Review: Fourth Reich Rising (Jack Shepherd Mystery Thrillers) by Tom Schwartz

Rating: 1.3 out of 5

I have struggled with writing this review for a few weeks now. I know what I want to say, but the hard part is figuring out how to say it in the most gentle way possible.

Fourth Reich Rising by Tom Schwartz is a very strange book. It starts out interestingly enough – with a prologue introducing us to Eric Goering, son of Hermann Goering, and offering a very haunting statement on the purpose of the Third Reich and plans put in place by those who’d constructed it to reform the idea if ever the Nazis lost control of the power they’d built. It was this prologue that pulled me in and made me want to review the book.

However, after this prologue, everything goes downhill. What we have here isn’t a novel, but an outline for a whole series of novels.

The story goes something like this: The children of all the former Nazi leaders and their remaining families come together, led by Erich, to facilitate the recreation of the Reich. The history is explained – in mind-numbing detail – of how they go about this, from college all the way up until present day. Then there is a cruise ship, upon which are mystery writer Jack Shepherd and his friends. The ingenious plan by the new Reich is to smuggle a nuclear warhead from the Ukraine, stow it away aboard the cruise vessel, detonate the bomb in New York Harbor, and all the while create enough “chatter” to blame the whole shebang on Iran and the Saudis, then organize all the white supremacists in the US and bring the government down.

Now this is all well and good, and as outrageous as it sounds, I’ve read pretty entertaining books that have presented much less believable scenarios. But the writing is so robotic and tedious, it is, like I said, an outline more than a novel. Even the “fun” scenes involving Shepherd and company come across as completely emotionless. Here’s an example passage from the text, so you can see what I mean:

Tonight they all ordered lobster. These were one-and-a-half pound Maine lobsters with drawn butter and crab stuffing. Jack said, “People, we can’t have lobster without wine,” and he signaled the wine steward. “Three bottles of Schwartenkatz Rhine, please.” As usual, the service was great and the wine went down easily. When it came time for dessert, no one was interested until Judi spotted baked Alaska on one of the tables next to them.

“I can't take any more of this. I’ll have to buy a new wardrobe,” exclaimed Bob, but he ate his entire dessert anyway.

And this is seriously one of the more exciting segments. The entire book reads this way, only often time even more stilted.

Another major gripe – the supposed main character is, of course, Jack Shepherd, mystery writer. Hell, his name’s on the subtitle. Two problems with this. #1, he’s flat as unleavened bread. (But then again, all the characters are, so why should he be any different.) #2, he appears in literally one-third of the book, at most. That’s right, most of the story deals with the reformation of the Reich, the plans of the Reich, how the Reich kill people, how they spread fear in rather simplistic ways, and so on. It becomes more than tedious. At certain points I started wishing I was reading my son’s accounting textbook instead.

With all the being said, the reason I’ve waited so long to write a review is that I appreciate Tom Schwartz’s point of view. Especially toward the end, when all these outlandish and excruciatingly boring plot points come together, the author is able to write more freely, to illustrate his rather beautiful perspective of the world to us in a touching, albeit slightly naïve-sounding way. I appreciated that, and thought that maybe the book could be saved if he could only hold on to that tone and stretch it out a little longer. But no, soon we’re back with the Reich as they try to escape the authorities after Shepherd helps thwart their plans (in possibly the most ridiculously overstated part of the book.)

There is also the strange tendency the author has to start just about half his chapters in present tense, introduce a huge block of dialogue, and then – bam! – the rest of the chapter is in past tense. It’s seriously one of the most odd and baffling conventions I’ve ever seen, in any type of literature.

I could go on, but I’m going to stop here. I don’t want to keep piling it on, which I feel like I’m about to do. All I have to say about Fourth Reich Rising is this: Tom Schwartz is a man with a lot of good to give the world, a lot of ideas about community and nationalism and religion and loving your brother. He’s defended our country in the military and is an upstanding, thoughtful individual.

He just can’t write. At least not yet.

Agree with me? Disagree? Buy the ebook if you wish, and let me know:

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Average Rating - 3.8 Stars

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When former Navy SEAL Cyril Landry and his team of assassins enter a chalet in Aspen, Colorado, he recognizes the pop star Brienne Cross asleep on the couch. As he is about to kill her, she wakes and looks into his eyes.

There is that one moment between them. And then she is dead. Someone with a higher pay scale than Landry has been ordering celebrities killed. Now he wants to know why.

At first glance, the shooting death of a police chief in a rundown Florida motel room appears to be an assignation gone wrong. But as detective Jolie Burke plumbs deeper into the crime’s murky undercurrents, she unveils a conspiracy shocking in its scope.

In her relentless pursuit of justice, Burke follows a byzantine path that will take her from the lottery-driven fantasies of a yard maintenance worker to a Panama City Beach missing-persons case and finally to the island compound of her estranged uncle--the Attorney General of the United States.

The death of a celebrity in Aspen has set the table for an orgy of death, destruction, and infamy. As the stakes rise, Jolie finds herself teamed with a killer. Only Jolie and her unlikely partner, Cyril Landry, can dismantle the shadowy entity known as The Shop--before it strikes again.

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Review: The Venom of Vipers by K.C. May

Rating: 4.6 out of 5

Science fiction many times comes down to en exploration of what it means to be human. When done well, it serves as an organic metaphor, breaking down the societal systems we exist within and revealing, through conflict, the best and worst of us. Sometimes it shows how far we’ve fallen, how our creations have ended up stealing a bit of our souls, bringing us to the brink of becoming slaves to that which we’ve created or, worst of all, regressing into a form of pre-humanity that is both untrustworthy and violent. In other instances, these works allow humanity to rise above, to demonstrate the goodness and ingenuity we all know is possible. And then, we have those works of literature that accomplishes both. It takes a talented author to break through this final barrier, to approach their concepts with an innate balance that shows good and bad, hurtful and helpful, and brings us out on the other side with at least a modicum of hope.

With The Venom of Vipers, K.C. May has proven herself to be in that rare class.

This is the story of humanity on the brink of extinction. A terrible new plague has gripped the globe, called moliomyositis (or molio for short). It is a disease for which there is no cure, and science has, in a way, resigned itself to the possibility that humans will cease to exist over the span of only a few short decades. To combat this, they have created a new human subspecies by splicing human and reptilian DNA. The resulting life-forms, dubbed Saphers, are immune to the virus, but they offer no magical solution to the outbreak. One might ask, if there is no help to be found from them, why did we create them in the first place and why are we keeping them alive? The answer to this I found most interesting, and philosophically poignant: to bring about a species that will carry on after we’re gone, to have the memory of our existence, our legacy, live on through them and, just maybe, they’ll progress enough to bring humanity – regular humanity – back some day.

There is one problem with this theory, however. The Saphers can’t breed on their own. When they try, the females’ bodies reject the fetus before seven weeks is up. For a genus designed to carry on our legacy, this is obviously a huge problem.

Enter Katie Marsh, the daughter of the man behind the creation of the Saphers. As the story opens, she is returning to the center she grew up in. She is now a reproductive scientist, and she’s been added to the team in hopes of finding a solution to the Sapher reproduction “problem”. Her presence inside the facility is a tension builder in and of itself, for Saphers aren’t considered viable people by the government, and she’s had a lifelong relationship with one of them – albeit (mostly) plutonic. The character in question is a hotheaded yet supremely bright and protective Sapher male named Ryder Storm. (Ignore the soap opera name. It might be clunky at first, but after a while it grows on you.) Their relationship, revealed expertly through tiny bits of flashback and simple character interaction, drive the story. This is a pair you can root for, even if Katie doesn’t seem to realize at first how much they mean to each other.

There are so many conflicting plot points in this book. You have the disease wiping out the globe. You have the issue of failed reproduction. Yet even greater than that are the conflicts that occur outside the written word – we’re told about them, but don’t necessarily see examples until the very end. There are two warring factions fighting over the imprisoned Saphers. One is the Freedom for All Peoples, an organization much like PETA, who wants science to stop experimenting on the poor saphers and grant them human rights. The other is the Human Purification Initiative, a bunch of nearsighted bastards who want nothing more than to see these “perversions of science” wiped off the face of the earth. The opposing groups are examples of extremism. The fact is, both sides have a point, but they’re too obsessive to look at what’s going on around them with any sort of clarity. There needs to be a balance in all ideas, and May does a fantastic job of showing how unbalanced – and henceforth unstable – these people are.

Add to this a plot point where some of the guards at the center, who themselves have fallen to be less than human, scheme behind the scenes and pull off some rather perverse (actually, downright evil) acts, and you have a story so rife with drama and conflict that you want to hurry up and get to the next page, just to see if any of it gets resolved.

This book is such a satisfying read. It was emotional at times – especially when it comes to Ryder and his daughter – and the way author May delves deep into the subjects of sensuality, doubt, and survival instinct are fantastic. The characters – especially Katie and the chief guard, Nelson – are wonderfully fleshed out and believable. Ryder, who is a man of thirty who’s never been outside the walls of the foundation he grew up in and desires the freedom that’s been preached to him but never delivered, is successfully not presented as a cartoonish good guy. The way the author inserts snippets of morose metaphysical ponderings in to the text (Does humanity deserve to be saved? Do we have the right to play God? Are we fooling ourselves to think we’ve risen above our most base animal instincts?) is fantastic. I found myself wondering much the same things as I was reading, and I realized that the Saphers, themselves, were almost mirror for the people who cared for them. They feel the pain of losing a child, while their human captors treat them as just another failed experiment. To the guards, they’re annoyances and sexual playthings, while they experience every moment of hurt and torment levied upon them.

Humanity is the monster, and humanity’s creation is more human than we are. It’s a common thread in science fiction, and here it’s done beautifully.

I had only a couple problems with this book, and they’re small, at that. One was the dialogue. At the beginning, it’s stilted, as if the author couldn’t get a grasp on a free-flowing conversation. This ends after a very short time, however, and doesn’t miss a beat again for the rest of the book. The other is the (SPOILER ALERT) solution to the reproduction problem. It comes about by the end, but I didn’t understand the explanation for how it was accomplished. This may simply be my own problem, however, so I won’t let it hurt the rating much at all, and it shouldn’t effect anyone’s enjoyment of the story.

In all, I had a very, very good time with The Venom of Vipers. It’s a poignant and fast-paced melding of science fiction, drama, and mystery. KC May solidifies herself as a writer to look out for in the future. She has something to say, she’s not afraid to say it, and she’s damn good at telling her story.

I highly, highly recommend it.

Plot - 9

Characters - 10

Voice - 9

Execution - 8

Personal Enjoyment – 10

Overall – 46/50 (4.6/5)

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Review: Have Gun, Will Play by Camille LaGuire

Rating: 4.9 out of 5

I pride myself on being someone who will read – and enjoy – anything that comes my way. So when “Have Gun, Will Play” came up on my TBR list, I was struck by the awareness that, outside the Lone Ranger adventures my mother would read to me as a wee lad, I have never read a western. Ever. Not that I’ve been actively avoiding them – “Blood Meridian” has intrigued me, given my adoration of Cormac McCarthy – they just haven’t come my way, and I haven’t searched them out. Consider westerns my “lost genre”.

So into my realm of personal unawareness comes this quaint and fun little book by Camille LaGuire. “Have Gun, Will Play” is the story of Mick and Casey, a pair of young gunslingers traipsing through the old west after having severed ties with a famous lawman. They come upon the small ramshackle mining town of Newton and are immediately thrust into a gunfight with invading outlaws. In the aftermath of this conflict, they meet up with a banker named Montel Addley, whose brother is a paranoid land owner who basically runs the town and its surrounding area. Mick and Casey are hired to usher the more important Addley’s daughter, Laurie, and her aunt Clara, to a safe haven, far away from the range war that is being waged.

Along the way there are numerous betrayals, schemes, a couple kidnappings, and a mysterious bag of toys. The story is told through Mick’s eyes, and we are held in mystery as to what’s going on because Mick, in his own adorable and earnest way, is a bit clueless. The tale twists and turns and captures the reader’s imagination by never lingering too long on any single plot point. This is done pretty expertly, and with Mick being such an endearing character, we don’t mind looking at the world through his point of view. In fact, there are many instances of comedy that come about simply through his tendency towards self abasement.

The background information of both Mick and Casey is a slow development. When we meet them at the beginning, they are simply thrown into our laps. Their history is presented to us in a slow trickle throughout the novel, so much so that even in the last paragraph we are given tidbits that let us greater understand their character. This was skillfully executed, and flaunts the author’s impressive mastery of character development.

It is within these characters that some of the more interesting aspects of the novel are uncovered. Along with the mystery and intrigue of the plot, this same mystery and intrigue surrounds them, as well…especially Casey. She is portrayed as a precocious yet troubled young (VERY young – it’s in question whether she is even 17 years old, which to us modern-day Americans is a bit disturbing) girl who married Mick the day they met. She is grumpy and damaged, a scowling mess of a young woman, who, despite the hardships of her past, is not yet jaded enough to turn her back on the world or the people who inhabit it. In many ways, despite her rough exterior, she is still an innocent. She struggles with the mores of right and wrong. She wants compassion and love yet often rejects it. She’ll act the mature lady one moment and the young girl she is the next – which completely fits with a girl her age. She constantly questions the motives of others, and even her own, and it isn’t until she meets a like soul in the character of Laurie that she starts to lower her walls and come out of her shell.

The whole of the novel kept this reviewer captivated throughout, and it is a really fun read. The structure is sound, the characters are sufficiently likeable (and contemptible), and there is enough action to keep me feeling eager to turn the page. It really is very good, and despite my earlier stated lack of knowledge of the genre, I found myself not thinking at all about the setting. It felt as if these dilapidated towns, dusty settings, and men and women on horseback were the most natural things in the world. That, in itself, is an accomplishment.

Every part of me wanted to give this book a four-star rating. Initially, that’s what I’d placed in the header. However, after going back and reviewing what I’d written, I realized that I can’t justify knocking off a star. There is really nothing wrong with the book. It’s highly entertaining and a nice little mystery. Add to that the fact it kept me intrigued and entertained, and I realized that the urge came about simply because I feel I’ve given too many books that ultimate honor…and it’s time I understood there is no shame in that. I’ve been lucky, and I’ve chosen well when picking books to review.

This book is just another one of those good choices. It gets a hearty recommendation from me.

Buy Have Gun, Will Play for the Amazon Kindle

Plot - 10

Characters - 10

Voice - 9

Execution - 10

Personal Enjoyment - 10

Overall - 49/50 (4.9/5)