Rogue Warrior: Detachment Bravo [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Richard Marcinko (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001 | Series: Rogue Warrior

In "Echo Platoon," the Rogue Warrior blazed a path of vengeance across the Middle East. In "Option Delta," he took out a German super-terrorist armed with stolen nukes. Now, the "New York Times" bestselling SEAL commando of eight explosive thrillers must pay for his success. The price: exile inside the lethal world of Irish Republican Army terrorists -- the battle no one else will touch. Relegated to head up a special ops organization made up of Brits, SEALS, spies, and NSA operatives, the Rogue Warrior is on the hunt for a high-tech hired army launched by two self-financed, new-generation terrorists. This murderous wing of the IRA is waging its own vicious little war -- smashing the Good Friday Peace Accord and killing a half dozen American and British CEOs. Refusing to be contained to Irish turf, their next planned assault promises to stun the world. Marcinko and his merry band are determined to stop them, but there are a few unknowns: they don't know the target, they don't know the date, and they don't know where the terror is going down. From top-secret diplomatic tunnels beneath London to the high seas off the Azores, "Detachment Bravo" is a fast-paced, furious, in-your-face adventure...just what the Rogue Warrior was made for.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Unabashedly testosterone-addled, the ninth installment in the Rogue Warrior series cuts another swath through posturing bureaucrats and waffling military brass. Capt. Dick Marcinko, a Navy SEAL black ops specialist, teams with British SAS special ops Brig. Mick Owen and a select few men to stop a London bombing by an IRA splinter group. Too many screwups endanger the mission, cause a big PR snafu and land Mick and Dick in hot water with their bosses. Then they're assigned to track another splinter group, the Green Hand Defenders, who are brewing a plot to kill huge numbers of U.S. and British citizens in one hit. Snubbing the higherups, Mick and Dick follow a lead to Argentina, where Dick abuses an old nemesis who's now a CIA station chief when the man rejects Dick's warning of an attack on the American Embassy. After word gets out, the boys find themselves persona non grata in their own agencies, but remain committed to finishing their jobs any way they can. The ensuing roughshod romp over land and sea is a military vigilante's fantasy. The authors' habit of addressing the reader adds to the tongue-in-cheek downplay of the superhero action, but make no mistake these irreverent characters skewer the establishment and trumpet opinions on what's wrong with the world today (e.g., political correctness, environmentalism) while upholding their pledge to defend it from terrorists. (May)Forecast: Copious vulgarity and violence, with an emphasis on male bonding and military lore, define the Rogue Warrior franchise when WWF fans read, chances are Marcinko is one of their picks. Expect brawny sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Detachment Bravo is an Anglo-American counterterrorist team led by Marcinko and British general Mick Owen. Its target is high-caliber Irish terrorists led by dot-com billionaire brothers Gwilliam and Gerry Kelley. However, the tangoes (i.e., terrorists) target Bravo first, killing one of Marcinko's men as they try to take down an IRA outpost. After that, Bravo's mission is as much about vengeance as anything else, and as faithful Rogue Warrior readers all know and love, RW (i.e., Marcinko) is a bad man with whom to have a score to settle. Bravo's first step toward reckoning involves a hostage rescue in London; the next, thwarting an attempt on the American embassy in Argentina; and the next, another European situation. Finally Bravo goes to sea for a white-knuckle pursuit and termination of the Kelleys and their cohorts aboard a missile-armed yacht. What readers have seen in hero-author Marcinko's previous outings is on view in this one, too, along with more cogent commentary on the special-ops than in some of its predecessors. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743504526
• ISBN-13: 978-0743504522
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,367,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rogue, Twisting in the Wind..., May 21, 2001

By 

Brad Smith (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Detachment Bravo (Rogue Warrior) (Hardcover)

Not quite as good as Echo Platoon, or previous works, but still a decent read.

The basic gist is that Dick has been exiled to running a joint counter-terrorist operation in England/N. Ireland with Mick Owen and soldiers from various services. They're hunting the True IRA, a group that in Real Life is laughably incompetent but suddenly has an infusion of funds that they're using to do some really unpleasant stuff. Things go wrong, Dick gets his face in the news, again, and he gets an assignment to hunt down a splinter group, the Green Hand Defenders, and to eventually get their backers, a pair of Irish dot-com billionaires.

Several themes stand out. First, the Rogue Warrior (R) is getting really old. He misses stuff he would've picked up on three books ago, stuff that's blindingly obvious to the reader. His network of support is retiring, and his patron, General Crocker, is taking his terminal leave.

There's also more of a focus on Dick this time. In past issues, his supporting cast was a lot more involved. This time, though, it seems like they're just...there. Even Mick Owens barely does anything all novel long. Oh, they do stuff, it's just more glossed over than anything else.

Finally, the opposition...just doesn't have any caliber to it. The dot-com billionaires are really rather pathetic, and none of the hired hands stand out as worthy opponents. The method the tangos were going to hit Target # 1 with was impressive, to say the least, but that was it. I'd really've liked somebody for Dick to fight who I could be truly worried would win.

This is, of course, a good novel. It's entertaining, informative, and downright humorous at times. It's not quite as good as those that have come before, though.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Predictable and poorly developed...the worst of the series, April 4, 2002

By 

Jon Eric Davidson (Redmond, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Detachment Bravo (Mass Market Paperback)

Let's get one thing straight right out of the chute: the "Rogue Warrior" series of novels aren't going to be winning Pulitzers anytime soon. These are pure, testosterone-driven, profanity-laced, escapes from reality; they have been a collection of books that have been fun to read. However, after reading "Rogue Warrior: Detachment Bravo", I have come to the conclusion that it may be time for Richard Marcinko to retire to his Rogue Manor.

For starters, the most obvious criticism of "Detachment Bravo" is its utter predictability. It is a trend that started several novels ago and gets worse with each successive book. Heck, even someone who has only read one or two of his books could guess the action and plot. You can ALWAYS guarantee one or more sequences where Mr. Marcinko loses his weapon or runs out of ammo and has to grapple in hand-to-hand combat with a bad guy, will go personally greet and smack around the chief villain in the story, will go meet and smack around his superiors, and - in the climatic battle at the end of the story - will lose his weapon or ammo and kill the villain in a prolonged hand-to-hand combat sequence. Honest to goodness: for a guy who preaches perfection and team support, he is always goofing up, and his teammates - who are there to back him - are never around to shoot the bad guy he's wrestling. Again, I know it's fiction, but it really starts to grate on a reader after a while.

The second criticism is that the plot in "Detachment Bravo" was poor. This series has never been too much about a plot, but he has done better. This one was not well thought-out, seemed disjointed in a lot of places, and was simply poorly developed. Yes, the reader knows who the bad guy(s) are, but it is never fully certain what their ultimate aim is or - more importantly - what they're doing other than trotting the globe on a yacht. What the reader is left with are the usual Rogue Warrior cliches found in every one of his books and the aforementioned predictability.

Readers who want to get Richard Marcinko at his very best should read his first two books: the nonfiction "Rogue Warrior" and the first fiction book "Rogue Warrior II: Red Cell". They launched him to stardom, but he never really held this high level, slowly tapering off until a precipitous decline in quality of his last couple of novels. I rate the book with two stars; it could have easily been a one-star review, but he still wins points for sheer escapism in his writing.

As I indicated at the outset, it may be time for Mr. Marcinko to put the "Rogue Warrior" series out to stud. If he decides to continue the series, this reader hopes that he will take a year or two off and develop a better story. Otherwise, I'm not wasting my money.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Feast for Marcinko Fans, September 22, 2001

By 

Mark Edward Bachmann (Westport, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Detachment Bravo (Rogue Warrior) (Hardcover)

My wife takes it as evidence of something profoundly wrong with me that I've read every one of Dick Marcinko's books. But then ... she can hardly be expected to understand anything about the joys of Rogue Fiction. Yes, sure, this is formula writing at it's most extreme: Marcinko has gotten rich writing the same book nine times. And, worse than that, if you think it's bad, I suspect he delegates all the work to co-author John Weisman, confining his own contribution to probably not much more than his name, Rogue persona, and the ugly mugshot they print on the flyleaves of these books. But Marcinko fans don't care about any of that, and in fact we admire him all the more for his self-interested Rogue cunning. Moreover, we like to think that he has more important things to do with his time - especially now - than sitting around like some kind of wonk in front of a keyboard typing out entertainment for us chair-bound tadpoles. Detachment Bravo has all the classic Marcinko plot motifs. It opens with a fast action scene in which Dick and his squad of oddly-named heroes take down a band of Tangos (terrorists for those unschooled in Rogue lingo), foiling their bloodthirsty plans. But, as always, there's no gratitude for Dickie. By flaunting the rules and showing up the incompetence of pencil-pushing military bureaucrats, he's brings down their vengeance instead. He and his loyal boys are forced out on the lam to unravel the vast Tango conspiracy, of which the opening attack was only a small manifestation. Relying on the limited protection of one True Warrior who has somehow survived in the military high command, and supported by his dwindling and embattled network of old-salt chiefs and other kindred sprits still scattered around in various places, Dick and his team go to work. They head off to various parts of the world and for several chapters engage in global high-tech sleuth work. They soon uncover evidence of a degenerate billionaire somewhere who is funding and masterminding the terrorists. Dick quickly tracks the guy down and, while not having enough evidence yet to take him out, nevertheless initiates an up-front-and-personal confrontation with him (i.e., slaps him around) just to let him know who's on the case. ... There is, of course, at least one detailed and slow-motion account of hand-to-hand combat between Dick himself and one of the unfortunate tangos, who meets his just end inevitably with something gruesome like a crushed skull. To anyone who has read even one of the books in this series, all this should all sound very familiar. Not that Detachment Bravo, like the others, doesnt have it's own unique wrinkles. The degenerate billionaire, for example, here is actually two degenerate billionaires, a couple of twenty-something Irish brothers who have made it as (what else!) dot.com entrepreneurs. Who says Dickie can't stay current with the times? The novel also sports all the trademark stylistic devices: half a dozen or so 'f' and 's' words per page, parenthetical lectures on the perils of underestimating Mr. Murphy, goofy asides to the pedantic APE (All-Powerful Editor), sappy prayers of gratitude to the God of War for the privilege of leading brave warriors into battle, panegyrics to the healing powers of Bombay gin, and so forth. I sometimes worry about what would happen if Marcinko ever goes creative or sensitive on us, the way Clancy has tried to do in his more recent novels. However, I can happily report that Detachment Bravo gives strong evidence that we have nothing to fear on that score. I'm afraid I can't recommend this book to most wives or other sensitive souls, but Marcinko enthusiasts will love it. If he writes the book another nine times, I intend to buy every one.