Edge of Battle

March 27, 2006
Action junkies for whom characterization is not a priority will zip through this near-future techno-thriller from bestseller Brown, a sequel to Act of War
(2005). The elite American unit known as Task Force TALON continues to battle a Russian terrorist group known as the Consortium, whose leader, Yegor Zakharov, seeks to exploit the porous Mexican border to infiltrate the U.S. and has allied himself with a mysterious Mexican smuggler of drugs and people. When U.S. Border Patrol agents are massacred, the National Security Agency adviser proposes such radical steps as using robots and nanotechnology to protect the border with Mexico. Some readers may find the lack of any radical Islamic threat in 2007 a bit hard to swallow (even with this imagined universe's capture of Osama bin Laden), while the escalation of tensions with Mexico, exacerbated by that country's naïve president who has jumped to politics from a career in television, also takes quite a bit of suspension of disbelief.

July 10, 2006
Veteran audio, TV and film actor McShane brings Brown's latest thriller to life with understated skill—a much-needed element in this churning engine of hard-to-swallow political and military theorizing. Listening to McShane is like sitting in a bar and sharing war stories with a friend; his raspy, deceptively ordinary voice could well belong to one of the U.S. Border Patrol agents who are killed by a Russian terrorist group in the hot zone between America and Mexico, or a member of Task Force TALON—the U.S. paramilitary unit trying to wipe out the terrorists whose leader has linked up with a seriously nasty "coyote"—a vicious smuggler of drugs as well as people. What Brown does best are the sort of nonstop action scenes his fans have come to expect—and McShane knows just how to bring those moments to vivid audio life without going over the top. Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 27).

The combination of illegal immigration and advanced military weapons research promises an edge-of-the-seat thriller. The story begins as illegal immigrants are killed near Operation Rampart, a test military base with a crew of Talon robots in Southern California. Michael McShane effectively manipulates pitch and tone, creates a variety of male and female characters, and delivers American and Mexican accents. But the story itself becomes lost in the author's exposition on the job losses, lack of economic opportunity, and blight on the U.S. health system caused by illegal immigration. McShane doesn't deliver the promised thriller, but neither does the author. G.D.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine