Black Ops

November 10, 2008
In bestseller Griffin’s gung-ho fifth presidential agent novel (after The Shooters
), the U.S. president assigns Lt. Col. Charley Castillo, a member of the Office of Organizational Analysis, a special task—to track down the terrorists who murdered an American diplomat in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When Castillo’s inquiries lead him to a pair of defecting Russian spies, they offer information about an Iranian-run bioweapons factory hidden in the Congo. Readers who want exciting accounts of desperate battles have come to the wrong place. Griffin excels in describing the planning and the bureaucratic tussles that have to occur before the first bomb goes off. He understands the psychology and motivations of military and clandestine service officers. While he paints an enticing, if overly idealized, portrait of loyal, capable people drawn to others of their kind, realism isn’t his strong suit. Still, Griffin’s many fans will be rewarded.

December 15, 2008
Griffin's latest in the best-selling but generally disappointing series involving terrorism in the modern world picks up immediately after its predecessor, "The Shooters", and features the same confusing ensemble of characters led by superagent Charley Castillo. People in the intelligence world are being murdered, and Charley might be next. But neither Charley nor his companions are fazed; they are sometimes more concerned with finding homes for a bunch of puppies than solving the killings, handling Russian defectors, and finding a biological warfare center in Africa. Far too much time is spent on irrelevant digressions and explaining past relationships instead of developing the story. Ultimately, of course, Charley and the good guys prevail. Griffin's fans will be happy that the club has resurfaced, but new readers will likely be turned off by the complicated tale and the too-flippant dialog. Based on this novel's conclusion, the series is either changing drastically or endingeither is overdue. For larger collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/1/08.]Robert Conroy, Warren, MI

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2008
Griffin, the veteran author of military-themed thrillers, once again proves that the same old thing can sometimes be just what readers want. The latest Presidential Agent novel is written in exactly the same tough-fisted style, with exactly the same sort of shorthand characterizations and hard-edged dialogue, as the novels that came before it. The story, too, is typically involved: a series of assassinations leads Presidential Agent Charlie Castillo to believe that his own name appears on the assassins list of victims. But can Charlie and his band of operatives stop the killings in time? Oh, and what about those two high-level Russian intelligence officers who claim they want to defect to the States but only to Charlie personally? Do they really know whos building weapons of mass destruction, or are they trying to sell Charlie a bill of goods? Griffins formula is straightforward: set up a bunch of obstacles, and let us watch Charlie knock em down one at a time. His novels promise action, suspense, and rousing entertainment, and they never fail to deliver.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)