The Minotaur

Rating:
Summary: A good effort from Coonts
Review: All things considered, The Minotaur was an enjoyable book. Jake Grafton, just back from his harrowing, near-death experience in the Middle East, is struggling with his position in the Navy and with life in general. He accepts a staff position at the Pentagon. Fearing a bland, paper-pushing position, he finds himself as the head of a team charged with investigating and recommending a next-generation Navy fighter. At the same time, the US is at the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union and espionage efforts are in full swing. Coonts brings together a number of range of characters, while blending a number of sub-stories within the main story. The book moves quickly, with frequent plot twists and uncertainty until the end about the position and motivation of a number of the book's characters. If you are a fan of Coonts, it is worth going back for the Minotaur.

Rating:
Summary: A good effort from Coonts
Review: All things considered, The Minotaur was an enjoyable book. Jake Grafton, just back from his harrowing, near-death experience in the Middle East, is struggling with his position in the Navy and with life in general. He accepts a staff position at the Pentagon. Fearing a bland, paper-pushing position, he finds himself as the head of a team charged with investigating and recommending a next-generation Navy fighter. At the same time, the US is at the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union and espionage efforts are in full swing. Coonts brings together a number of range of characters, while blending a number of sub-stories within the main story. The book moves quickly, with frequent plot twists and uncertainty until the end about the position and motivation of a number of the book's characters. If you are a fan of Coonts, it is worth going back for the Minotaur.

Rating:
Summary: Definetly Not Coonts' Best...
Review: I picked up The Minotaur the morning after I finished Final Flight, and while it was better than a lot of the bilge I've read over the years, it was definetly not my favorite Coonts tale (I think that position will forever be held by Final Flight). Still, for a die-hard Coonts fan like myself, it's still required reading, and will provide adequate entertainment

Rating:
Summary: One of the very best COONTS books !!!
Review: I truly loved the story of the devolopment of a new military jet with all the difficulties that comes with such a development, a weird man who has devoloped a new generation of Stealth technoligy who isn't to easy to make a deal with is one example. That while the famous Jake Grafton was experimenting on his own scale model sailplane whit help from his neighbour boy. And, verry surprising: TOAD gets married, something I did not expected at all. A very good book with a real good Grafton story. I realy like this character and I hope he will stay in the future Coonts books.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely enjoyable read
Review: I very much enjoyed this high-tech (which is not quite up to Clancey), detective, spy thriller. Coonts does a great job of personalizing his characters (and here, I think, better than Clancey). This was the first book I've read by Coonts, and it was great even out of order for the series. I'm very happy to see that readers think there are better books by Coonts out there. They must be very good indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely enjoyable read
Review: I very much enjoyed this high-tech (which is not quite up to Clancey), detective, spy thriller. Coonts does a great job of personalizing his characters (and here, I think, better than Clancey). This was the first book I've read by Coonts, and it was great even out of order for the series. I'm very happy to see that readers think there are better books by Coonts out there. They must be very good indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic! Coonts' best yet!
Review: In the world of the Minotaur, espionage and counter-espionage rule. Fast paced and full of surprises! The only story that might be better than The Minotaur is Flight of the Intruder, also written by Coonts. Must have!

Rating:
Summary: Vague and confusing
Review: The book is really good, exept for the fact that it is a bit to complicated. Also, the way Coonts explains things is very vague, and confusing in the way he explains who each character is.

Rating:
Summary: Vague and confusing
Review: The book is really good, exept for the fact that it is a bit to complicated. Also, the way Coonts explains things is very vague, and confusing in the way he explains who each character is.

Rating:
Summary: Spy catcher meets techno-thriller
Review: This is the sixth Stephen Coonts book I've read, and the first one that I liked so much that I'm giving it five stars.

"The Minotaur" combines two main stories that are cleverly interwoven with each other.

Story 1: There's a traitor, code named Minotaur, somewhere high up in the Pentagon who is channeling America's top military secrets to Moscow. Amazingly, the Russians don't know the identity of this mole, so not just the FBI but also the KGB are feverishly doing everything they can to find out who this traitor is.

Story 2: The U.S. Navy is in the midst of a procurement project to obtain a new attack aircraft to replace the aging A-6 Intruder. The new airplane will be based on stealth technology, including a top-secret device to actively suppress radar reflections.

I found the procurement story to be especially interesting. There's a lot of presumably authentic inside information on how the U.S. military handles the procurement of a major weapons system. The political skullduggery involved was fascinating, with a high-ranking U.S. Senator manipulating the process in an attempt to get the contract awarded to a company in his state. This Senator was more interested in his own re-election than in whether the Navy got an optimal, or even usable, aircraft!

Mixed up with the two main stories are a fair number of sub-plots, most of them concerning the lives and personalities of various people in the book. These sub-plots display Stephen Coonts' talent for creating characters who are real people, not the cardboard clichés that populate most techno-thrillers.

Overall, the most enjoyable aspect of this book is the way it draws you into the story and makes you want to learn what's happening behind the scenes and why. Who is the Minotaur? Why is he (or she) passing secrets to the Russians? Will he/she be stopped?

Unless you have a very good memory, I would recommend that you create and maintain a list of the main characters in the book. Otherwise, things can become rather confusing, and your chances of guessing who the Minotaur is will be minimal.

There are some very exciting descriptions of the test flights involved in the procurement project, first with a modified A-6 Intruder and then with two different prototypes of the new stealth attack airplane. These narratives, and some general descriptions of the joys of flying, are an added attraction in "The Minotaur." Stephen Coonts' background as a pilot and flying enthusiast is obvious here.

If you like techno-thrillers populated with real people, and if you are interested in flying and especially in military aircraft, then I'm sure you'll like "The Minotaur."

Rennie Petersen