She Treads Softly: Lethal Action

Friday, November 29, 2024

Lethal Action

Lethal Action by Logan Ryles
12/8/24; 376 pages
Inkubator Books
Mason Sharpe #9

Lethal Action by Logan Ryles is a very highly recommended action thriller featuring ex-military Army Ranger Mason Sharpe. This is the ninth book in the series but it can be enjoyed as a standalone novel. The opening flashback has Sharpe rescuing WHO workers from an Ebola infected war zone, which provides a clue to the plot.

It's winter and Mason Sharpe has been working at a lumber mill in Prairie Junction, Iowa, for the last three months. He is shocked to wake up one morning, hearing helicopters and obvious military equipment. Prairie Junction is under orders by the governor to be under a strict lock down, quarantined. Armed National guard soldiers in hazmat suits are enforcing martial law, setting up roadblocks, and not answering questions. Sharpe manages to get outside the quarantine zone to check on a friend's mother. He discovers her body and recognizes the cause of death - Ebola. This is the beginning of an action-packed investigation into what is really going on and Sharpe is holding nothing back to get answers.

Lethal Action is a lightning-fast-paced thriller that has Sharpe using all of his military experience, intelligence, and discernment to uncover what is really happening. He takes incredible risks to discover the truth and the scope of the deception is shocking. He manages to contact Dr. Evelyn Landry with the CDC, who understands Sharpe's concerns and immediately comes to Iowa into the fray. The action intensifies to explosive levels.

Make no mistake, you will have to set a major dose of disbelief aside in several areas and overlook a few inconsistencies (for example Landry's hair color changing). However, the plot and the action make it easy to do. In fact even while noting glitches, I was all in and committed to the end. That in itself is a huge recommendation. The plot is shocking because recent events make it more possible than anyone would want to believe.

Mason Sharpe is an extraordinary character for a military based action thriller. He is resourceful, smart, and capable. He will do whatever it takes to uncover and expose the corruption and the threat. Thanks to Inkubator Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.