Rating: 
Summary: Timely
Review: More decisive, suspenseful and action filled than the last entry in the series. An attack on New York is all too credible. A fun read.
Rating: 
Summary: Jake Grafton & friends save the world... again!
Review: Published in 2001, Stephen Coonts' novel America is the 9th in the series starring his U.S. naval air hero Jake Grafton. We first met Lieutenant Grafton in the 1986 novel Flight of the Intruder as a carrier-based A-6 Intruder pilot in Vietnam. In subsequent novels, he has advanced in rank to now Admiral, moved to the Pentagon, & saved the United States (& the world) from increasingly evil villians & ever more technologically complex weapons.In this novel, the first U.S. SuperAegis space-based missile defense system satellite is hijacked at launch, crashing it into the eastern Atlantic for salvage by a European billionaire & the European space agency. A super-silent, ultra-sophisticated, U.S. nuclear submarine is stolen by Russian & German pirates who then fire "Flashlight" energy pulse Tomahawk cruise missiles at Washington, DC & New York City, frying all devices with integrated electronic circuits, in essence crippling those modern cities. These two events are linked, & it takes Jake Grafton, his loyal aide Toad Tarkington, their CIA operative buddy Tommy Carmellini, old friend Marine Commandant Flap Le Beau, & their wives to figure the situation out & then rectify it as usual. Jake Grafton is a modern literary hero approaching Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in stature (although Clancy's much longer books allow him to more deeply develop his character). I am a fan of both. My favorite Jake Grafton novels are the earlier ones in which the immediate tension of naval aerial combat & war itself is better communicated. They were also great books for becoming acquainted with the workings of miltary planes & aircraft carriers. The later novels have gotten more farfetched in terms of plot and weaponry. The novel America continues that recent trend, at times stretching believability. However, it is an enjoyable read, & Jake Grafton fans & other miltary literary buffs should not miss it.
Rating: 
Summary: Another great Grafton novel
Review: Stephen Coonts and I have the same roots. Both former Vietnam era vets now writing Navy genre books. Although, he is much more sucessfull at this than I. For this reason I have truely enjoyed every Jake Grafton novel that I have read. His descriptions of our Navy, of its people and of its machines are beyond reproach. In this story spy sub USS America, I thought of the USS Jimmy Carter,the real spy sub, goes missing. Usually when a sub goes missing I think of Sontag's Blind Man's Bluff. The thing blew-up, it sank, people died. Not so. Jake learns that a group of CIA operators "spooks" may have swiped the sub. Their target is the White House. (Good choice. If you're trying to hit the broadside of a barn a huge white house would be an easy target. Dont' you think?)The Tomahawk cruise missle is designed to fly through a one meter window and is about 90% accurate on target. With a range of 1,500 miles, a Tomahawk lauched from Cuba would hit its mark. So the shot on the White House was not all that tough. Coonts is a relentless storyteller. If you liked Cuba or Hong Kong you will love this book as well. As a side note. I read a review that said,"...rivals Clancy for fiction-as-realism and Cussler for spirited action." I disagree. Stephen Coonts' writing and storytelling skills stands alone as one of the modern standards to which all genre writers should strive to achieve. Put this one on your must real list.
Rating:
Summary: One of the better Jake Grafton adventures
Review: Stephen Coonts must be one of the most inconsistent technothriller authors writing today. He has produced one true classic in the genre - "Flight Of The Intruder" - and ever since, the ride for the reader is one of ups and downs. His track record has been to pen one or two so-so or outright bad novels, then get serious and fire off a gem. So, in between good reads such as "The Red Horseman" and "The Intruders", we are also served clunkers such as "Final Flight" and "Cuba". It has become such that a "buyer beware" tag should accompany every Coonts novel, just to be on the safe side. Fortunately, after the debacle that was "Cuba" and the tepid "Hong Kong", he got down to business and wrote "America", which turned out to be a pretty darn good story. The plot that Mr. Coonts lays out - that of a hijacked, top-of-the-line sub and the havoc it wreaks on the Eastern Seaboard - is unique in this genre that has grown to be jammed with Tom Clancy-lookalike plots. After a prologue that will eventually tie into the main plot, Mr. Coonts doesn't waste any time diving headlong into the action, leaping right into a gripping opening sequence in which the submarine "America" is hijacked. Enter hero Jake Grafton, tasked to find out who the bad guys are and to figure out a way to get the sub back. Grafton begins his sleuthing amidst the missile attacks, and deals with a Russian operative who may not be all he seems to be. The pages fly by as the plot unfolds, leaving the reader wondering how everything will tie up in what is sure to be a riveting conclusion. Except that the conclusion sort of fizzles out. I would echo the sentiment of another reviewer in that the final 100 pages seemed to be written as if Mr. Coonts had run out of gas and was coasting the rest of the way home on vapors. Suddenly the pace slowed, and some of the side stories are mostly wrapped up in an all-too quick and "tidy" way as a means of falling into the solution of the main plotline. This is followed by the climatic confrontation with the bad guys, which is curiously set aboard a cruise ship and leads to a "happily ever after" sort of ending that seems all too clean and sterile, given the story that had led to this point. The cruise ship element felt way out of place, and only seemed to serve the purpose of making sure the characters of Callie, Toad, and Rita had some print space in this story where they were otherwise largely ignored (and not missed by this reader). I wavered back and forth on rating this at three stars or four; it really could have gone either way. In the end, though, I gave "America" four stars because - conclusion aside - it was an entertaining book. Additionally, when evaluated with his other work, "America" was a far better effort by Mr. Coonts. I can only hope that his next book is as good or better, but given his track record over the years, we'll have to wait and see. The good ones tend to be few and far between.
Rating:
Summary: A cutting-edge techno-thriller
Review: Stephen Coonts' - who has reached that pantheon of writers where his name dominates the cover - has produced an absorbing book have nothing to do with airplanes at all, a disappointment since it's from the former A-6 pilot whose first (and best) work was "Flight of the Intruder."
This complex tale of the interception of a rocket carrying the first of the Super Aegis space-based antiballistic-missile defense system satellites and the theft of the U.S.'s latest, most able submarine - the America - is nevertheless engaging and involving. The hero, now-Rear Admiral Jake Grafton (the A-6 driver who illegally bombed Hanoi in Coonts' first novel), is drawn into the mystery because he was assigned as a liaison officer with the missile team.
A lot of countries would like to see the missile defense system fail and even more would like to have the newest submarine, which only needs about a third of the usual crewmen and is packed with special new features, such as 3-D holographic projections of everything around it. It doesn't even have (or need) a periscope.
Moreover, the America is not only a capable submarine, but it also carries 10 cruise missiles with a special new weapon called "flashlight," a warhead that simulates an electromagnetic pulse generation equivalent to the detonation of a nuclear weapon. As you military types know, an EMP pulse will fry just about anything having to do with electronics, computers, avionics, wiring, batteries, chips, etc.
It quickly shoves your enemy back about five generations in technology.
It's not clear when Steve wrote "America," but the bad guys launch some of these missiles, exploding them over Washington, New York City and AOL headquarters, among other places. They cause the predicted economic chaos and physical damage.
It's Jake's job to figure out if the theft of the submarine has anything to do with the disappearance of the defense shield rocket, who took the submarine and what's behind all the death and destruction that follows. Although this book is somewhat of a departure for Coonts, it's no less engaging and you'll cling to all 390 action-packed pages.
- Wayman Dunlap
Rating:
Summary: Still waiting for a great Grafton novel
Review: The "America" of the title is the newest nuclear sub, the USS America, an advanced class of deep-sea hunter killers. With it's revolutionary sonar systems, and armed with warheads capable of unleashing EMP, America has the power to bring any modern power to its knees. The America is barely out of port when the sub is hijacked in a daring (and bloody) daylight assault. The impact of the successful theft compounds a bad month for the US government, one already spoiled by the fiasco of the botched launched of an SDI system - after the ruined launch, the remains of the SDI platform are missing. Soon, the America's hijackers use the sub's high-tech weaponry to level Washington and New York. Using EMP warheads, the big cities are left intact, but darkened - as if thrust back into a pre-electric age. The economy verges on collapse (good news if you bought Euros) and only Admiral Jake Grafton can do anything about it. With the help (or perhaps hindrance) of an ex-KGB spook, the Marine Commandant (Flab Le Beau, introduced in the novel "Intruders") and a CIA employed safecracker named Carmellini (Introduced in "Cuba"), Grafton races against time to link the hijackers with the missing SDI satellite and various shady types including some European businessmen and the beautiful owner of a NJ-based dot-com that weathered the e-collapse by diversifying into hacking secure government computers. Better than "Fortunes of War"? Sure. And it was the first techno-thriller I'd picked up in ages (missed "Hong Kong"). So what's wrong? Coonts doesn't really solidify the complex story which includes a three-way conspiracy and plenty of techno-stuff. Also, the pirate crew of the "America" never really come together to form their own subplot (no pun, really!). They're a bunch of eastern types led by Kolnikov, an ex Red Navy sub commander reduced to driving a Parisian cab, and Heydrich, a cold-blooded assassin. The crew is frequently at odds with each other, but there's nothing more about them - they could have as easily gotten their own story but didn't. Coonts never does anything with the spectacle of the nuclear submarine commander reduced to shuttling tourists out of Orly Airport and around the Eiffel Tower, or even into the history of a guy who played "Blind Man's Bluff" thruought the cold war. The biggest problem with the novel is trying to understand what the massive conspiracy is even about - it's never clear why the plotters need the sub, and only the sub, to recover the missing satellite once Admiral Grafton concludes that salvage was the idea. Grafton argues that it's the satellite itself that needs to be recovered, even though those responsible for the crime could have easily stolen the plans for it, and wouldn't have had to go to the trouble of hijacking a nuclear sub to get them. (In the late 1960's to produce their own fighter plane, the Israelis resorted to an elaborate plan to steal a warehouse-full of blueprints for an airplane they already had). "America" lacks any fun characters like those in "Intruder" or even "Cuba" and Coonts' writing moralizes endlessly about bureaucrats (all the unpopular characters are compared to bureaucrats) and left-wing politicians. There's one great flying scene - with F-16's chasing Tomahawk missiles at low altitude - that doesn't so much make up for the rest of this boring book as much as remind us what a better book it could have been.
Rating:
Summary: I Think The Man in the Gaberdine Suit is a Spy...
Review: The next line in the song is "she says his bowtie is really a camera," and throughout this latest novel from Stephen Coonts I couldn't stop thinking about these lyrics from the old Simon and Garfunkel song. This novel reminds me that we have not travelled very far from the days of the sixties when the cold war was at its peak. Sure Coonts has thrown in a bunch of new technological gadgets to make the story contemporary, but it's the same old story - we have it, they want it. The "it" this time is the USS America, the latest, high-tech, ultra-expensive, nuclear submarine that the Navy has just commissioned. It's loaded with the best sonar, the best electronics and the most recent high tech gadgetry that Uncle Sam can buy, including "Flashlight" Tomahawk cruise missiles that release an energy pulse on detonation capable of disabling all things electrical, including automatic doorlocks on cars, commercial airliners' electronics and the White House communications systems; and to the chagrin of the USA, the sub gets hijacked. The hero in all of this is once again Jake Grafton, the naval officer who is connected in all the right places and written about in other Coonts' novels. Jake's character should have been expanded more in this book because if the reader is unfamiliar with Jake from previous novels, then his credibility as someone whom the USA would rely upon at a time of crisis is questionable. Other characters in the story making a return appearance from previous novels like Tommy Carmellini, the CIA operative whose irreverence at the bureaucracy seems believable, cry out for a bigger part. Coonts does, however, move the story along with his concise writing style and plot lines and before you know it, you'll be finished reading this book. If you liked "Hong Kong" and "Cuba" by this author, you'll certainly like this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great plot, disappointing finish
Review: This is a good book, and should make an great movie. The author proceeds the book with a proper disclaimer about technology, so the reader is warned ahead of time not to take it too literally. The writing is clear; Coonts is a very good writer. Some of his scenes are so realistic that when you put the book down, you are suprised at being safely back at home, not in the chaos that he creates in Washington and New York City. The plot, essentially a runaway hacker combined with a Star Wars scenario gone bad, starts out extremely well. The US' latest submarine and a guided missile, in apparently unrelated events, are stolen. The plot is developed in an interesting way. The shortcomings of the book for me were the selection of heros and the way he closes out the story. The characters are a little too much like plastic soldiers off the shelf. The biggest disappointment was the climax. The final situation is so patently unrealistic that I found myself sitting there thinking, "why is he ruining a good story with this silly final act?" It simply defies credibility that the US government, no matter how goofy the situation, would ever rely on a Marine Corps general and his wife, a two-star admiral (the hero of the book) and his wife, to sally forth into a virtual combat situation, thinly disguised with paste-on mustaches and Virginia Beach attire, to save the Nation. It is, regrettably, almost as if Coonts decided to create a comic, Chevy Chase-goes-to-war, ending to the book. Too bad. For the movie, I suggest a better ending. And don't count on the Europeans liking the movie at all; too close to the truth there. (Some of Coonts' geopolitical analyses, uttered by a Russian intelligence officer, are right on the mark and frightening in their implications.) By all means, if you like "Red October" you will like "America." Red October still sets the standard, which neither Clancy in subsequent works nor Coonts in this one, have equalled. I enjoyed "America" and look forward to the movie.
Rating:
Summary: great story, mediocre writing
Review: This is the first Stephen Coonts book I've read, and I have to say, this guy needs an editor in the worst way. He's a great storyteller. The plot drew me in quickly -- and it was actually rather prescient, having been published before the 9/11 tragedy. But the writing is just sloppy. The same piece of information is frequently delivered twice in the same scene, as though the author decided to move it and then forgot to delete the original mention. He refers to characters by their full names incongruously and often, sometimes more than once in a paragraph when the characters have already been introduced. (Occasionally they've been introduced more than once, as though the author had forgotten he'd already done it). Mystifying acronyms show up all over and aren't defined until later, but the NSA is for some reason referred to by its full name throughout the book. These seem like minor details, but they're distracting; to me, they disrupt the flow of the narrative. If you're not a writer, these things probably won't bother you. It really is a good story, and I'd love to see it made into a movie. Coonts, unlike Tom Clancy, describes technology in just enough detail to make it interesting, but not with the sort of excruciating obsession with minutiae that makes Clancy's books too bloated for me to bother with. Coonts' description of the sub <i>America's</i> control room is so vivid I can picture myself there. The characters are surprisingly believable for this sort of book, although some could do with a little more detail. But as a writer... well, by page 20 I was seriously considering marking the paperback up in red ink and mailing it back to the publisher with my resume and rates.
Rating:
Summary: The story sinks when the action moves to a cruise ship
Review: This time Stephen Coonts really let me down! I was getting ready to give "America" five stars until I hit the third-last chapter, at which point the action moves to a luxury cruise ship, and the good guys take their wives along for the jaunt! When the going gets tough, the tough guys (and their wives) go for a luxury cruise? No way! Until the last three chapters I really liked "America". OK, the plot is a bit farfetched, involving hackers meddling with the launch of a super-advanced military satellite and a CIA-trained team of Russians and East Germans stealing a likewise super-advanced US Navy submarine named "America". But if you can swallow the plot the story is very exciting, and the characterizations of the people in the book is fairly good. The submarine "America" and its advanced equipment and weapons are the real stars of the show. I especially loved the descriptions of the havoc created by the Tomahawk cruise missiles with new EMP (electromagnetic pulse) warheads, the attempts by two F-16 Fighting Falcons to shoot down the cruise missiles, and the underwater battle between "America" and two Los Angeles class submarines. At times like this Stephen Coonts is even better than Tom Clancy. There is also a whole array of bad guys who you can love to hate. The one who's presented best is the Russian captain Vladimir Kolnikov, the leader of the team that steals "America" and then inflicts major damage on the USA. Zelda Hudson, the American hacker who finds it only slightly challenging to re-program a satellite launch or to get into any of the Pentagon's weapons systems, is also a cool customer whose services are available to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the two top bad guys, the Frenchmen Antoine Jouany and Willi Schlegel, never get much coverage, remaining simply "the nasty Europeans" who want to challenge the dominance of the USA. It would have been nice if they got to play a larger role. But then comes the last three chapters, and major disappointment. Willi Schlegel happens to own a luxury cruise ship and decides to use it to rendezvous with "America" off the coast of Portugal. This is totally crazy - what bad guy in his right mind would involve hundreds of paying passengers and hundreds of non-combatant crew members in his criminal activities? Even crazier, the good guys then decide to get aboard the luxury cruise ship pretending to be ordinary passengers and they bring their wives along to provide cover. Of course the bad guys are on top of the situation and the next thing we know the good guys and their wives are being held at gunpoint! Is this dumb or what? I don't know how you feel about your wife (or husband), but deliberately and unnecessarily putting her (or him) in harm's way when going up against cold-blooded killers is not my idea of proper behavior. In summary, an exciting techno-thriller that's great until it breaches the reader's credulity when the action in the last three chapters moves to a luxury cruise ship and the good guys bring their wives along for the final confrontation. That twist in the plot is too much to swallow, and spoils the whole book.
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