Sphere of Influence [Abridged]

Rating:
Summary: Rebel FBI Agent
Review: SPHERE OF INFLUENCE By Kyle Mills

I do not have time to write reviews on books on which I am neutral or do not like. I liked this book. Kyle Mills writes a good up-to-date adventure story about a rebel FBI agent who is not an FBI agent at the end of the tale. Mark Beamon who put the truth ahead of his job, and who was drinking and smoking himself into an early grave is a good believable lead character. He reminds me of people I have known in the past. Mark did not appear to fear death too much or anything else. His mind was made for thinking and he was afraid he was loosing his edge at that.

TV stations start getting videotapes from somewhere in the USA. They show a primitive rocket launcher, which is in the hands of terrorists somewhere in the States. The FBI immediately have almost all of the people terrified of where the first rocket will land, in a supermarket, schools, shopping malls in what State? When, is the next frightening question?

Beamon had ... off most of Congress and embarrassed the Washington elite with a too honest investigation and was about to be sacrificed on a tromped up charge. When a new president was elected and he had support again and was given an office in the field--one more dinosaur that would not disappear immediately.

He contacted Laura Vilechi, an old friend in the FBI for information about the rocket launcher and unofficially joined her effort to find it. This took him, Mark to places in the world that he would just as soon have never seen, and people like General Yung in Laos. Yung was a murdering sociopath the king of drug trafficking in his part of the world.

The FBI had in affect fired Mark, and he was working with a powerful mystery man, Christian Volkov whose primary income aside from his many legal businesses was from drugs. He was a citizen of anyplace and everyplace in the world and for the people who wanted him impossible to find. But he found Mark and developed a liking for him.

Mark helped Laura find the rocket launcher with the aid of Christian Volkov and the CIA, and the unwilling aid of the Mob. Mean while he got himself in so deep with Christian Volkov that the FBI tried to find him because he was embarrassing them'it's an interesting book. If you like books about the FBI, CIA and drugs in our modern world read it and do yourself a favour.
Roger L. Lee

Rating:
Summary: Kyle Mills is a Quality Read - Interesting & Well-Written
Review: Sphere of Influence is the fifth novel by Kyle Mills and the fourth he has written about his main character, Mark Beamon. While readers of Mills' previous works will know what Beamon brings to a story, the strength of Sphere of Influence is its plot and storylines, which include many topics currently in the news. These include terrorism, drug-smuggling, and more. References are made to the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and the World Trade Center. The realistic description of people and events adds to an already exciting and believeable story. Kyle Mills has penned his best novel yet and shows no signs of falling into the trap of mediocracy that plaques many writers at this stage. This book is good enough that new readers will be looking for his previous works.

Also recommended: Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, and Free Fall by Kyle Mills. Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels including Transfer of Power and Separation of Power.

Rating:
Summary: Give it the heave-ho .......
Review: The biggest problem in this book is the plot. This story rarely revolves around the Plot - Threat of a Rocket inside the US. Instead it meanders around everything other than the main plot. It seems the author had decided to write about specific scenes and later came up with a plot that was made to fit around the scenes.
When I finished reading this book I recollected a classic story in our country. A Student , for his essay in an Exam, reads about Trees. Instead the Essay in the Question Paper asks about cows. He proceeds to write everything about Trees and ends the essay by writing that a cow can be tied to the Tree.

The only factor going for this book is it goes at a brisk pace...

Rating:
Summary: strong espionage thriller
Review: The CIA is supporting Al Quaeda in its bid to take over the heroin trade in the Golden Crescent. It's leader Mustafa intends that the money brought in by the sale of heroin in the United States will be used to buy weapons to be used against the people of America. The CIA believes that Yasin's methods would interrupt the drug supply and allow the Asians to become the new supplier to the US, therefore diminishing or eradicating Al Quaeda's power base.

Unfortunately, things don't go according to plan and Al Quaeda is able to smuggle a missile launcher and an unknown amount of missiles into America. They are threatening a reign of terror not seen since September 11th and only one man can stop them. Mark Beamon, SAC in charge of the Arizona Branch of the FBI, goes undercover. He risks his life, his career, and his reputation to remove the threat from American soil.

Kyle Mills is an enthralling writer of espionage thrillers on the same level as Tom Clancy and Dale Brown. The protagonist is willing to bend, even break the rules to keep America safe. A man who is willing to sacrifice everything he holds dear is a true hero and it is this reviewer's fervent wish that there other thrillers starring Mark Beamon in the future. SPHERE OF INFLUENCE is a must read for anyone who enjoys a great thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Average thriller at best
Review: The Tom Clancy quote on the back cover reads, "Kyle Mills is fast becoming the new master of gripping and intelligent page turners."

Gripping and intelligent is where the wheels start to come off on this book. The plot comes down to the threat of a rocket launcher and 3 or 4 missile s smuggled into the United States via Mexico and the vague threat that these might have biological or chemical warheads. This situation puts the public in a deep panic and the economy in a tailspin. Furthermore, the rockets and the launcher are held by separate terrorist cells, and have to come together so that they can launch a rocket with a 12 mile range at a civilian target.

I guess the threat isn't all that credible in my mind. Saddam proved you don't need a fancy launching platform to send SCUD missiles into Israel so why do these terrorist need one? The bad guys never pull off a strike - so why is there such a tremendous panic?

Secondly, the plot has a whole raft of interesting characters. You have Mark Beamon (Mills' burnt FBI agent), a Russian gangster, a CIA nincompoop, a New York wiseguy, and your stock-in-trade fanatical terrorist. There is a lot of potential here, maybe enough for a couple of books.

Thirdly, Beamon goes so far out on a legal limb that the ending defies belief.

With all that said, Mills is a talented writer. The dialogue and story moves along. I just think he needs to recognize the Mark Beamon character has run its course and move on. He has shown us that he can be brilliant, but I think he needs new material.

Rating:
Summary: Average thriller at best
Review: The Tom Clancy quote on the back cover reads, "Kyle Mills is fast becoming the new master of gripping and intelligent page turners."

Gripping and intelligent is where the wheels start to come off on this book. The plot comes down to the threat of a rocket launcher and 3 or 4 missile s smuggled into the United States via Mexico and the vague threat that these might have biological or chemical warheads. This situation puts the public in a deep panic and the economy in a tailspin. Furthermore, the rockets and the launcher are held by separate terrorist cells, and have to come together so that they can launch a rocket with a 12 mile range at a civilian target.

I guess the threat isn't all that credible in my mind. Saddam proved you don't need a fancy launching platform to send SCUD missiles into Israel so why do these terrorist need one? The bad guys never pull off a strike - so why is there such a tremendous panic?

Secondly, the plot has a whole raft of interesting characters. You have Mark Beamon (Mills' burnt FBI agent), a Russian gangster, a CIA nincompoop, a New York wiseguy, and your stock-in-trade fanatical terrorist. There is a lot of potential here, maybe enough for a couple of books.

Thirdly, Beamon goes so far out on a legal limb that the ending defies belief.

With all that said, Mills is a talented writer. The dialogue and story moves along. I just think he needs to recognize the Mark Beamon character has run its course and move on. He has shown us that he can be brilliant, but I think he needs new material.

Rating:
Summary: A VERY standard conspiracy novel
Review: This is the third or fourth novel Kyle Mills has written with Mark Beamon as a main character. Mark's the best investigator in FBI history (everyone says so, about every fifty pages in this book) but he's been kicked up stairs to Special Agent in Charge in Phoenix. He makes a lousy supervisor, and is getting a review of his performance which is horrible, and will lead to his reassignment. One of his friends from Washington has a problem: she's investigating a case of terrorism in which some Al Quaeda extremists have smuggled a missile into the U.S. and are threatening to use it. She requests Beamon's help with an undercover investigation, and the result is that Beamon becomes Nicolai, a shadowy character who's part assassin and part organized crime kingpin. Another FBI agent is killed, and Beamon becomes Nicolai for more than a minute, and stays undercover, looking for who ordered his partner's death.

This is a pretty formulaic novel. It's very well-written, but the plot is so predictable and the villains are very easily identified. As a result, I didn't enjoy it as much as I might. I was wondering how he was going to end the story, but I will confess that again the ending was predictable and rather formulaic. Good writing, but lousy plot.

Rating:
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:
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:
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.