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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
An exciting blend of techno-thriller and spy fiction, Flannery's new book exploits a near-future setting. The U.S. and Russia are preparing Operation Pit Bull, a high-tech war game involving the best of the former adversaries' navies. At stake are not only new weapons systems and future arms sales, but also the integration of Russia's armed forces into a new, civilian-controlled order. Old-guard hardliners in Ukraine, led by General Pavl Normav, have their own agenda: provoking the longtime Cold War antagonists into a nuclear-tipped shooting war that will make Ukraine the center of a re-created Soviet Union. National Security Agency staffer Bill Lane suspects Normav's intentions. Can he convince his superiors and the Russians, while dodging assassins, before Pit Bull turns from an exercise into grim reality? Flannery ( Moving Targets ) constructs a plausible political scenario for a byzantine turn-of-the-century world in which friends and enemies are still sorting themselves out. He describes modern naval warfare clearly and accurately for general readers and is such a skillful storyteller that one of the novel's most exciting episodes involves an aerial duel conducted entirely by electronic simulation. His new book is a winner in fact as well as title. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Flannery (Counterstrike, Eagles Fly, The Zebra Network), who also writes as David Hagberg (The Capsule, Desert Fire, Twister), here offers a multifront techno-thriller that turns on the power vacuums created by the Soviet Union's breakup. While the author's shooting script has been overtaken by geopolitical events (notably, Ukraine's agreement to give up its atomic ordnance), his casus belli scenario has enough plausible conflict and momentum to keep most readers in rapt suspense until the final pages. At any rate, on the eve of Operation Pit Bull (large-scale Russo-American war games offshore of Rio de Janeiro, in which both countries have substantive economic stakes), a US spy ship is sunk, evidently by a Kremlin-controlled submarine, in the international waters of the Barents Sea. As it happens, the killer craft is a Ukrainian vessel acting on orders from Pavl Normav, a renegade general in Kiev, who is determined to subvert the joint maneuvers, precipitate a nuclear holocaust, and make his newly independent nation a devastated world's sole superpower. Whilst hot lines hum between Moscow and Washington, the US President assigns thirtysomething Bill Lane to the case. The brainy NSA agent quickly deduces diehard Ukrainians, not Russians, are throwing high-tech monkey wrenches into the potentially volatile works. But whether Lane can stop cunningly sabotaged aircraft and warships from turning the Rio scrimmage into an Armageddon in which Kiev's maverick militarists emerge as triumphant survivors is quite another matter. Although the intrepid, globe-trotting G-man can't prevent the opposing forces from inflicting severe casualties upon one another, he stymies would-be assassins, a venal senator, faint- hearted diplomats, Ukrainian desperados, and a host of other foes, averting a doomsday outcome at the eleventh hour. Fine absorbing fare for devotees of what-if brinksmanship.
Booklist Review
International politics and military might are key elements in Flannery's latest thriller, which also features adult males arguing over who's got the biggest and best weapons. The story re~volves around Operation Pit Bull, a post-cold war mock battle that will allow the U.S. and the USSR to get a firsthand look at their former rival's latest war toys. The scheme goes awry when a group of vengeful politicos hell bent on bringing back the Soviet Union's glory days, substitutes real weapons for the fakes, leaving the American and Russian military mainstream to unravel the plot before Operation Pit Bull becomes World War III. If there's still such a thing in these gender-conscious days as a "man's mystery," then this is it--but, of course, women with a taste for spy-type military thrillers will like it just as much as their male counterparts. Flannery's story is littered with lots of (to us civvie types) strange and confusing military jargon and acronyms, but he does his level best to provide parenthetical explanations. A mildly suspenseful and entertaining thriller with an alarming plot premise. ~--Emily Melton
Library Journal Review
In his latest, veteran thriller author Flannery (who also writes as David Hagberg) posits a military world so laid-back that Russia and the United States are planning mutual war games. Deep under the seas, though, hostile submarines lurk, ready to destabilize the games and thus provoke a new world war. Only one man can put the pieces of the puzzle together fast enough and credibly enough to force the plotters to retreat and wait for a luckier day. Will he make it? Flannery confidently expects experienced readers to keep up with his lightning turns. The location changes every few paragraphs, the technical settings are dense with high-tech jargon, the plot requires a cast list to keep track of the double crosses, and there is no big love or sex interest to distract from the intensity of the hunt. Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler will need to look over their shoulders as Flannery gains in his mastery of the intrigue-at-sea genre.-- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.