Tag: thriller

Book Review – Under the Banner of Valor by Gary Corbin @garycorbin

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About the Book

Book cover of Under the Banner of Valor by Gary Corbin

Val Dawes and the WAVE Squad get called into action after Clayton’s family planning clinics receive ominous threat: Close the clinics, or else.

WAVE Squad member Valorie Dawes takes this threat personally, as her closest friend since childhood, Beth, discloses that she’s pregnant and is considering an abortion.

Can Val support her friend and keep her safe from the armed madman? Or will Beth’s stubborn recklessness thrust her into harm’s way?

Format: eARC (455 pages) Publisher: Double Diamond Publishing
Publication date: 7th May 2024 Genre: Crime, Thriller

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My Review

Under the Banner of Valor is the fifth book in Gary Corbin’s crime series featuring rookie cop, Valorie Dawes. In fact, that’s not quite correct because Val is no longer a rookie, although some of her fellow police officers still treat her as one. I think Under the Banner of Valor could be read as a standalone but then you’d miss out on seeing how Val’s character has developed over the series and learning about the experiences earlier in her life that have given her such a determination to tackle violence against women. You can get an insight into this in my recent Q&A with Gary and, if you follow the links from the titles, you can read my reviews of previous books in the series: A Better Part of Valor and Mother of Valor.

Skilled in martial arts and a keen runner, Val’s someone you don’t want to mess with. She’s smart but she’s not infallible and sometimes her forthrightness puts others’ backs up. She has short shrift for inefficient, lazy or downright incompetent officers and unfortunately she encounters her fair share of them while working on cases which initially seem to have no connection. Plus misogyny is not yet dead in the Clayton police force. Fortunately, she now has the lovely Gil Kryzinski to support her, although it’s taken a bit of time for her to be able to truly trust another person. (I’ll whisper so Val can’t hear: I have a bit of a crush on Gil.)

The author has a knack of incorporating contemporary issues into the plot of his novels. Previous books have tackled political corruption, sex trafficking and right wing extremism. This time it’s campaigners against abortion and the shady world of incels.

We’re introduced to the sniper attacking abortion clinics early on although his actual identity is not revealed, we just know him as Stafford. For much of the book he’s one step ahead of the police partly because of his meticulous preparation for the attacks and partly because they’re missing some crucial links between this and another case. A rather pathetic individual, Stafford is fuelled by a determination to prove himself to the other members of his incel group whose doctrines appeal to his feelings of rejection and sense that he’s been short-changed in life through no fault of his own.

Another thing you can rely on in one of the author’s crime novels is meticulous detail about police procedure and the step-by-step process of investigating a crime: narrowing down suspects, cross-checking alibis, interviewing witnesses, identifying connections between the victims, trawling social media for background information on suspects. With her regular partner absent because of personal issues, Val teams up with another female officer although it turns out they have very different approaches when it comes to interrogating suspects.

The tension builds as the book progresses becoming a breathless race against time and involving some narrow escapes for both Val and those close to her.

If you’re looking for a skilfully crafted, exciting police procedural with a strong female character, then Under the Banner of Valor will tick all your boxes. And if you’re already a fan of the series, the author reveals there’s another book on the way.

My thanks to the author for my digital review copy.

In three words: Compelling, dramatic, assured
Try something similar: Payback (DI Charley Mann #1) by R.C. Bridgestock

About the Author

Author Gary Corbin
Photo credit: Renee Faddis

Gary is a novelist and playwright in Camas, WA, a suburb of Portland, OR. In addition to ten published novels, his creative and journalistic work has been published in BrainstormNW, the Portland Tribune, The Oregonian, and Global Envision among others. His plays have enjoyed critical acclaim and have been produced on many Portland area stages.

Gary is a member of the Willamette Writers Group, Nine Bridges Writers, the Northwest Editors Guild, PDX Playwrights, and the Writers Dojo Writing Workshop. He also participates in workshops and conferences in the Portland, Oregon area and on the North Oregon Coast.

A homebrewer and home coffee roaster, Gary is a member of the Oregon Brew Crew and a BJCP Beer Judge. He loves to ski, cook, and root for his beloved Patriots, LSU Bengal Tigers, and Red Sox. And when that’s not enough, he escapes to the Oregon coast with his sweetheart. (Photo: Author website)

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Book Review – The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse @moonflowerbooks

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About the Book

Book cover of The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse

He may have prevented the world from falling into ruin, but Alexandre Lamarque knows his work is not done yet.

There’s still a controlling intelligence out there, pulling together the strands of a new and even more destructive conspiracy.

Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex and his allies must reunite for the fight of their lives.

From the streets of Paris, the lithium mines of southern Mali, and the mighty Aswan Dam, they come up against forces whose intentions are as devious as they are malign. Time is against them, and there’s more at stake than ever.

Format: eARC (365 pages) Publisher: Moonflower Books
Publication date: 25th April 2024 Genre: Thriller

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My Review

The Coming Storm is the sequel to the bestselling The Coming Darkness. Set in 2037 in a world fundamentally affected by climate change, it sees the return of intelligence agent, Alexandre Lamarque. The opening chapters provide a brief introduction to the main characters, including Mariam Jordane, the woman Alex is in love with, and his friend and colleague, Amaury Barry, plus a brief recap on what happened in the first book. Even I who read the first book was grateful for this. Although The Coming Storm could be read as a standalone, I would recommend reading The Coming Darkness first. Apart from anything else, it’s a terrific book.

Whereas in the first book the target of the fanatical cult known as The Coming Darkness was the technological interconnectedness so vital to the world’s functioning, this time it’s the globe’s energy sources.

As in the first book, there’s some great world building. People have access to high tech personal devices and autonomous transport but there is also constant surveillence and state imposed curfews. Society has become highly stratified. Money can buy you effective air conditioning but it can’t protect you from the global effects of climate change – rising sea levels, cities obliterated by flooding – or incurable viruses.

‘Alex thought about thirst and drought, the wars being waged over natural resources, surreptitiously or overtly, in several dozen countries of the globe. He thought about hunger and transgenic disease, about the growing populations of Blanks, the non-persons living outside full citizenship. He thought about over-population and under-population – too many people in total, too few young people to service the swelling number of the aged.’

The short chapters keep the pace and the tension high, with storylines featuring different characters often running in parallel. Every good conspiracy thriller needs an enigmatic, unnamed character directing events from afar, and The Coming Storm doesn’t disappoint in this respect.

Amongst Alex’s gifts are what he describes as ‘a kind of hyperawareness’ and an ability to see patterns and make connections between seemingly random events. When he, Mariam and Amaury find themselves in different parts of the world – Mariam because of a personal tragedy and Amaury because of an official posting – he has a sense of foreboding. So does Mariam. ‘What if we die, each of us, so far apart?’ It turns out they’re right to be fearful. They all find themselves in danger zones, surrounded by those whose fanaticism means they have no fear of death, in fact often positively welcome it.

It has to be said the author is pretty ruthless about disposing of characters, sometimes in quite bizarre ways, and leaving others, having defied the odds, in precarious situations. Setting things up for the next book? I hope so.

The Coming Storm is a compelling thriller set in a scarily possible future in which the action comes thick and fast.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Moonflower Books.

In three words: Gripping, fast-paced, imaginative
Try something similar: A Winter Grave by Peter May

About the Author

Author Greg Mosse

Greg is a director, writing and writing teacher. He has lived and worked as a translator in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid. He now lives in Sussex with his wife, the novelist Kate Mosse.

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