Rating: 
Summary: action packed thriller
Review: Russian General Petrov sells four decaying from age nuclear warheads for two million American dollars to Islamic terrorist Ashruf, known more often as infidel killer Frouq al-Zuair. Anna "Modin" Mickhailova observes the sale and later notifies her boss Russian spy chief Janos Ilin about it. Ilin informs retired Rear Admiral Jake Grafton about the sale and that the four warheads are heading to America. Grafton briefs the President.The Greek freighter carrying the warheads vanishes while a terrorist cell in Florida waits for further instructions. Meanwhile Jake ignores the ranting of the absurd bureaucracy demanding he follow the rules (and a few laws too) when he orders the military and Coast Guard to use radiation detectors at the East Coast ports of entry. He knows the consequences if he fails to catch the terrorists before they disembark. LIBERTY is an action packed thriller that is at its best when it focuses on either of the testy testosterone twins Frouq or Jake. A subplot involving an irate maniacal Vietnamese seems inane and the stereotyping of the government agencies as inept seems too easy and trite. Still fans of complex multiple sub-plots will appreciate this high-octane tale. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Was this really Coonts?
Review: See book summary above. "During the Middle Ages in Europe ignorant, illiterate people were manipulated by appeals to the strains of intolerance and fanaticism that are part and parced of every religion. The Crusades, the popes' wars on heresy, the Spanish Inquisition, the war between Catholicism and Protestantism...all these horrors were committed in God's name. The result was the rise of the secular states, which grew into nations.
The Muslim world didn't move on--it's still trapped in the Middle Ages. Islam teaches that man should live a life that earns him God's mercy--it's no better or worse than any other religion. Yet the Islamic fanatics are exporting the horrors to a developed world that moved on centuries ago. Perhaps this war between religion and secular society is a stage that every civilization has to go through. Maybe it's the only way for a people to gradually learn tolerance, which is the foundation for complex societies that can entertain new possibilities, new visions." This is a Jake Grafton speech (the protagonist of this and previous novels) and like it or not the book is filled with many of these little gems. This is about the only positive thing I can say about this Grafton novel. Yes I was disappointed. When I see Stephen Coonts on a book cover, no less a Jake Grafton novel, I expect alot. This didn't deliver. If you didn't read it in two or three sittings it's sometimes hard to remember who certain characters are, of which there are many. Maybe I'm just getting old but this one seemed to be a chore to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Liberty
Review: Simply the best book I've read in a long time, period.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!!!!!!!
Review: The scariest thing about this book is that it could be happening.Middle Eastern terrorists, The Sword of Islam, have located a corrupt Russian general who is willing to sell nuclear warheads which he is in charge of guarding. Four are delivered which sets in motion a riveting story of their delivery to the United States and the forces which are hunting them down in order to prevent the ultimate catastrophy. Jake Grafton, a central figure in many of Coonts's book is put in charge of a secret antiterrorism task force by the President
and given powers to use which may be constitutionaly suspect, but necessary nonetheless. When his powers are described to him, Grafton tells the President that "If the press gets this, you'll be impeached and I'll go to prison." The President's response is that "The president has the inherant power to defend the nation. I'm using that power here and now." That pretty much sets the tone for what is to follow. An interesting melange of characters flesh out the story and set up a tense and gripping situation in New York harbor involving Fleet Week, an armed atomic device on the torch platform of the Statue of Liberty and a desperate plan to avoid disaster. When informed of how Grafton plans to subdue the terrorists, the FBI wryly comments, "You don't have a plan." Maybe not, but it makes for page turning reading. This tale is as current as tomorrows headlines and as scary as it gets. Let's hope that it never comes to that and remains fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Jake Grafton and friends save the world yet again!
Review: This book was written by Stephen Coonts after 9/11. He weaves a plot in which Middle East terrorists and a couple of disenchanted Vietnamese refugees buy or steal some old Soviet nuclear bombs and try to blow them up in major US cities. Of course, Jake Grafton along with his wife Callie, old friends Toad Tarkington and Tommy Carmellini, new friend Anna Modin, and others intervene to save the day. Even though you know that the good guys are going to win again in the end, Coonts takes you on an exciting, suspenseful ride. Whither Jake Grafton? Is he really retiring? I'm awaiting Coonts' next offering with bated breath!
Rating:
Summary: Jake Grafton retires - and does it in style!
Review: This book was written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy, and is very much influenced by that event. The story is somewhat reminiscent of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of all Fears": terrorists are smuggling nuclear weapons into the USA in an attempt to destroy western society.
I liked this book a lot. It's true that the book is colored by Sept. 11 and by the desire to have a story with real heroes doing heroic things and to paint the Islamic terrorists in as negative a way as possible. But despite this Stephen Coonts created a story that is quite thought-provoking, very scary, and featuring a fair number of "good guys" who are not as lily white as they first appear to be.
Another interesting aspect of the story is the picture that is painted of the political infighting between the politicians and the various organizations such as the CIA and the FBI and the military. Everyone should be working toward the goal of combating the terrorists, but in reality many people are working on their own private agendas.
The story is very complicated with a large number of characters and with several subplots. Unless you have a very good memory I'd recommend that you create a written roster of characters as you read the book, noting vital facts for each person and noting the pages they appear on. Then, when you realize that you're not sure if a character has already been presented or not, it's easy to look in your roster and see.
My roster of characters for Liberty ended up covering four pages with some 45 names on it! It was very satisfying being able to cross off the names of most of the bad guys as they met with violent ends. Of course, some of the good guys also lost their lives. In all, 18 entries in my roster ended with "killed on page xxx"!
In summary, a very exciting book with interesting subplots, unexpected twists in the story and good characters. My only criticism is that the lack of panic in the general population does not seem realistic - my guess is that if it became known that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into American cities that it would result in massive fleeing from the cities to the countryside.
This is the 10th and (presumably) final book in the "Jake Grafton series", with Jake announcing his retirement at the end of the book. Stephen Coonts has started a new series of novels starring Tommy Carmellini, another indication that it's unlikely that we'll see any more "Jake Grafton books".
So far I've read six of these 10 Jake Grafton books, have written reviews for all of the books I've read, and intend to read the remaining books if/when I get a hold of them. In other words, I recommend the series quite strongly.
Rennie Petersen
Rating:
Summary: Terrorists and nukes
Review: This is a fairly predictable post-911 book: Islamic Terrorists smuggle nukes into the country and get ready to light them off. WHile we all know Jake Grafton and company is going to stop the horrific from occurring, this book is better written than most attempts at similar story lines.
Mr. Coonts throws in a couple of red herrings and false leads. There is a lot going on in this book and a couple of things that makes one wonder how close we came to nuclear immolation during the Cold War.
This is an enjoyable, afternoon and/or beach read.
Rating:
Summary: Starting at the end of Jake Grafton's career
Review: This was my first Jake Grafton (and Stephen Coonts) book, so I didn't have any preconceptions beyond those generated by the book's back cover. The premise caught my attention enough to buy this book, and I'm glad I did. The plot moves along at a pretty brisk pace. Since all the characters were "new" to me, I found them interesting and fairly well-developed (this book is easily a "stand alone" novel). There were a few annoying lapses in detail accuracy (e.g., Glock handguns don't have slide safeties that one clicks on), and the subplot involving the Vietnamese brothers suggests Coonts still has some axes to grind left over from his Vietnam service. Also, Grafton sending a husband and wife team (Toad and Rita) together against terrorists entrenched in the Statue of Liberty seemed too contrived (the potential for them losing mental focus while worrying about each other seems too great a risk for an admiral of Grafton's caliber to take, esp. given that neither of them is trained in close quarters combat). Still, Coonts accomplished perhaps the most important objective of an author: interesting at least this one reader to buy more of his works in the future. All told, I enjoyed this book!
Rating:
Summary: Starting at the end of Jake Grafton's career
Review: This was my first Jake Grafton (and Stephen Coonts) book, so I didn't have any preconceptions beyond those generated by the book's back cover. The premise caught my attention enough to buy this book, and I'm glad I did. The plot moves along at a pretty brisk pace. Since all the characters were "new" to me, I found them interesting and fairly well-developed (this book is easily a "stand alone" novel). There were a few annoying lapses in detail accuracy (e.g., Glock handguns don't have slide safeties that one clicks on), and the subplot involving the Vietnamese brothers suggests Coonts still has some axes to grind left over from his Vietnam service. Also, Grafton sending a husband and wife team (Toad and Rita) together against terrorists entrenched in the Statue of Liberty seemed too contrived (the potential for them losing mental focus while worrying about each other seems too great a risk for an admiral of Grafton's caliber to take, esp. given that neither of them is trained in close quarters combat). Still, Coonts accomplished perhaps the most important objective of an author: interesting at least this one reader to buy more of his works in the future. All told, I enjoyed this book!
Rating:
Summary: Bring all the characters into the 5th Act, then dump 'em
Review: When I was in the 10th grade, a thousand years ago, Mr. Skolsky was my English teacher. Introducing a few of Shakespeare's tragedies, he would joke that all the characters the venerable bard didn't know what to do with by the end of the 4th Act, he would bring together in the 5th Act and bump them off. Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and all the rest of them. Even poor Romeo and Julie. There's an element of that in the Stephen Coonts novels. Liberty is great. Coonts takes aim at the blustery agencies and they in turn become 'the foolish player[s] who strut and fret their hour upon the stage.' And of course, the xenophobic terorists suffer the same fate at his pen. The Russians, ever the evil empire, now have their own hero in Janos Ilin, who delivers the horrifying news to the almost John Wayne-like Jake Grafton that there are 4 nukes heading for the US. He exacts a favor from the ever level headed Admiral Grafton, and we are uncertain of it until the last 10 pages. Nice work, Steve, keeping those face cards close to the vest. There are dozens of characters, good and bad, who populate the first 60 or 80 pages. There are so many characters that several hundred pages later, you have to go back to determine 'who was that guy?' There are assassins, bad guys turned good guys (see Zelda, computer criminal turned Joan d'Arc) and bad guys turned REALLY good guys (see Tommy Carmellini, again, a new hero of tremendous substance.) The killings are somewat grisly so if that churns your stomach, beware. Heroes abound; love is good; fools are plentiful; and the bad guys suffer righteously ... in the 5th Act. Stephen Coonts does a great job of bringing the reader up to date with his plot and characters, always well crafted and intricate. In the beginning there are almost too many but it all evens out. Much more complicated than a beach read it remains overwhelmingly an excellent action novel.
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