Price of Duty

February 20, 2017
The masterly 19th entry in bestseller Brown’s McLanahan series (after 2012’s Tiger Claw) combines geopolitical machinations and advanced computer terrorism. In the near future, under the iron rule of President Gennadiy Gryzlov, Russia targets Poland, temporarily forgoing bullets for bytes with a cyberwarfare campaign waged from a secret facility buried deep in the Ural Mountains. With Poland’s financial and power systems devastated by malware attacks, civilian aircraft wirelessly reprogrammed into deadly missiles, and an untraceable team of assassins lying in ambush, pilot Brad McLanahan and his Scion team, based in Eastern Europe, must utilize every gadget at their disposal to find and destroy the underground lair. Since the NATO alliance has fallen apart, thanks to the U.S. president’s ineptitude, the Poles have only the Baltic states and other small countries in the region to help them. The smoke barely clears from the explosive climactic battle before Brown, a founding father of the military techno-thriller genre, ups the stakes for the inevitable sequel. Agent: Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group.

April 1, 2017
Brown (Iron Wolf, 2015, etc.) once again deploys futuristic Cybernetic Infantry Devices to keep Mother Russia from re-establishing hegemony over Poland and the Baltic nations.Those countries are still recovering from a Russian false flag attack. Now Russian President Gennadiy Gryzlov has launched Operation Plague, all-out cyberwarfare. From a buried fortress called Perun's Aerie deep inside Mount Manaraga in the Nether-Polar Urals, an atomic-powered supercomputer sends a Romanian nuclear power reactor into near meltdown and then shuts down Poland's financial system and electrical grid. U.S. President Stacy Anne Barbeau is out of her depth. Only her exiled mortal enemy, former U.S. President Kevin Martindale, and Scion, his private military-contractor company, can combat the attack. That requires not only CIDs--"a human-piloted combat robot"--from the Iron Wolfe Squadron, but also Scion's never-deployed XCV-62 stealth air freighter. The mercenaries also need Scion's pilot Brad McLanahan's multifaceted combat skills and Polish Special Forces Maj. Nadia Rozek's expertise. Strap in, for there are shootouts on every page plus a well-choreographed climactic raid on Perun's Aerie's computers. By then Scion has solved the matter of corrupting an airliner's flight software to lure Piotr Wilk, Poland's heroic president, into an assassination ambush. The characters are static and one-dimensional, including the thoroughly contemptible and morally bereft Gryzlov; the dialogue has the necessary quotient of manly banter; and the settings are cinematic. Literary flaws there may be, but Brown deserves kudos for contriving a compelling, fast-paced, and imaginative techno-thriller from a conflict where most foot soldiers are wizards at typing computer code. There's so much action here it's a wonder there aren't bullet holes and bomb craters on every page.

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January 1, 2017
From deep within the Ural Mountains, the Russian president launches a series of cyberattacks on the West, and Brad McLanahan enters to save the day. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017
Brown's latest novel in his ongoing Scion series could not be more timely or engaging. After the events depicted in Iron Wolf (2015), the Russian president is angry and wants revenge. He decides to launch a strike against both the U.S. and Europe by first going after banking systems and then escalating it from there. The U.S. president, feeling flummoxed by this new brand of cyberwarfare, calls in Brad McLanahan and the Scion team to take action. The Russians, however, have anticipated Scion intervening and have set a special trap for the group. Brown lays out a terrifying scenario that eerily reflects current concerns regarding Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election. Some of the technology seems more sci-fi than what is currently possible, but that doesn't distract too much from the impact of the story. Fans will find Brown in fine form here, and newcomers who enjoy top-notch military fiction will have no trouble diving into the deep end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)