Red Mercury

Rating:
Summary: An elaborate, well-researched nuclear thrill ride!
Review: I have never been a fan of counter-terrorist type international thrillers, but this novel's intricate plot of potential mass devastation at the Olympic Games is truly riveting. The author combined accessible technical direction with a clearly plausible plot and fallable yet magnetic characters. When coupled against the back drop of one of our most cherished international events, these "improvised nuclear devices" and "pure fusion" concepts are as staggering as they are sobering.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, fast moving, fictional account of Nuclear Terrori
Review: Red Mercury; Book Review By C. L. Staten - ERRI Senior Analyst (ENN) Another in a series of several excellent counter-terrorist novels recently caught this author's eye and was quickly devoured by this inquiring mind. The book, "RED MERCURY", tells an increasingly more believable tale of fissile material stolen from the super-secret Soviet city of Chelyabinsk-65. It then follows the international trail of the atomic agent as it moves towards Atlanta and a nuclear attack on the Olympic Games. Along the way, we learn about the Nuclear Emergency Response Team (NEST) and our fictional former SpecOps leader, Mack McFall. Add a female karate back-belt as head of a special FBI CT "Javelin" HRU team and mix with some deranged and vindicative paramilitary bombers. Finally, factor in a frantic search for the possibility of a material called "Red Mercury," a pure fusion nuclear material, that could destroy Atlanta and a large part of the Eastern Seaboard. The book is filled with many authentic details (and some purposely fictionalized) about Atlanta, the Olympics and its security arrangements, and the nation's leading counterterrorist forces. It focuses on the fearsome possibility of the use of a improvised nuclear weapon of mass destruction (WMD), which contains the here before illusive "pure fusion" combination of radioactive materials that give it, its name, "RED MERCURY." The book, written by "Max Barclay", a believed pseudonym of an S. California investigative journalist, provides an extensive number of references and the names of resource persons who contributed to the effort. All in all, we would have to give it an A- and recommend it to members of the emergency, military, and intelligence community. Because of its fast pace, it admittedly is one of those books that you could pick up and find hard to put down until the dramatic ending.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, fast moving, fictional account of Nuclear Terrori
Review: Red Mercury; Book ReviewBy C. L. Staten - ERRI Senior Analyst (ENN) Another in a series of several excellent counter-terrorist novels recently caught this author's eye and was quickly devoured by this inquiring mind. The book, "RED MERCURY", tells an increasingly more believable tale of fissile material stolen from the super-secret Soviet city of Chelyabinsk-65. It then follows the international trail of the atomic agent as it moves towards Atlanta and a nuclear attack on the Olympic Games. Along the way, we learn about the Nuclear Emergency Response Team (NEST) and our fictional former SpecOps leader, Mack McFall. Add a female karate back-belt as head of a special FBI CT "Javelin" HRU team and mix with some deranged and vindicative paramilitary bombers. Finally, factor in a frantic search for the possibility of a material called "Red Mercury," a pure fusion nuclear material, that could destroy Atlanta and a large part of the Eastern Seaboard. The book is filled with many authentic details (and some purposely fictionalized) about Atlanta, the Olympics and its security arrangements, and the nation's leading counterterrorist forces. It focuses on the fearsome possibility of the use of a improvised nuclear weapon of mass destruction (WMD), which contains the here before illusive "pure fusion" combination of radioactive materials that give it, its name, "RED MERCURY." The book, written by "Max Barclay", a believed pseudonym of an S. California investigative journalist, provides an extensive number of references and the names of resource persons who contributed to the effort. All in all, we would have to give it an A- and recommend it to members of the emergency, military, and intelligence community. Because of its fast pace, it admittedly is one of those books that you could pick up and find hard to put down until the dramatic ending.

Rating:
Summary: Well Researched?
Review: This book was purportedly well researched. Well, maybe while the author was collecting data on weapons of mass destruction, he forgot to read up on how people really speak and act. The characters in this book were overblown caricatures of every other player you've ever read about in the spy-thriller genre: Deranged villain seeking to extract revenge on government for cancelling his top secret research project battles noble, selfless, widower hero who can withstand all injuries to outwit villain and still fall in love with beautiful, gutsy, blackbelt heroine who fights the good 'ol boy network to earn her place on the team. Need I go on?

Also, this may be a nit, but the author lost all credibility with me in the first chapter, when he stated that the weight lifters from Uzbekistan had won several medals at the World Track and Field Championships. Sorry Max, there are no weightlifting events at the World Track and Field Championsips. That error is fairly obvious - Track and Field is not Nuclear Physics - God knows what else he got wrong.