Sphere of Influence [Abridged]

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining if Somewhat Standard
Review: In Sphere of Influence, Kyle Mills brings back series character Mark Beamon, brilliant FBI agent whose life is filled with bad luck and his own socially inept decisions. In this latest effort, he once again is threatened with losing his job, going to jail and possibly getting killed as he gets involved with tracking down a rocket launcher being held by terrorists.

At the beginning of the novel, Beamon is facing a bad job review and increasing hostility from his superiors. In addition, his on-again-off-again relationship with this girlfriend continues to be fragile. When terrorists threaten to launch rockets at American targets, Beamon is called in, not so much because he's brilliant but because he has a connection that can force the CIA to cooperate with the FBI investigation. Since the CIA agent called in is intimately involved with the terrorists - as well as organized crime - he is not particularly cooperative.

In what initially seems to be a separate investigation, Beamon is then called into an undercover role as a mercenary named Nikolai. This supposedly brief assignment winds up being a dangerous mess and Beamon is forced much more deeply into his assignment. He gets involved with Christian Volkov, a major organized crime boss, and in the process, gets tangled up in illegal operations.

Mills has put together a good novel, but not one that is distinct from a dozen similar stories. While striving towards realistic situations, Mills simultaneously creates characters and scenarios that are borderline implausible. Overall, while this book is by no means a classic, it is at least entertaining and a fun way to spend a few hours.

Rating:
Summary: sphere of influence
Review: Interesting story and set up. The setting of conflict between CIA and FBI in the drug wars is plausible. The idea of burnout in a bureaucratic organization and the fact that the criminal mind can be fascinating makes it easy reading.
Having said that there are some inconsistancies. The Mafia entity, Gasta, seems too stupid. It is hard to believe he would not have been eliminated by natural competition earlier.
Laura is another weak person She does not have many original ideas, but is apparently beyond a world class athelete since she can run and catch a truck going 15 miles per hour. Not only can she do that, she also passes the truck, has time to turn around and shoot several times, and fall flat before the truck hits her. Maybe her name should be Cheetah.
All that said it is an interesting story, and I recommend it for light reading.

Rating:
Summary: Great Story---HOWEVER....
Review: Kyle Mills continue to impress with with his most recent novel. As usual, the storyline are imaginative and thought-provoking, with unwilling hero Mark Beamon again involved up to neck his in trouble, both with to criminals and he own government.

As much as it pained me to write that paragraph with all those grammatical errors, I figured that would be the best way to get the point across as to what it was like to read this book. Prior to reading it, I had noticed a previous reviewer's comments regarding this problem, but didn't really pay too much attention to it, believing it to be nit-picking. Wow, was I wrong. There is only one word to describe the grammar in this book--HORRENDOUS. Aside from finding it very difficult to believe these mistakes could make it through numerous readings by editors and publishers, I also found it extremely annoying, due to the fact that everytime I came across one, I would immediately snap out of the state of fantasy we all desire to be in when reading works of fiction, right back to reality, realizing that, of course, what I had in front of me was just thousands of words put together in a not-very organized way to form a story.

I certainly will continue to read further books by Kyle Mills, simply because his stories have always been very entertaining and suspenseful. HOWEVER, in the hopes that the author occasionally checks Amazon.com to look at reviews of his books, I would like to include a simple plea to Mr. Mills: "Please, please find somebody more capable of editing. What happened here?!"

The story deserves 4, if not 4-1/2 stars, but I had to knock it down due to the frequent (seriously---FREQUENT) grammar mistakes.

Rating:
Summary: Kyle Mills is a master!
Review: Kyle Mills has once again scored a hit with his series starring Mark Beamon. I was worried that as the books continued, they would start to get stale, but not so! It's not a read you can put down and pick up constantly, but one you will want to devote time to. I'm looking forward to seeing where Mr. Mills goes with Mark Beamon in his next book. A GREAT READ!!

Rating:
Summary: Exciting and well written
Review: Mark Beamon becomes more and more likable with each installment. Cudos!

Rating:
Summary: This guy can write
Review: Mill's writing style is superb - excitement, tension, intrique, etc and out comes something to make you laugh such as
"She handed Beamon a tall glass and he took a sip of the cold, fizzy liquid. For the thousandth time in his life, he said a quick, silent prayer for the souls of the brilliant men who invented Alka-Seltzer."
The downside is that I guess I'll have to wait another year or so for the next one. I've read them all but if you haven't it will give you something to do until the next one comes along.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Mills' best one yet
Review: Mills writes thrillers with the plotting skills of a Clancy; but he adds to the mix strong characterizations and a well crafted, breezy, wry and often humorous writing style which rarely falters in tone. I've read all his books as they've appeared. He started out strongly with his first two novels; but I feared that he was starting to get stale when his third and fourth seemed formulaic and somehow lacked relevance. "Sphere" restores the mantle of top-notch thrillmeister with a very timely, wide ranging and complex story. The real hero of this story is a fascinating criminal mastermind, one who definitely arouses ambiguous feelings on the part of the reader...rooting for the bad guy. It's a hard trick to pull off; but Mills writing is strong enough that the reader is happily manipulated, even when the story goes to the brink of implausibility. I literally couldn't put the book down.

Rating:
Summary: Well Worth The Read: Sphere of Influence by Kyle Mills
Review: Rogue elements or individuals within America's governmental law enforcement agencies have always been a hallmark of many thriller and mystery novelists. For example, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy, just to name two, have often used rogue CIA operatives as part of their many novels and to great effect. In the past, the Cold War provided the backdrop for such operations. With the theoretical end of the Cold War, there was concern that like black and white movies, the times had passed such topics by. Now, in what is sure to be a flood of such novels, Muslim fanaticism and the global war on terror are replacing the Cold War as a fictional backdrop. Rogue elements in the CIA in fiction along with the occasional glimpses through Congressional hearings in real life makes this novel highly believable.

Somewhere in America, an Al-Queada terrorist cell has a rocket launcher and some missiles for it. With the death of Osama Bin Laden (treated as fact), Al-Queada has reconstituted itself under new leadership and become a smaller, more efficient terrorist organization. They have learned the ultimate lesson of the terrorist attacks-America was hurt much worse by the economic impact of such actions than by the casualty toll. The terrorists release videotape to the major networks detailing their threat to fire missiles somewhere in the United States. They promise to attack schools, shopping centers, etc. to make the point again that one is ever safe.

Panic grips the nation exacerbated by the twenty four hour seven day a week cable news coverage of the threat. Schools, business, shopping centers, etc. begin to close as the nation's commerce grinds to a halt. For Mark Beamon, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Phoenix Office, the situation is doubly frustrating. Not only is this not his case and that has been made clear by his superiors, he has massive personal problems of his own.

Mark is less than happy with his current role in the FBI. As detailed in the earlier three novels of this series character, Mark Beamon is a loner and does not play well with others. He certainly does not really fit into the model of what an agent is in the currently politically correct version of today's FBI. He eschews office politics and relies on results. About to be fired, arrested and imprisoned for his previous actions, the incoming President saved him from himself. Thanks to having a friend on the White House Staff, he was instead sent to dead-end his career in charge of the Phoenix office. Management is not his thing and as the ongoing office audit makes clear, his talents are better suited to working cases, not people.

Because of his connections to other agents from past cases, Mark begins to get separate but important pieces of information that he is not supposed to have access to. He sees a totally different track to the case and his ideas conflict with his superior's public statements. He begins to suspect that the terrorists have links to organized crime and wonders why the CIA isn't telling all they know. Soon his suspicions prove correct as a fellow agent and long time friend is executed while both are on an undercover operation. Allowed to survive, Mark Beamon begins to work the case from deep undercover using any resources and methods necessary to find not only the rocket launcher but also those responsible inside and outside of government.

This is an extremely complicated novel, which in my summary, I have failed to do justice to. As the really good novels do, it works on many levels with puzzles within puzzles. The players are extremely complicated and multi-dimensional and there are a large number of plot twists. The action is frequently intense and the novel moves forward at a steady clip.

One also has to wonder just how much of this novel is actual fact and not conjecture. Tom Clancy took an active involvement in this author's career from the early stages including helping him get his first novel published titled "Rising Phoenix." Tom Clancy has long been known for his access to highly classified government information and sources and is said to have introduced Kyle Mills to many of the same information resources. One often gets the feeling in reading his novels that Kyle Mills barely fictionalizes many important details. If true in this case, he is providing some very interesting material on the war in terrorism in this very enjoyable thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Great thriller
Review: See book description above.

From Kyle Mill's very first novel, I've been a fan. The character of Mark Beamon is a very likeable and admirable hero.
The story and characters of Mill's latest are also very timely. From Yasin, a powerful Afghan terrorist, to Volkov, a powerful drug lord. The many characters make for a somewhat intricate plot. Afghan terrorists and drug dealers, local mafia bosses, a Laotion general, CIA bosses, FBI bosses, Heroin wars, a missing rocket launcher, and of course Mark Beamon and his friends.
A great international thriller with vivid story telling.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Fast moving and action packed
Review: So you think Bill Gates is the richest man in the world? Perhaps he's gathered the world's largest legitimate fortune, but how do we know that there are not shadowy underworld figures whose wealth makes the Gates' billions seem like small change?

FBI agent Mark Beamon believes in the existence of such people, and what's more thinks they are linked to the CIA, terrorist organisations, the Mafia and huge drug cartels. When a rocket launcher suddenly appears in the deserts of Arizona or Nevada, a young agent which the disgraced Beamon helped train is put on the case. To help her investigation, Beamon goes underground taking on a persona of a terrorist himself. About there things start to go wrong.

Another agent is killed, the Mafia man Beamon was working for is arrested, and the CIA is stirring trouble with the world's heroin suppliers, trying to distance themselves from the rocket launcher. Beamon then encounters the enigmatic Christian Volkov, perhaps the richest man in the world, perhaps not. To keep his cover, Beamon becomes manager of Volkov's heroin business. As events unfold, Beamon discovers Volkov has far superior intelligence sources than the combined US agencies, commands an enormous underground economy, and despite his criminal interests, is a highly cultured, well meaning person. He also finds the CIA has been hiding a lot of it's dealings from it's own government, and is not in control of heroin trafficking whatsoever.

The story throws up a number of moral dilemmas, like is a crime still a crime if it is committed to prevent a larger crime, or is the policy of "any means necessary" justifiable in conducting a nation's foreign affairs. The conclusion of the story is a little unexpected, but shows one possible solution to these dilemmas.