{"id":8452,"date":"2020-04-01T07:14:06","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8452"},"modified":"2020-04-01T07:14:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:14:06","slug":"armchair-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8452","title":{"rendered":"Armchair Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In case you wonder what the *** mean in my reviews, there\u2019s\na key on the book reviews page. They\u2019re a good guide to how much I liked a book\u2014since\nmy reviews leave open the possibility a read I found meh might suit someone\nelse perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

****The Dead Don\u2019t Sleep<\/strong>
\nBy Steven Max Russo\u2014It has taken five decades for the long arm of retribution to\nreach halfway around the world and tap the shoulder of Frank Thompson. Today, Frank\nis a recent widower living in rural Maine, and he doesn\u2019t talk about Vietnam,\nbut the buddies of the American he shot there so many years ago have found him.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three men are full of plans for tracking him down, and for\nthe massive, highly illegal firepower needed for this mission, one fueled with\nalcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. They\u2019re all about Frank\u2019s age, nearly 70, which\nis a stretch. I can imagine guys in their twenties and even thirties talking\nthemselves into such a crazy plan. Yet the author makes clear the years haven\u2019t\nadded to these guys\u2019 store of common sense or muted their violent tendencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From his home in New Jersey, Frank\u2019s nephew Bill knows about\nthe danger and wants to help. He has zero experience with the kinds of\nsituations Frank has seen, and his indecision alone is enough to tell you he\u2019d be\na liability in any kind of showdown. \u201cStay home!\u201d I kept telling Bill\ntelepathically. He doesn\u2019t listen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Steven Max Russo\u2019s second thriller. He\u2019s an\nadvertising executive and lives in New Jersey, which accounts for his solid\ndescriptions of life here in the Garden State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****The Wild One<\/strong>
\nBy Nick Petrie \u2013 This is Nick Petrie\u2019s fifth thriller featuring PTSD-afflicted\nIraq and Afghanistan war veteran Peter Ash, and it retains all the energy of his\nearlier works. Ash\u2019s old war-buddy seeks his help in locating an eight-year-old\nboy, who disappeared a year earlier from his Washington, DC, home, after\nwitnessing his mother\u2019s murder. The kidnapper is most likely the boy\u2019s own father,\nthe presumed killer, and he\u2019s most hiding out with his tight-knit family in remote\nnorthern Iceland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mother, Sarah, ran a\ncomputer security business. On a client\u2019s servers, she discovered career-ending\nevidence of criminality among Washington\u2019s political class. She sets up a mirror\nserver with an unbreakably long encryption key preserved in only one form, in\nthe photographic memory of her son \u00d3skar. The bad guys want it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ash has plenty of antagonists, aside from his internal demons. There\u2019s the mysterious crew following him: do they want him to find Eric and \u00d3skar? Or not? There is Erik\u2019s paranoid extended family, not averse to ensuring their privacy with violence. There is the head of the Icelandic Hj\u00e1lmar, relentless in trying to bring Peter in. But perhaps his greatest adversary is Iceland\u2019s brutal, dead-of-winter weather. A more apt metaphor would be difficult to find. So, throw on a couple of sweaters, make yourself a cup of something hot, and settle in for a wild ride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s anything to object to in Petrie\u2019s work, it\u2019s a tendency to reach a little too far in the closing pages. In this book, a final act of violence puzzled me, because it came out of the blue. But that wasn\u2019t enough to negate everything solid that had gone before. Do note that Ash is now a wanted man and has no passport or I.D. It will be interesting to see how he gets back to Oregon. I\u2019m hoping Petrie plans to tell me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Sasint Tipchai for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you wonder what the *** mean in my reviews, there\u2019s a key on the book reviews page. They\u2019re a good guide to how much I liked a book\u2014since my reviews leave open the possibility a read I found … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Armchair Adventures - These thrilling adventures will take you right out of your feverish cabin!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,1335,52,40,126,32],"tags":[790,1724],"class_list":["post-8452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-nick-petrie","tag-steven-max-russo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Vietnam-2.jpg?fit=330%2C393&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ck","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8455,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions\/8455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}