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Sphere of Influence

Sphere of Influence

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great story but pushed limits of beleivability
Review: This was a great story, even better than a Clancy book - more action and less verbage. The main character is again Mark Beamon, an older and slightly used up FBI agent put out to pasture as Special Agent in Charge at the Phoenix office. He gets pulled into a complicated case by his former partner Laura Vilechi who has been placed in charge of finding a missing rocket launcher held by Yasin, a powerful Afghan terrorist. The case gets much more complicated involving Volkov, a powerful drug lord and other drug dealers, the mafia, CIA bosses, and his own FBI boss. I would love to see another Beamon story but I do not know where Mr. Mills could possibly take him further.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun, but unbelievable
Review: This was a pretty quick read, and once I got to around page 200, I was thoroughly enjoying it. If you tend to give up on books early, I would warn you away from this one. It starts slow, and quite a few of the early plot points are either confusing or just not credible.

The story centers Mark Beamon and Laura Vilechi (sp?), two rogue CIA guys (the villains), and an underground criminal called Christian Volkov. The story starts rolling and becomes fun when Beamon pops out of his FBI persona and begins acting in concert with Volkov. That was cool! It was even somewhat believable until Beamon in the end is able to return to the US without any legal trouble.

I am tired of rogue CIA guys that can get operation support to gun people down. It like there is potential for a fifth column at every turn.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good fast-paced audio.
Review: Though not normally a fan of thrillers, I liked this one, mostly because of its humor, pace, and exploration of ideas behind the action.

Mark Beamon is a smart FBI office chief whose best days seem to be behind him. As the country is gripped by terrorist threats from Muslim fanatics, one of Mark's proteges, Chet, is undercover working for a dumb mafioso who buys drugs from Afghans. The mafioso, taking orders from an unseen boss, plans to murder them and steal their drugs. Fearing that that would trigger further instability-or just get them all killed-Mark goes undercover as an international criminal mastermind to try to control the situation.

However, the boss give the mafioso the order to kill Chet. Mark gets sucked into scheme after scheme to further infiltrate the criminal network, hoping to avenge Chet's death. He ends up working with Christian Volkov, who, although a criminal, impresses Mark as one of the only trustworthy people around him. Christian is the epitome of the organized criminal businessman who, operating outside of government regulations or corporate bureaucracy, conducts business with ease and efficiency. This character-well-connected, urbane, untouchable-is hardly realistic, but entertaining in his ability to "make things happen" and of course, to escape every scrape.

In thriller tradition, we know "whodunit" long before Mark does, but he doesn't quite figure out the truth; it more just kind of comes to him. His sardonic humor keeps all the cloak-and-dagger from getting too serious. He lampoons his own weaknesses, such as heavy drinking and smoking, mercilessly.

Michael Kramer, the narrator, did an above-average job reading and expressing what was going on, but his accents were not great. A Mexican sounded exactly the same as an Arab. One character, Alan Holston (sorry if I misspell but this was audio, remember), goes from blowhard American to crisp and vaguely British, and back again. Female voices are too breathy and soft, especially for women with tough jobs like FBI agents. Laura Vilechi sounds incongruously like Marilyn Monroe as she counts down an assault on a terrorist hideaway. He also pronounced Sepulveda as no Angeleno would. Yet, those flaws didn't ruin the book for me. Overall, it was a fast-paced story, easy to follow, even thought-provoking, and I recommend it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Audio version could not hold my interest.
Review: Want to hear a great story of terrorists taunting the USA on its' own turf?

You won't find it in this novel. This audio book lost my interest by the second tape of eight. Nothing exciting happens here.
It's one scene after another of people sitting around tables discussing
the problems of the world. I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this book.



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