Rating: 
Summary: Dismal
Review: Absolutely dismal. Harold Coyle used to write the best soldiering books. But Dead Hand simply [stinks]. The first (and only) firefight does not take place until page 300 something with the book, mercifully, near it's end. Even the editing [stinks], with spelling errors rampant throughout the book. (They're called "needle nose pliers" . . . not "needle nose plies".
How sad that Harold Coyle has sunk to this level.
Rating: 
Summary: Not among Coyle's best - 2 1/2 stars
Review: Although my thoughts are not as negative as many of the reviews listed here, Dead Hand is clearly not among Coyle's best works. The action and frequent battle scenes that typically fill Coyle's works were largely absent here. Instead, Coyle takes the reader on a journey of preparation that leads to the action at the end. During the build-up, Coyle goes on at length about the duty, honor, courage and valor of the soldier, regardless of rank or nation of origin. While this is clearly a noble position to take, the presentation of this theme seems to overwhelm.
Rating: 
Summary: Harold Coyle's Most Ambitious Effort To-Date
Review: As a big military novel fan, Harold Coyle is one of my favorite authors. No one captures the individual emotionality of going to war -- the apprehension, the camaraderie, the burdens of leadership, and the hardships of combat -- better than Harold Coyle.Mr. Coyle's novels usually highlight a specific theater of operations, be it Iran (Sword Point), Egypt (Bright Star), the Civil War (Savage Wilderness and Until the End, which, incidentally, are two of his best), Columbia (Code of Honor), Mexico (Trial By Fire), or, more recently, Slovakia (God's Children), rather than playing on a world stage, like say a Tom Clancy. In his effort to feature elite troops from the British SAS, the French Foreign Legion and the American Special Forces Group, and to pit them against experienced Russian commandos, Mr. Coyle attempts one of his most ambitious works to-date. The international premise, and its establishment in the first half of the novel, unfortunately, is highly implausible. Without divulging all of the specifics, let's just say it involves an asteroid hitting the earth and a rogue Russian general using this natural catastrophe to leverage his regional nuclear weapons to blackmail Moscow and the West. The regional commandeering of the missiles is made possible by a secret doomsday mechanism (code named Dead Hand, and reminiscent of the doomsday device in the movie classic, Dr. Strangelove), which is triggered coincidentally by the errant meterorite. Fortunately, Mr. Coyle's emotional description of battle is without peer, and true fans of his will find the second half of the book as riveting as any of his earlier works. Mr. Coyle's story, on a geopolitical plane, doesn't achieve the level of intrigue and complexity of a Tom Clancy novel. But even Tom Clancy doesn't capture the emotional view from the field as well as Harold Coyle. Mr. Coyle's novels aren't just about war and conflict; they are about personal sacrifices made for the accomplishment of a greater goal (which is, of course, a great metaphor for life in general and why his books are so meaningful). If you'd like to experience the timeless and universal anguish and elation felt by all men and women (combatants) in war; and if you'd like to believe that there are causes in this world more noble than those faced by most of us in our everyday lives, Harold Coyle's Dead Hand is a very satisfying read. I enjoyed it immensely.
Rating:
Summary: INTERESTING PREMISE
Review: AS USUAL, COYLE COMES THROUGH. GOOD PREMISE AND USUALLY FAST PACED. AN INTERESTING READ.
Rating:
Summary: Is there an option for partial stars?
Review: Being a big fan, I really looked forward to "Dead hand." Having read it, I have to ask, did Harold Coyle write it? It is loaded with errors. Some of this is simply poor editing, for example, a tank hull is called a "haul" several times, Mount St. Helens is called "Helena," the NSC (National Security Council) is called "NSA" (acronym for National Security Agency). Many errors are more egregious. The Army Chief of Staff launches a strike. The Chief does not command any forces or have legal authority to order any strikes. A combatant commander, which the Chief is not, has to do that. U.S. Special Forces are mentioned but not Delta Force, the U.S. unit most likely to be involved in the mission described. The special ops team members are described in terms that would embarrass even green regular force units. They seem immature, mercurial, and uncooperative. A weapons expert "jerks" a trigger. Only a steady pull will get the shot on target. A Special Forces colonel makes a phone call home to his wife when he is in isolation before a mission. Strictly forbidden. British SAS unit is described with troopers that are corporals and privates. In the real SAS they have sergeants and higher. SAS has a lot of military courtesy and use of "Sir" when an NCO speaks to an officer team-leader. Not done in the real SAS. SAS goes on a mission with a team made up of expendables found in the regiment rather than with an established team. Very highly unlikely. A shaped charge is described as being so powerful it will go through a missile silo blast door designed to protect a silo against all but a direct strike by a nuclear weapon. The charge will not only pierce the doors but the missile warhead section and then down to the missile fuel below. And one man can carry this charge. Absolutely incredible. The shaped charge principle of operation is described in detail twice, incorrectly, and poorly both times. A French Foreign Legion demo sergeant fabricates shaped charges himself when many rugged and expertly designed and fabricated ones are available. The shaped charge is air dropped and then carried cross-country with the blasting cap installed. This violates basic instruction on explosives. The blasting cap is always carried away from the charge, preferably by someone other than the charge carrier, is well padded and protected, and only installed at the firing point. A special ops team leader is switched mid-air enroute to the drop zone. At the last minute, a scratch special ops team is put together from the remains of several national teams. It departs on the big mission without planning, organizing, or rehearsing because "it would take too much time." The team leader doesn't even know who is carrying the demolitions crucial to the mission. A special ops team moves cross-country headed for the target. All are staring down following the steps of the man in front. This violates basic patrol discipline and would not be expected in elite units. A 40 millimeters grenade is described as being "baseball sized." In fact, 40 mm is almost exactly golf ball sized. The saddest thing about this is that the research to get it right would have been so easy. There are several excellent non-fiction special ops books around including "Blackhawk Down" by Bowden and "The Commandos" by Waller.
Rating:
Summary: Harold Coyle, where are you?
Review: Being a big fan, I really looked forward to "Dead hand." Having read it, I have to ask, did Harold Coyle write it? It is loaded with errors. Some of this is simply poor editing, for example, a tank hull is called a "haul" several times, Mount St. Helens is called "Helena," the NSC (National Security Council) is called "NSA" (acronym for National Security Agency). Many errors are more egregious. The Army Chief of Staff launches a strike. The Chief does not command any forces or have legal authority to order any strikes. A combatant commander, which the Chief is not, has to do that. U.S. Special Forces are mentioned but not Delta Force, the U.S. unit most likely to be involved in the mission described. The special ops team members are described in terms that would embarrass even green regular force units. They seem immature, mercurial, and uncooperative. A weapons expert "jerks" a trigger. Only a steady pull will get the shot on target. A Special Forces colonel makes a phone call home to his wife when he is in isolation before a mission. Strictly forbidden. British SAS unit is described with troopers that are corporals and privates. In the real SAS they have sergeants and higher. SAS has a lot of military courtesy and use of "Sir" when an NCO speaks to an officer team-leader. Not done in the real SAS. SAS goes on a mission with a team made up of expendables found in the regiment rather than with an established team. Very highly unlikely. A shaped charge is described as being so powerful it will go through a missile silo blast door designed to protect a silo against all but a direct strike by a nuclear weapon. The charge will not only pierce the doors but the missile warhead section and then down to the missile fuel below. And one man can carry this charge. Absolutely incredible. The shaped charge principle of operation is described in detail twice, incorrectly, and poorly both times. A French Foreign Legion demo sergeant fabricates shaped charges himself when many rugged and expertly designed and fabricated ones are available. The shaped charge is air dropped and then carried cross-country with the blasting cap installed. This violates basic instruction on explosives. The blasting cap is always carried away from the charge, preferably by someone other than the charge carrier, is well padded and protected, and only installed at the firing point. A special ops team leader is switched mid-air enroute to the drop zone. At the last minute, a scratch special ops team is put together from the remains of several national teams. It departs on the big mission without planning, organizing, or rehearsing because "it would take too much time." The team leader doesn't even know who is carrying the demolitions crucial to the mission. A special ops team moves cross-country headed for the target. All are staring down following the steps of the man in front. This violates basic patrol discipline and would not be expected in elite units. A 40 millimeters grenade is described as being "baseball sized." In fact, 40 mm is almost exactly golf ball sized. The saddest thing about this is that the research to get it right would have been so easy. There are several excellent non-fiction special ops books around including "Blackhawk Down" by Bowden and "The Commandos" by Waller.
Rating:
Summary: Losing his touch
Review: Dead Hand is an example of what happens when a good author runs out of ideas. The plot is appealing enough - we Americans LOVE renegade Russian generals - but even that may be starting to wear a little thin. Unfortunately the characters need lots more work, the story line seems to be jumbled collection of disconnected scenarios, and the small unit combat actions - the passages which Harold Coyle has always been so good at - are pretty much absent from the book. Mr. Coyle's musings on the nature of military leadership are borrowed from Ted Fehrenbach's study of Korea, "This Kind of War" and the description of the meteor strike reminds me a little too much of Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". Dead Hand leaves me with the feeling that the book was written in a great rush to meet a contract date. It also leaves me feeling that a good writer has become burnt out.
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to par with his other works
Review: During the coldest moments of the Cold War, the Communist regime concluded that the West had superior capability with a second strike that could wipe out the Soviet retaliation. As a deterrent and the ultimate eye for an eye response, the Soviet Union creates DEAD HAND, an offensive nuclear retaliatory system that becomes triggered by massive destruction that needs no human operator. The Soviet Union has since crumbled, but DEAD HAND quietly remains activated. Nereus 1991 HWC, an asteroid on a collision course with Siberia, has the strike force potential to trigger DEAD HAND. A race against time begins to deactivate the doomsday machine as the crash lights up Siberia in a way that makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like harmless firecrackers rather than deadly weapons of war. However, as the heroic military team advance on the mission to save the world, not everyone in Russia wants to abort DEAD HAND. DEAD HAND is an action-packed global thriller that never slows so readers better take a big breath at the start. The story line is an updated slight twist of Dr. Strangelove without the keen satirical blade of the movie. The characters are heroic and intrepid, but they seem slim. Still this techno-military thriller will please those readers who want action to the nth degree and is a sure best seller for Harold Coyle who always provides a one stop reading experience. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Goodbye Mr. Coyle
Review: For years I have been an ardent fan of Mr. Coyles books. "Dead Hand" changed that right from the start. So far the authors books have always been well researched and that was one of the reasons I loved them. Usually books of US authors are less than badly researched, so Mr. Coyle was a refreshing change in this habit. Apparently he now follows the lack of interest of his fellow American authors. Alone in the first 80 pages I have discovered a lot of crude factual mistakes, based on poor research. Here just the ones which really turned me angry:
1. The selection training of the SAS Regiment is done in the Welsh Brecon Beacons and not in the Highlands of Scotland.
2. Sergeant Major is not a rank in the British Army but a posting, the rank of a British sergeant major is usually Warrant Officer 1 or 2.
3. The base of the SAS Regiment is like depicted in the book in Hereford but Hereford is not in Scotland but in Western England on the border to Wales (The County of Hereford and Worcester). Any book about the Regiment would have shown that to Mr. Coyle.
4. The mansion in which the British broke Enigma was not called Blenchly Park like Coyle wrote but Bletchley Park and anybody knowing a bit about WWII knows that.
5. The British agency dealing with communications security and surveillance is not MI5 but GCHQ Cheltenham (Government Communications Headquarters). A bit of reading about British services would have revealed that.
These were just the worst mistakes and I only started reading but it shows an US tendency to not giving a damn about the rest of the world, a tendency on being centered on the Northamerican continent. I would call this tendency ignorance. That Mr. Coyle has finally fallen for this ignorance is very sorry. As I always finish a book I started reading I will finish it but I won't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed "The Ten Thousand" and others. Mr. Coyle already started this ignorance in "The Children of God" where the only peacekeepers mentioned were US soldiers despite the fact that worldwide only a small number of peacekeepers are members of the US military. The plot itself of "Dead Hand" is what I usually call toilette literature - something you read while sitting on the toilette performing some bodily functions. It is far too far fetched and unbelievable and badly written. This was definitely the last novel of Harold Coyle I bought.
Rating:
Summary: An absolutely dreadful waste of time...
Review: From factual errors concerning hardware (ex. PSM pistols and AK-74 rifles DO NOT use the same ammunition), to cliched characters, to a plot that seems to have been computer generated,to a climax that was as predictable as it was unaffecting, the faults of this book are legion. I could have lived with all that, however, but for the self-indulgent, sanctimonious blathering about soldiers and their duty that actually forms the bulk of "Dead Hand." Clearly, the author didn't really want to tell a story, he wanted to preach a sermon praising his beloved "warrior ethic.". The result is a boring story thinly coating an even more boring lecture. Don't buy this book.
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