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Mayberry and Garrett, Book 2

From the publisher:

Mayberry and Garrett, introduced in the national bestseller Collusion, are caught in the middle of a deadly crisis with a pending nuclear bomb attack and little help from the government that sidelined them both.

When an exiled Iranian scientist is assassinated in Washington, DC, the former FBI counterintelligence agent and ex-SEAL are pulled back into the world of clandestine ops—and the fate of the entire East Coast is at stake. Joining ranks with a heralded Mossad agent, Mayberry and Garrett pursue a skilled international killer hired to murder a legendary Israeli spymaster.

Their pursuit draws them into an international conspiracy led by a power-hungry Russian oligarch intent on destroying Washington, DC, and the Navy’s most important Atlantic base. The oligarch plots to unleash a nuclear onslaught first devised by the KGB but shelved by Kremlin leaders during the Cold War. On top of this, Iran’s sudden offer to help the United States raises suspicions about its possible role in a global shakedown.

With too many enemies emerging and too little time, the two Americans are forced to operate outside official channels to stay ahead of naive US politicians and foreign enemies out to entangle their efforts in red tape. Operating in an international tinderbox, Mayberry and Garrett must decipher which players are allies and which are posers—in time to thwart a cataclysmic nuclear attack on US soil and prevent an international incident that could ignite a third world war. And they must keep themselves alive.

The writing team of Gingrich and Earley return with another of their action-filled novels based on current world events. All of these books are well written, enjoy interesting plotting, and have realistic protagonists involved in taking on the enemies of the United States.

In this book, Valerie Mayberry and Brett Garrett are idled by circumstances beyond their control. Valerie, leaving the FBI on bad terms, and Brett, receiving a dishonorable discharge from the Navy where he was a Seal.

A neighbor of Brett’s is killed outside of the building they live in. He was formerly an Iranian scientist and through this event, Valerie and Brett are pulled back into action with a plot discovered that indicates Iran is planning to explode a nuclear device somewhere on the coast of the U.S. The plan is that the explosion will cause a tsunami, which will move inland doing immense damage and causing major loss of life.

While Iran argues that they do not possess any nuclear weapons, the Israeli Mossad knows they do and sends Esther, an agent of theirs, to work with the Americans. The information obtained is that an Iranian father and his daughter are working to get the bomb to the US and explode it. Their rationale is that the mother and son were killed by an Israeli raid and they want to punish that country by an attack on their ally- The Great Satan – the U.S.

No doubt based on the authors’ keen awareness of world events, the movement of the story is as real as can be imagined. An all-night read and then some, with both winners and losers among the characters on both sides of the story. Easily a five-star novel and the authors’ normal incentive to get their readers to eagerly await and pick up their succeeding books when published.

4/2020 Paul Lane

SHAKEDOWN by Newt Gingrich & Pete Earley. Broadside Books (March 24, 2020). ISBN: 978-0062860194. 368p.

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From the publisher:

Stag Maguire, a burnt-out journalist hardly able to prop himself up in the wake of tragedy, agrees to help a friend move. They find an urgent message—HELP ME—written on a piece of silk tacked behind a long-forgotten portrait.

The message from an address in Berlin is urgent; though it had to have been written pre-World War II. Curious, Stag and his friend begin to research the address and whomever might have written the message. They trace the address to an apartment, a sealed time capsule that has not been lived in since 1942. And from one phone call to that apartment, the men unleash a nefarious plot and brutal security forces long thought vanquished.

Events begin to cascade without mercy, and Stag—a broken man from the Midwest—finds himself pitted against a vestige of the Third Reich with powerful forces ensuring the propagation of Heydrich’s infamous SD—Nazi’s intelligence agency—in today’s world. Will ordinary-man Stag Maguire prevail in his lone stand against evil?

Indicated as the author’s first published book, it certainly represents the completion of a monumental, well researched and written novel, and a definite introduction of Kenneth to the top of the literary world.

Stag Maguire, the principal protagonist is first met as he approaches rock bottom in a less than successful career as a journalist. He is filled with inertia and not motivated to publish any articles that can enhance his reputation. A friend asks Stag’s help in moving out from the bar he had run and our reluctant hero agrees to do so.

The task opens up an enormous can of worms and provides the basis for a story that is quite distinct from most novels. A portrait taken down from a wall in the bar reveals a piece of paper from long ago saying “help me”. The two are galvanized into action in attempting to find the origin of the paper and determine that it was written by the long-dead mistress of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi official that was infamous as the architect of the Holocaust which guided the Third Reich into the systematized slaughter of millions of Jews.

Following clues from a variety of sources, the two find that the paper was probably written while the woman that was Heydrich’s mistress was living with him in an apartment in Berlin during WWII. Stag obtains the phone number for the building which is still up and places a call to it, gets no information other than someone offering to deliver a message. The next thing that happens is that someone comes looking for those that made the call, finds Stag’s friend and kills him.

Instead of backing off in the light of his friend’s death, Stag plunges headlong into a situation that includes a worldwide company buying and selling information and the existence of cells of Nazis still active and scattered around the world. From an opening that appears to prelude a story about World War II the novel ramps up to a head rush of events that run through the midpoint of the second world war to today’s world and move from New York to Germany, England, and Bali. A very welcome entree for the author who has already set up the ending in this book to become the basis for more Stag Maguire novels.

4/2020 Paul Lane

A ROOM FULL OF NIGHT by TR Kenneth. Oceanview Publishing; None edition (March 17, 2020). ISBN: 978-1538748145. 352p.

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