The Mudslinger Sanction

Rating:
Summary: The Mudslinger Sanction; Take a deep breath now!
Review: The Mudslinger Sanction: Take a deep breath, you'll not get another chance!

"The first time I jumped off this cliff I might have been all of four years old. And see that little ledge, Sweetheart, way down the rock face over there? That's where the wind put me down." The boy, now a man, has come back to a scene of his childhood with his beloved, and, confident he has lost none of his powers, persuades her to jump with him. "They plunged as a single person into the suddenly silent void. And from the murky depths a gruesome, grisly graveyard rushed gratefully upward to greet them."

Can you top this opener? If so, stop reading now. But you can't... so read on!

Jim Foster, the hero of Then Is The Power, has a bounty on his head, set by two world powers, Russia and the United States. He'd previously stopped a probable nuclear war by using his mental control of the wind to gut the Russian embassy in Washington DC, then to empty the reflecting pool between the Washgton and Lincoln monuments of water and sludge, and to dump the entire mess atop the White House. But the superpowers are not grateful. Instead, they consider Jim a world-class terrorist and hire two bounty hunters to bring him in dead or alive: sinister Dutchman Nils Van Oot, hired by both powers, and the Norwegian butcher Bolwerk, working for the Russians. The U.S. president has also engaged the FBI to mount an independent manhunt for the man now known as the Mudslinger.

Foster has disappeared without a trace, but not his partner in saving the world from nuclear disaster, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Whittier. The doctor becomes the key to snaring the Mudslinger. The FBI is maintaining a stakeout near his home, and the two bounty hunters converge there to kidnap Whittier. The butcher Bolwerk arrives first and snares the victim; Van Oot appears shortly after; Jim Foster and his sweetheart Trish come to the rescue. But the nest is empty.

There follows a magnificent chase with a severely injured Gordon Whittier as bait: first to a desolate, half-dismantled oil-storage tank, Ekofisk, the diameter of a football stadium, awash in the frigid North Sea. But it does not end there. The concerned parties converge again on El Hierro, smallest and least known of the Canary Islands, where Van Oot maintains his headquarters.

The surprising ending includes a group of FBI operatives in a Keystone Cops finish.

Gerald W. Mills again shows his mastery of technologies of all sorts: computer, helicopter, oil refining; his knowledge of geography, geology, weather patterns, medicine, the vagaries of the law, and the power of the press, not to mention his command of English, his wit, and his breakneck storytelling. Did I mention his ability to paint characters we come to know better than our own family?

You can take a breath now.

Rating:
Summary: The Mudslinger Sanction; Take a deep breath now!
Review: The Mudslinger Sanction: Take a deep breath, you'll not get another chance!

"The first time I jumped off this cliff I might have been all of four years old. And see that little ledge, Sweetheart, way down the rock face over there? That's where the wind put me down." The boy, now a man, has come back to a scene of his childhood with his beloved, and, confident he has lost none of his powers, persuades her to jump with him. "They plunged as a single person into the suddenly silent void. And from the murky depths a gruesome, grisly graveyard rushed gratefully upward to greet them."

Can you top this opener? If so, stop reading now. But you can't... so read on!

Jim Foster, the hero of Then Is The Power, has a bounty on his head, set by two world powers, Russia and the United States. He'd previously stopped a probable nuclear war by using his mental control of the wind to gut the Russian embassy in Washington DC, then to empty the reflecting pool between the Washgton and Lincoln monuments of water and sludge, and to dump the entire mess atop the White House. But the superpowers are not grateful. Instead, they consider Jim a world-class terrorist and hire two bounty hunters to bring him in dead or alive: sinister Dutchman Nils Van Oot, hired by both powers, and the Norwegian butcher Bolwerk, working for the Russians. The U.S. president has also engaged the FBI to mount an independent manhunt for the man now known as the Mudslinger.

Foster has disappeared without a trace, but not his partner in saving the world from nuclear disaster, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Whittier. The doctor becomes the key to snaring the Mudslinger. The FBI is maintaining a stakeout near his home, and the two bounty hunters converge there to kidnap Whittier. The butcher Bolwerk arrives first and snares the victim; Van Oot appears shortly after; Jim Foster and his sweetheart Trish come to the rescue. But the nest is empty.

There follows a magnificent chase with a severely injured Gordon Whittier as bait: first to a desolate, half-dismantled oil-storage tank, Ekofisk, the diameter of a football stadium, awash in the frigid North Sea. But it does not end there. The concerned parties converge again on El Hierro, smallest and least known of the Canary Islands, where Van Oot maintains his headquarters.

The surprising ending includes a group of FBI operatives in a Keystone Cops finish.

Gerald W. Mills again shows his mastery of technologies of all sorts: computer, helicopter, oil refining; his knowledge of geography, geology, weather patterns, medicine, the vagaries of the law, and the power of the press, not to mention his command of English, his wit, and his breakneck storytelling. Did I mention his ability to paint characters we come to know better than our own family?

You can take a breath now.