Crossfire

Rating:
Summary: Not one of his best
Review: A good read, but not one of his best. Check out Joshua's Hammer - now that is a great read ;)

Rating:
Summary: Full of action and riveting
Review: Again David Hagberg does a superb job. Russia is in bad need of funds, after the fall of Communism. US plans to send 125 tons in gold to Iran to preserve their presence in the Middle-East. Old hard-liners in Russia plan to steal the gold and blame everything on the ex-CIA agent. Full of heart-stopping action, switching plots, devious characters - a great book.

Rating:
Summary: Hagberg In Usual Fine Form
Review: Hagberg aka Sean Flannery writes a compelling spy yarn, no matter what nome de plume he writes under. Ranks right up there with books like Flannery's Moving Targets and Counterstrike. This tale of the fight between McGarvey and Kurshin is one to read, even if you haven't read any of the others before this.

Rating:
Summary: Another Good One
Review: I have read a number of Hagberg's Books. They are all similar, including this one. Highly recommend. Hagberg is under-rated as an author.

No deep thoughts just good writing to keep you entertained. Quick moving smooth writing. Do not try to disect too much, this is not brain surgery, just read and enjoy. Bargain entertainment as per Tom Clancy - and all plausible.

Jack in Toronto

Rating:
Summary: More magic from the master of action adventures.
Review: Kirk McGarvey is still at it. Protecting the world from people that would kill James Bond. Crossfire is a cross the world action adventure that involves many twists and turns that was an adventurous read, but the enemy McGarvey is after should have been someone else. But still, it is a great book for people who like 'continuing' adventures. You should buy and read Countdown before you read Crossfire.

Rating:
Summary: an Exciting Action Book!
Review: Kirk McGarvey once again gets to do battle with his arch enemy Arkady Kurshin. McGarvey had thought that he had killed Arkady Kurshin on the cosst of Syria. Kurshin survived his battle with McGarvey by killing his rescuers,some Syrian troops. Kurshin makes his return by blowing up the American embassy in Paris and placing the blame on McGarvey. McGarvey rescues several people from the exploded embassy including a woman from Argentina who is searching for a sunken Nazi submarine. She hooks up with McGarvey and they find the submarine only to discover that it has fake gold. They obtain a list from the submarine telling the na,mes of Nazis who know where tje gold is. In the meantime the Americans have returned the Iranians their assets in the form of gold. Arkady Kurshin and some of his KGB gang are going to steal it. McGarvey stops them buts gets badly wounded. Kurshin is also wounded in the battle. McGarvey and the woman find the location of the gold. A tremendous battle takes place in a castle in Lisbon involving McGarvey,Kurshin,Israeli agents,and guards who work for the Nazis. Kurshin is finally killed. A very good read. This was a book that I could reccomend to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: an Exciting Action Book!
Review: Kirk McGarvey once again gets to do battle with his arch enemy Arkady Kurshin. McGarvey had thought that he had killed Arkady Kurshin on the cosst of Syria. Kurshin survived his battle with McGarvey by killing his rescuers,some Syrian troops. Kurshin makes his return by blowing up the American embassy in Paris and placing the blame on McGarvey. McGarvey rescues several people from the exploded embassy including a woman from Argentina who is searching for a sunken Nazi submarine. She hooks up with McGarvey and they find the submarine only to discover that it has fake gold. They obtain a list from the submarine telling the na,mes of Nazis who know where tje gold is. In the meantime the Americans have returned the Iranians their assets in the form of gold. Arkady Kurshin and some of his KGB gang are going to steal it. McGarvey stops them buts gets badly wounded. Kurshin is also wounded in the battle. McGarvey and the woman find the location of the gold. A tremendous battle takes place in a castle in Lisbon involving McGarvey,Kurshin,Israeli agents,and guards who work for the Nazis. Kurshin is finally killed. A very good read. This was a book that I could reccomend to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: As exciting as it is Explosive...
Review: Our hero, Kirk McGarvey, makes an explosive comeback in this thrilling adventure which jumps from one place on the globe to another with the speed of a Tomahawk missile. I have long felt that McGarvey was a combination of James Bond, Jack Ryan, Dirk Pitt & Indiana Jones rolled into one...and he is in TOP form in 'Crossfire'.

Arkady Kurshin, who Kirk thought he had 'taken care of' in his previous adventure comes back to serve up a heaping dose of revenge against the one man who has turned his life upsidedown and who very nearly killed him. Arkady is one of those villains you almost root for--ALMOST, because he is so much fun as the bad guy, and gives Kirk such a run for his money that you are left almost breathless as you read along.

I also VERY much enjoyed the addition of the submarine in the plot. WELL done, Mr. Hagberg. I enjoyed virtually everything about this novel...in fact as I look back on it, I cannot think of ANYTHING which I did NOT enjoy. Kirk McGarvey is easily one of the most entertaining characters I know in print today, and as long as he keeps making comebacks in Hagberg's novels, I will be lining up to purchase his books. 'Crossfire' rivals almost anything written by Clancy, and for sheer adventure/action, Kirk can keep pace with Dirk Pitt any day. If I had to sum up this novel in one word, it'd be this: FUN.

Rating:
Summary: As exciting as it is Explosive...
Review: Our hero, Kirk McGarvey, makes an explosive comeback in this thrilling adventure which jumps from one place on the globe to another with the speed of a Tomahawk missile. I have long felt that McGarvey was a combination of James Bond, Jack Ryan, Dirk Pitt & Indiana Jones rolled into one...and he is in TOP form in 'Crossfire'.

Arkady Kurshin, who Kirk thought he had 'taken care of' in his previous adventure comes back to serve up a heaping dose of revenge against the one man who has turned his life upsidedown and who very nearly killed him. Arkady is one of those villains you almost root for--ALMOST, because he is so much fun as the bad guy, and gives Kirk such a run for his money that you are left almost breathless as you read along.

I also VERY much enjoyed the addition of the submarine in the plot. WELL done, Mr. Hagberg. I enjoyed virtually everything about this novel...in fact as I look back on it, I cannot think of ANYTHING which I did NOT enjoy. Kirk McGarvey is easily one of the most entertaining characters I know in print today, and as long as he keeps making comebacks in Hagberg's novels, I will be lining up to purchase his books. 'Crossfire' rivals almost anything written by Clancy, and for sheer adventure/action, Kirk can keep pace with Dirk Pitt any day. If I had to sum up this novel in one word, it'd be this: FUN.

Rating:
Summary: Over long and underdevloped
Review: With tons of explosions, the only thing you can say about this book is this: boy, does it blow!

In "Crossfire", a clique of distaff Soviets are hoping to pay there way out of the chaos that is the "Former Soviet Union" using a stolen cache of Iranian gold. That's right, another story about fanatic and backward Soviets who don't know the meaning of the words "we lost the cold-war!" First, for reasons that aren't immediately clear (that's putting it mildly - very little becomes clear in "Crossfire") these post-Soviet baddies must ice a retired CIA operative named Kirk McGarvey, Hagberg's hero. Although Hagberg's Russians kill with little compunction, McGarvey's death requires irony, and his downfall begins with the Russians framing him for the bombing of the US Embassy in Paris. Now on the run from just about everybody, McGarvey hooks up with a beautiful woman and decides to track down the conspiracy, which now includes a homicidal Ukranian named Kurshin, a man thought dead since McGarvey thew him into the Mediterranean. Luckily for Kirk, Kurshin is gunning for him as well (that is that Kirk won't have to look that far; "far" being a relative word, considering that this is the sort of novel that bills itself as an international thriller "From Paris to Rio - Washington to Tehran!". At least McGarvey can rack up frequent flier miles) In South America, McGarvey tangles with more hired guns as he investigates a sunken U-Boat possibly loaded with Nazi gold. Kurshin, never far behind, cleans up any characters McGarvey allows to live. Some Israelis show up but, appearing in the parts of the book dealing with sunken Nazis, they are the sort of wise and kind (comparatively) Mossad agents who only use espionage to cleanse the world of the evil of the Holocaust; the badass Mossad agents thought employed against Israel's mideast enemies never appear.

With little resolved or explained, the novel shifts to Iran and a shipment of gold that once belonged to the Shah that the US decides to return to Iran. Knowing of the bullion delivery, the evil post-Soviets decide to make a grab for it themselves in an operation that looks doomed from the start (using strategic bombers that need long runways, they'll swoop down in the desert and just haul the gold away. Yeah, that can happen).

Everything in this novel is either unnecessarily complicated or simply suspends your belief. Nothing in the plot even remotely suggests why anybody could believe McGarvey would want to bomb our embassy. Worse - just wondering about whether McGarvey could be the kind of guy to commit wholesale "collateral damage" will bring you to the unsettling realization that McGarvey, for his exploits, is a boring guy - he's like Bond, without the expensive tastes, hot women, gadgets or one-liners. Then there's Kurshin, who seems addicted to killing people - early on, he warms himself by contemplating McGarvey's murder. Unfortunately, like McGarvey, Kurshin is also a bore - murder is basically all he does. He kills those who happen to cross his path while following McGarvey, he kills participants in his schemes once they've outlived there usefulness; he even kills the poor slob who has to drag the Ukranian across the desert after their big scheme fails. He's like the masked killer in any of those teen-slasher pics (and this book is pretty hefty proof that the spy-thriller really needs a shot of the self-parody treatment that we got in "Scream"). "Crossfire" would be bad enough if it didn't recall another book Hagberg wrote under his Sean Flannery alias - "Kilo Option". Like "Cross", "Kilo" involved plenty of explosions, a hunky and resourceful hero, baddies with an unnecessarily complicated scheme, an over-written but under-developed plot, Iranians who are either good or evil depending on how religious they are, and (most annoying of all) a psychotic Ukranian who kills according to compulsion, and can't be killed himself - this one named "Yernin". (see the difference?) Even Kurshin's getting tossed into the Mediterranean by McGarvey in a prior book hints at Yernin's fate at the end of "Kilo". What's the point of having a pen name if you write esentially identical books under both names?

Above all of the book's other flaws is this one - there really is no plot, no story that explains or links the pointless slaughter perpetrated throughout the book. Since "Crossfire" is obviously part of some larger series that will pit McGarvey against Yernin (sorry, I meant Kurshin), I can forgive its reference to other books for needed plot devices. But that doesn't explain how this book lacks a true beginning, middle and end. I mean, how did Hagberg know where to start and end this tedious book? In short, keep out of this "Crossfire".