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: 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: 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 won't have to burn up too many 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".