Unmanned

June 30, 2014
At the outset of this timely thriller, Capt. Darwin Cole, a Predator drone pilot comfortably ensconced at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base, discovers too late that children have entered his target area in eastern Afghanistan. The missile strike leaves two children dead, and Cole, devastated, spends a year in self-abnegating seclusion in the Nevada desert. Journalist Keira Lyttle finds Cole and persuades him to help her and two of her colleagues investigate the high-level misuse of government drones by a rogue CIA officer. As Cole and the reporters follow a trail through ex-CIA agents, intelligence contractors, and military technocrats, Fesperman (The Double Game) delineates the capabilities of modern drone aircraft in details that evoke wonder as well as chills at their disturbing implications for personal privacy. Though the characters never completely gel and the action sags in places, the technical information will keep readers turning the pages up to the rousing conclusion. Agent: Jane Chelius, Jane Chelius Literary Agency.

August 15, 2014
A timely thriller that brings drone warfare to the streets of America. There is treachery here-in the government, in big business and among the technology geeks who make it all work.Darwin Cole is a hotshot F-16 pilot pulled back from the skies to man a drone; he flies from a screen in Nevada and watches in horror as a young girl in Afghanistan dies on camera. He flips out, loses his family and sinks into a dissolute life drinking in a trailer in the desert. Something doesn't add up for him. The wrong targets are being killed, and the military and civilian contractors involved are not being held accountable. Darwin's road back to sanity begins when Keira Lyttle, a reporter following the threads of a labyrinthine story about the Predator program, appears at Darwin's trailer and lures him into the hunt for the truth. Keira and her fellow journalists Steve Merritt and Barb Holtzman are tracing clues that military targets in Afghanistan and Iraq are "glorified test labs, proving grounds...for state-of-the-art technology." What is learned in the air above the war zones is refined back in the U.S. and tested by surveillance on the streets of America. Darwin and his crew of reporters are tracked and even photographed inside their safe house remotely. Their clues lead to a security company called IntelPro, near Chesapeake Bay. Enter Nelson Hayley Sharpe, a technology guru who worked for the Pentagon. Sharpe is Fesperman's signature character, a mad, colorful genius who pulls all the dangling threads together for Darwin. Having been pushed aside by the military, Sharpe is out for himself with more than a hint of revenge. Fesperman has delivered an unlikely thriller nuanced with moral ambiguity. As Sharpe says: "Legality is no longer the point." Well-written and dense with complicity, this is an action-packed glimpse of intrusive technology in which the good guys never have clear moral standing.

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August 1, 2014
Darwin Cole was a career pilot in the U.S. Air Force. First he flew fighter planes; then he flew, via remote control, Predator drones. Now he's living down and very much out in a dilapidated trailer in the Nevada wilderness, still trying to recover from the drone he flew more than a year ago, in which he witnessed children being killed by the missile he fired. That mission destroyed him, destroyed his life and family, and, when a trio of journalists approaches him for help with a story about the intelligence officer in charge of the mission, he sees an opportunity to pull his life back together and to get some justice for the children whose lives, he believes, were taken by a murderer hiding in the shadows of the American government. Another winner from the author of The Arms Maker of Berlin (2009) and The Double Game (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2014

Worried about drones encroaching on personal freedoms? Then you should read this--or maybe not. Capt. Darwin Cole, a former F-16 pilot reassigned to drone detail, watches in horror as his drone wipes out a family of civilians in Afghanistan. A tragic accident--or is it? Three reporters wondering about this and similar incidents hunt down Cole, who's lost home, rank, and family to become, essentially, a drunk living in a derelict trailer in the desert. But Cole sobers up, joining with the reporters and a rogue drone-engineering genius to begin an under-the-radar (literally, sometimes) investigation into a treacherous defense contractor and more. They are of course tracked all the time by omnipresent cameras in this surveillance culture of ours, and then there are the drones; forget that they are not "allowed" to surveil civilian airspace. VERDICT A paranoia-inducing page-turner, and there's even a romance angle if you need one. Multiaward winner Fesperman (The Prisoner of Guantanamo) offers some definite Jack Reacher moves, and though few match up to Lee Child's, this work is right there, minus the physical violence. Essential for fans of Child and like authors. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/14.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2014

Winner of the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's John Creasey Memorial Dagger and Ian Fleming Steel Dagger awards and the International Association of Crime Writers' Dashiell Hammett Award, Fesperman once again proves that he's great for sophisticated readers with this work about a drone pilot devastated by what the drone's display revealed (particularly an Afghan child running for her life) after one catastrophic mission. So he teams up with some journalists to discover the anonymous operative who managed that mission--which puts him in no little danger.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2014

Worried about drones encroaching on personal freedoms? Then you should read this--or maybe not. Capt. Darwin Cole, a former F-16 pilot reassigned to drone detail, watches in horror as his drone wipes out a family of civilians in Afghanistan. A tragic accident--or is it? Three reporters wondering about this and similar incidents hunt down Cole, who's lost home, rank, and family to become, essentially, a drunk living in a derelict trailer in the desert. But Cole sobers up, joining with the reporters and a rogue drone-engineering genius to begin an under-the-radar (literally, sometimes) investigation into a treacherous defense contractor and more. They are of course tracked all the time by omnipresent cameras in this surveillance culture of ours, and then there are the drones; forget that they are not "allowed" to surveil civilian airspace. VERDICT A paranoia-inducing page-turner, and there's even a romance angle if you need one. Multiaward winner Fesperman (The Prisoner of Guantanamo) offers some definite Jack Reacher moves, and though few match up to Lee Child's, this work is right there, minus the physical violence. Essential for fans of Child and like authors. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/14.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
Fesperman's ("The Double Game") latest enjoyable thriller is concerned with the use of surveillance and attack drones in U.S. combat operations. Former F-16 fighter pilot Darwin Cole is transitioned to flying drones and becomes so psychologically troubled by collateral damage from a botched mission that he leaves the air force. Lured from his hermit-like existence by a trio of journalists looking to write a book about a rogue intelligence operative thought to have targeted civilians on many missions of questionable military value, Cole commits to helping them unmask the unknown man behind Cole's last outing. Well-done depictions of drone technology and descriptions of the Chesapeake Bay area will encourage listeners to overlook some stereotypical characters and overly clever solutions to plot dilemmas. VERDICT This novel is excellently narrated by Armand Schultz and is recommended for inclusion in adult audio collections. ["A paranoia-inducing page-turner, and there's even a romance angle if you need one.... Essential for fans of Child and like authors," read the starred review of the Knopf hc, "LJ" 8/14.]--Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.