GOOD FRIDAY CST

Rating:
Summary: lame thriller set in the Mid East
Review: In "Good Friday" the US faces an imminent Soviet invasion of Saudi Arabia. A fleet of Russian transports and escorting MiG fighters converges on the Gulf Kingdom - a move that leaves the Americans with few options. They can't allow the Russians to take Saudi, nor can they let the kingdom become the flashpoint for WWIII. Instead, the Americans decide to invade the kingdom itself, purely as a preventative measure. "Good Friday" posits the moves and counter-moves of the plot as occurring within a short period of time and jumps between the White House situation room, the cockpit of a Marine Harrier Jet, Saudi palaces and the desert battlegrounds.

Unfortunately, it's all a mess - nothing comes together in this story, which remains a disjointed collection of scenes that do nothing to advance the plot. By the middle of the book, it's impossible to determine whether the Americans really have opted for their nifty strategy of preemptive invasion, whether anybody in Saudi knows or even cares about it or even what the consequences of that plan are. Key to "Good Friday" is that the Saudis haven't the capacity to defend themselves - they've got hot planes like the F-15, but they can't fly them that well (landing seems to be a particular problem for Holt's Saudis) - and they come off like the stereotypical Arabs you see on sit-coms. Also crucial to the plot is that the Russian invasion force will otherwise be overwhelming, an aspect of the plot I missed entirely (I mean an airborne force is nifty, but what else do they have; also wouldn't that force be mincemeat against ground-based defenses?; and how far can armed MiG-29's fly, even when one way?). The "techno" is thin here, and you'll get a better feel for the dynamics of flying a Harrier by picking up Microsoft Flight Simulator than this book. By the end of the book, it's impossible to determine what happened. But you'll have lost interest long before that.

Rating:
Summary: lame thriller set in the Mid East
Review: In "Good Friday" the US faces an imminent Soviet invasion of Saudi Arabia. A fleet of Russian transports and escorting MiG fighters converges on the Gulf Kingdom - a move that leaves the Americans with few options. They can't allow the Russians to take Saudi, nor can they let the kingdom become the flashpoint for WWIII. Instead, the Americans decide to invade the kingdom itself, purely as a preventative measure. "Good Friday" posits the moves and counter-moves of the plot as occurring within a short period of time and jumps between the White House situation room, the cockpit of a Marine Harrier Jet, Saudi palaces and the desert battlegrounds.

Unfortunately, it's all a mess - nothing comes together in this story, which remains a disjointed collection of scenes that do nothing to advance the plot. By the middle of the book, it's impossible to determine whether the Americans really have opted for their nifty strategy of preemptive invasion, whether anybody in Saudi knows or even cares about it or even what the consequences of that plan are. Key to "Good Friday" is that the Saudis haven't the capacity to defend themselves - they've got hot planes like the F-15, but they can't fly them that well (landing seems to be a particular problem for Holt's Saudis) - and they come off like the stereotypical Arabs you see on sit-coms. Also crucial to the plot is that the Russian invasion force will otherwise be overwhelming, an aspect of the plot I missed entirely (I mean an airborne force is nifty, but what else do they have; also wouldn't that force be mincemeat against ground-based defenses?; and how far can armed MiG-29's fly, even when one way?). The "techno" is thin here, and you'll get a better feel for the dynamics of flying a Harrier by picking up Microsoft Flight Simulator than this book. By the end of the book, it's impossible to determine what happened. But you'll have lost interest long before that.