BOOK REVIEW: "The Termination Protocol" by Brian Drake

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If you're seeking an action novel that is heavy on the bullets and light on the bloat, look no further than The Termination Protocol by Brian Drake. The prose is as tight as anything Lee Child or Vince Flynn ever put to page, but with quadruple the action. If you're a fan of the guns 'n' guts genre and that last sentence didn't get you salivating, I don't know what will. (Maybe giving away a free Glock with every book purchase?)

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian Drake is part of a network of authors I occasionally converse with via social media. But he did not give me a free copy of this book--I bought it with my own hard-earned royalties--and all the thoughts contained in this review are mine, not his. If they were his thoughts, there would probably be a lot of stuff about 'Murica, Ebola conspiracy, and pumpkin spice tampons, judging from his Facebook posts.

But social media proclivities aside, Drake is an accomplished author and he recently unleashed his newest creation, CIA operative Scott Steletto, upon the literary world. Genre fans who ignore this novel deserve to be terminated like an ISIS terrorist wrapped in disease-drenched rags. The story rockets forward so relentlessly that it redefines the phrase "rapid-paced." Lean and mean is the name of the game here.

The most vital component of any action-adventure book is, well,
action (duh) and The Termination Protocol offers a plethora of gunfights. Even better, many of those firefights feature one of my favorite weapons, the Heckler & Koch UMP .45. (Seriously, I need to get my trigger finger on one of those suckers.) So if you like bullets a-blastin' and blood a-sprayin', then you'll be plenty happy here. While not exactly a gore-fest, Drake definitely goes more graphic with the carnage than we typically see from him. As a self-professed action-splatter aficionado, I wholeheartedly approved. Hell, I think I even gave him a standing ovation at one point ... which was awkward, since I was in church at the time.

Anyway ... lest you erroneously believe that the book sacrifices plot in favor of all-out action, rest assured that a nifty plot does indeed exist, full of betrayal and crises and even a smidgen of romance. And sex. Not exactly the 50 Shades variety, but suffice it to say that the HK UMP .45 isn't the only gun Steletto gets to shoot.

So yeah, the bullets may blaze and the brains may splatter, but the savage action is in service to the story and characters. Presumably Scott Steletto will grow more fleshed out as the series progresses, but as it stands, he is given more than enough personality to make him a welcome addition to the pantheon of pistol-packing action heroes. Only something as terminal as decapitation would prevent me from reading the next book in the series, and such an event seems unlikely unless I run into one of the aforementioned ISIS scumbags.

Bottom line, when all is said and done and boiled down to bare brass cartridges, if you like action-thrillers, you'll like The Termination Protocol. Even if it doesn't come with a free Glock.

BOOK REVIEW: "Mexican Heat" by Stan R. Mitchell



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I should probably preface this review by confessing that I know Stan. Well, know him about as well as you can know someone you've never actually met but chat with for hours every month on Facebook. And you know what? He kicks ass. No, seriously, the guy's a martial artist, so he actually does kick ass.

 

He's also a kickass writer in the "guns 'n' guts" genre, having created with his debut novel, Sold Out, a kickass (are you sensing a pattern here?) hero in the form of warrior-sniper Nick Woods. Well, Stan recently released Mexican Heat, the second novel in the series of Nick Woods thrillers, and if you're wondering if it also kicks ass, well, read on.

 

This second Nick Woods adventure finds him reluctantly hired by the CIA to take a team of hot-shot trigger-pullers into Mexico to tackle the powerful Godesto cartel after it slaughters a SEAL team and targets the president. Now, boiling the plot down to its bare skeleton makes it sound a bit thin, but trust me, it's not. The story is actually quite ambitious for an action novel, full of the kind of political intrigue that made Vince Flynn a household name.

 

To say things get hot would be an understatement on par with saying a .45 packs more punch than a BB gun. And the heat isn't limited to explosions and firefights--though there are plenty of those--it also comes from Isabella, a curvaceous team member with sensual Latina sizzle to spare, the kind of woman that can turn even Nick Woods' head. Mitchell wisely avoids turning this into a romance novel, but let's just say not all the action comes from the end of a gun.

Listen, if the thought of a novel that reads like Tom Clancy on steroids gets you excited, prepare to pop wood like you chugged a bottle of Viagra. Mexican Heat spins an intricate, political story much like Clancy, but cranks up the gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and overall action quotient while chopping out all the boring stuff. (Don't look at me like that; you know damn well Clancy has plenty of boring parts.) Much like Nick Woods himself, this book is lean and mean and packed with hard muscle. Mitchell knows how to write a book that moves at high velocity with prose that is stripped to the bone.

Bottom line, if you enjoy stories where the good guys kick the crap out of the bad guys, then this novel needs to be in your hands most ricky-tick.