Mike Maden

Fire Strike - Mike Madden - (Mystery & Suspense Group Read - February)
Series: Oregon Files - Book #17
Genera: Action/Adventure/Thriller
4.5 ★
Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon must battle an army of genetically engineered mercenaries to stop a hypersonic missile attack in this explosive new instalment.
Mike Maden does a wonderful job in keeping Clive Cussler's "Oregan Files" series alive and still burning up the pages with the spark of top-of-the-line adventures of the Super Tech show more ship...The Oregan and it's sometimes odd-ball crew. Mr. Cussler would be proud.

In this the 17th book in the series, Captain Juan Cabrillo and his crew have been charged to take on a violet and brutal genetically enhanced mercenary force that is trying to start a new war between the Middle East and Israel. Directed by an evil and malevolent Saudi Prince, the bad guys want to use a hypersonic, ship-killing missile to initiate the potential war. Cabrillo and his crew are hired to stop them!

I've read all the books in the series, and I have to say that every single book in the Oregon Files adventures is like the equivalent to being on a run-away roller coaster ride that's being operated by an escaped insane-asylum inmate. This one is not the exception! Just another word of warning: If you start it, you won't be able to put it down.

There was an abundance of subplots at the beginning, and it was a little convoluted, but Mike Maden manages to tie them all together at the end with a very energetic conclusion. show less

An American flyer is captured and sent to a notorious Japanese biological research facility. Decades later, a notorious gun merchant known only as "The Vendor" is busy facilitating arms sales from the Taliban using abandoned American weapons to wreak havoc around the world. The Vendor is not only a weapons dealer, but he is also a brilliant weapons designer. Using AI, he has created some of the deadliest weapons ever to exist.
An old friend from the CIA contacts Juan Cabrillo and asks him to show more find out who The Vendor is and how he is moving these weapons undetected. Cabrillo and the ship he commands, The Oregon, agree to take on the mission. The chase leads him from Afghanistan to Kuala Lumpur, and beyond. Along the way, the matter becomes highly personal. Cabrillo is determined to find and stop The Vendor, who is equally determined to put an end to Cabrillo. The Oregon and all her crew will be tested to their limits. Thousands of lives and a shift in the balance of power in East Asia hang in the balance.

Ghost Soldier has a villain worthy of James Bond and a group of protagonists worthy of Mission Impossible. Mike Maden is firmly in control of these characters. In the best Clive Cussler tradition, you start with an event in the past whose shockwaves are felt in the future. You have a strong group of characters, led by Juan Cabrillo, who are dogged in their pursuit of the villain and will do anything to prevent his devastating plans. The ship Cabrillo commands is a technological marvel. The action soars around the world in the air, on land, and at sea. The fight and combat scenes are edge-of-the-seat thrill rides and there are plenty of them. If you like thrillers with high stakes, colorful characters, and lots of action, this book is just what you want. One of my favorite reads of the year.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. show less

Enemy Contact, Tom Clancy, Mike Madden, authors; Scott Brick, narrator
Like in all the books about Jack Ryan Jr., who is the son of the President of the United States, there are many confusing ideas introduced which will converge in the final chapter to reveal and explain all of the mind-boggling and conflicting themes that arise. When the story begins, there is a violent, failed military event in Argentina involving Hezbollah, a terrorist organization intending to stage an attack on Jews who show more are planning a large gathering there. At this same time, Jack Ryan Jr. visits an old friend he has not seen in many years. His dying friend asks him to fulfill a promise he had made to his father, but was never able to carry out. Jack agrees to do this but is then prevented from fulfilling the task when he is sent to Poland by his employer to check out some unrelated and nefarious goings on over there that possibly concern cyber security. As the story develops, it goes in several different directions involving many countries like China, Argentina, Angola, Poland, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, and the Czech Republic. Soon the bodies are piling up and the mysteries widen. There are so many themes, and they all seem unrelated until the very end, as per usual.
There appears to be an effort not only to compromise the cyber security of the United States but there are also tangents concerning drugs, mining, human trafficking, spying, money-laundering and the cloud. There is so much misdirection in this novel, and there are so many underlying conspiracies which send the reader in different directions, that until the very end, the entire raison d’etre of the novel remains a mystery.
Jack Ryan, however, as usual, gets into many mishaps that defy the imagination for which he suffers unbearable guilt, and yet is extricated from each harrowing experience in ways that sometimes require the suspension of disbelief. This novel sometimes got tiresome as the reader is forced to deal with Jack’s constant soul searching and brow beating as a result of his often thoughtless and witless choices for which he survives but most often, others do not.
Still, there is tension and excitement that the author builds to keep the reader coming back over and over in order to find out just how all of the many threads will knit together in the end. show less

"Drone" is good. Maybe not Vince Flynn good, but still a pulse-pounding political thriller that has lots of twists and turns. Like many of author Mike Maden's counterparts in books, TV, and movies, however, he does rely way too much on amazing technology that' does the deductive work for the characters.

"Drone" is about the political back and forth with a new Republican administration, her allies, her enemies (both at home and abroad...and within her own party too). After the death of her son show more by Mexican drug lords, American President Margaret Myers wants revenge. But she ran on, and won, on a platform of non-interventionism. So she covertly hires Pearce Systems, run by Troy Pearce, a former special ops agent with the CIA.

Maden seems to hit on all political topics, save for maybe abortion. This isn't strictly a conservative or liberal book (as there are nods to both sides) so it's pretty well rounded in that regard. One of the drawbacks, however, is how little we learn of Pearce. The cover of the book says "Introducing Troy Pearce," so the assumption is that we'll learn more about him in future books. This is OK, but the rich, high-tech security character is someone stereotypical so getting a little more background would've been nice. show less