Reviewer Dr. Wesley Britton: Dr. Britton is the author of four non-fiction books on espionage in literature and the media. Starting in fall 2015, his new six-book science fiction series, The Beta-Earth Chronicles, debuted via BearManor Media.
In 2018, Britton self-published the seventh book in the Chronicles, Alpha Tales 2044, a collection of short stories, many of which first appeared at a number of online venues.
For seven years, he was co-host of online radio’s Dave White Presents where he contributed interviews with a host of entertainment insiders. Before his retirement in 2016, Dr. Britton taught English at Harrisburg Area Community College. Learn more about Dr. Britton at his WEBSITE
Author: Samuel Marquis
Publisher: Mount Sopris Publishing
ISBN:
978-1-943593-08-8
ASIN: B01A4O3UVC
BUY ON AMAZON
Author
of 2015’s Slush Pile Brigade and Blind Thrust, novelist Samuel
Marquis has accomplished something rather rare. In The Coalition,
Marquis has injected fresh air into the often thread-bare genre of
political conspiracy and assassination thrillers.
For one
matter, the key players include Skyler, a highly-skilled female
sniper who’s deceived her employers for years. No one knows she’s
a woman adept with disguises and therefor untraceable, even after she
shoots the President-elect. But her story is more complex than her
profession. Her motives aren’t typical of most such
free-lance agents and she becomes conflicted about her job due to
both religious and sexual inner struggles. In fact, most of the major
characters on both sides of the law are sketched with deeper personal
stories than, say, a Robert Ludlum terrorist. For another example,
Benjamin Bradford Locke, head of the pseudo-religious organization,
American Patriots, is also chair of The Coalition, a powerful secret
group out to take over the U.S. government by imposing their far, far
right agenda on the country. They believe God is on their side. But
Locke also has to try to balance the desires of the rest of the
coalition leaders along with several family crises, especially the
unwanted pregnancy of his teenage daughter. He wants to be a good
father even as he plots targeted deaths of moderates and liberals who
don’t share his vision of wanting a President in the mold of Ronald
Reagan.
Likewise, FBI agent Kenneth Patton has to weave his
investigation through a maze of superiors who ignore his theories or
actively seek to block him while he reignites an old romance with
journalist Jennifer Odden. She’s spying on the American Patriots
while dueling with her insensitive publisher while feeling guilty for
giving up the child she bore Patton all those years ago. In short,
only part of the saga deals with conspirators and killers and
Machiavellian power moves. Much of the story deals with character
regrets, guilt, and self-discovery on very personal levels that
humanize even the villains.
Marquis relied on considerable
research and his familiarity with the novel’s various settings to
give the novel verisimilitude. The Coalition is far less violent than
most other like books, and there’s no mass devastation
scheduled in the dastardly plots. It’s a nice change of pace
to have no Islamic threats in the mix but rather ultra-conservative
Christians wanting to take the country toward what they think is the
correct, Godly direction. But if their best laid
plans went smoothly without surprising twists and turns, well, what
sort of story would that be?
I’ll admit, Marquis throws in
unneeded red herrings, like a computer virus which doesn’t seem to
accomplish anything. On the other hand, not to give anything
away, there are characters I’d like to see again, even if The
Coalition is intended as a stand-alone read. Perhaps a nice
novella to tie-up a few loose ends?