense. There was a lot of violence in the book, but it didn't have graphic descriptions of the murdered bodies.

I bought The Osiris Alliance for my adult son as a gift, so I didn't read it myself. He reports, though, that the book grabbed his attention immediately and was hard to put down - he finished it quickly and thoroughly enjoyed it. He would like to read more from Jack Ford.

Adam Stark, a one-time army ranger turned federal prosecutor, is assigned to lead an investigation into shadowy reports of nuclear material being shipped from the United States to the Eastern Bloc. He winds up teaming with television journalist Megan Delaney, who's caught a whiff of the rumors herself. They uncover leads, but at every turn their progress seems to be thwarted by the bad guys, which quickly leads them to suspect that someone in the small cadre of people in the know is leaking information. The principal bad guy is a wizened old man who isn't identified until very late in the story. A spill-all journal, never meant to be made public, is stolen from his home at the beginning of the book, and he'll go to any lengths to get it back. But Adam and Megan would like to get their hands on the journal as well, since it reportedly holds the answers to a number of questions, including who's behind the nuclear shipments and who really orchestrated the Lindbergh kidnapping back in 1936.

The Osiris Alliance is the first novel by Jack Ford, whom readers may be familiar with from his work as a correspondent on ABC News, 20/20, and other news programs. It's a very competent debut. The plot held my interest, the writing flows well, and Adam and Megan are a likable pair of protagonists--even if Adam clenches his jaw a few too many times by way of showing emotion. Ford does a good job of blurring moral lines in the book, which makes for an interesting denouement. I don't know whether this is intended to be the first in a series of Adam Stark thrillers, but I'd be happy to read a sequel. (It can't be held against the author, but there are a couple of egregious typos in the book--see pages 11 and 45--where whole chunks of text have been omitted. The publisher should see to getting these corrected in future printings.)


-- Debra Hamel