Scan barcode
A review by brettt
The Insider Threat by Brad Taylor
3.0
One of the knocks on the practice of "profiling" terrorists is that eventually it won't work, as the terrorist organizations find recruits who don't fit the profile -- and may even look more like the people down the block than the fanatical faces on the evening news.
Brad Taylor gives a group of such sleeper agents the name "The Lost Boys" because of the history he creates for them and lets the extralegal Task Force gain a hint of them and their plans. Pike Logan and his team have to track their few known leads to even get on the Lost Boys' trail, let alone try to catch up or know where it will end up. And once on that trail, the one thing they do find is that time is not their friend in The Insider Threat.
Former Special Forces soldier Taylor has given his Pike Logan series a healthy dose of realism when it comes to combat and the stress it brings, especially when the combatants face each other from the shadows of espionage operations and not across an open battlefield. He continues to do that in this latest story, showing Pike and his team members often on the frayed edge of stress overload fighting both enemies and the clock. Threat is more scattershot than some earlier books in the series, with what seems like a wrinkle too many and a couple of unneeded cast members to follow and mine for motives and information.
The action scenes still pop, though, and the tension the characters face feels real even if Taylor's prose style is still pretty meat-and-potatoes and he's still on the learning curve of figuring out how to show his readers things instead of telling them. Pike and his team-mate Jennifer are continuing to develop in their own character arcs and two newer cast-mates, the Mossad agents Aaron and Shoshana, are given more screen time to find their own best fit in the narrative. The Pike Logan series remains an important and enjoyable one for the espionage thriller fan.
Original may be found here.
Brad Taylor gives a group of such sleeper agents the name "The Lost Boys" because of the history he creates for them and lets the extralegal Task Force gain a hint of them and their plans. Pike Logan and his team have to track their few known leads to even get on the Lost Boys' trail, let alone try to catch up or know where it will end up. And once on that trail, the one thing they do find is that time is not their friend in The Insider Threat.
Former Special Forces soldier Taylor has given his Pike Logan series a healthy dose of realism when it comes to combat and the stress it brings, especially when the combatants face each other from the shadows of espionage operations and not across an open battlefield. He continues to do that in this latest story, showing Pike and his team members often on the frayed edge of stress overload fighting both enemies and the clock. Threat is more scattershot than some earlier books in the series, with what seems like a wrinkle too many and a couple of unneeded cast members to follow and mine for motives and information.
The action scenes still pop, though, and the tension the characters face feels real even if Taylor's prose style is still pretty meat-and-potatoes and he's still on the learning curve of figuring out how to show his readers things instead of telling them. Pike and his team-mate Jennifer are continuing to develop in their own character arcs and two newer cast-mates, the Mossad agents Aaron and Shoshana, are given more screen time to find their own best fit in the narrative. The Pike Logan series remains an important and enjoyable one for the espionage thriller fan.
Original may be found here.