Two years after shocking Washington D.C. with a brutal betrayal, General Terrence Sanderson waits in the shadows for the right moment to demonstrate the grim necessity of his resurrected Black Flag program. His opportunity may arrive sooner than expected.
At the CIA, Karl Berg makes a disturbing discovery. Russian Federation intelligence services are quietly scouring Europe to find Anatoly Reznikov, a rogue Russian scientist at the top of every nation's WMD watch list.
Obsessed with reviving a bio-weapons program long banned by the Russian government, Reznikov has found partners willing to fund the project--with unimaginable consequences.
Berg goes "off the books," sending one of Sanderson's Black Flag teams to track down Reznikov. Led by Daniel Petrovich, the team races to stay one step ahead of a twisted conspiracy aimed at crippling the West.
In the end, nothing is what it seems in this gritty world of covert operatives and back room Washington agendas.
Book 1: Black Flagged Alpha Book 2: Black Flagged Redux Book 3: Black Flagged Apex Book 4: Black Flagged Vektor
Steven graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1993, receiving a bachelor of science in English literature. He served the next eight years on active duty, traveling the world as a naval officer assigned to various Navy and Marine Corps units. His extensive journey spanned the globe, including a two-year tour of duty in Japan and travel to more than twenty countries throughout Asia and the Middle East.
From enforcing United Nations sanctions against Iraq as a maritime boarding officer in the Arabian Gulf, to directing aircraft bombing runs and naval gunfire strikes as a Forward Air Controller (FAC) assigned to a specialized Marine Corps unit, Steven's "in-house" experience with a wide range of regular and elite military units brings a unique authenticity to his thrillers.
He still wakes up at "zero dark thirty" to write for most of the day. When "off duty," he spends as much time as possible outdoors or travelling with his family--and dog.
Steven is the bestselling author of ten novels and several novellas, including a commissioned trilogy of novellas based on the popular Wayward Pines series. His canon of work includes the popular Black Flagged Series, a gritty, no-holds barred covert operations and espionage saga; The Perseid Collapse series, a post-apocalyptic thriller epic chronicling the events surrounding an inconceivable attack on the United States; and The Fractured State series, a near future, dystopian thriller trilogy set in the drought ravaged southwest
You can contact Steven directly by email (stevekonkoly@striblingmedia.com) or through his blog (www.stevenkonkoly.com).
Since the decline of the Soviet Union, marking the end of the Cold War, authors have been struggling to find a suitable new archenemy. The instability and unpredictability of North Korea have proven a good replacement; for awhile. Since the infamous attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, radical terrorism moves to the top of the list of enemies. This role is solidified after the Middle East revolution started in 2010 with the Tunisian Revolution and spreading throughout the area. This new nemesis has proved to be more elusive, volatile, and terrifying than Moscow ever was. General Terrence (Terry) Sanderson has established a clandestine and scrupulous special operations division that fits neatly between the cracks of the other recognized investigative and operational organizations. Men and women are recruited and trained to kill at close quarters or assassinate at a great distance.
Black Flagged Redux is an international terrorist/espionage novel, filled with facts and figures but lacking in a clear-cut hero or heroine. It seems that everyone has their, not so clean fingers, in a very big pie. If I could name the heroine of this story, it would be “Crabby Girl.” Spanning the world, different organizations, on both sides of the line, vie for position and an advantage for their own individual crusades. The acronyms just slightly outnumber the supporting cast as they wage their own individual battles. The Bioweapons / Chemical Threat Assessment Division discover the existence weaponized encephalitis that was almost seventy percent fatal when it is added to the water supply of a Russian city. It was developed by Anatoly Reznikov, a Russian dissident with a grudge against his government and the city of Monchegorsk, on the Kola Peninsula. The Russian government tries to cover-up the attack for obvious reasons.
Steven Konkoly demonstrates an expertise in weapons, tactics, and intelligence operations but his knowledge of Russian surnames is sadly wanting. Dr. Valeria Cherkasov should be Cherkasova as the family name changes with each sex. This is just a small, nitpicky criticism. I’m sure this story will stimulate an erection for any weapons aficionado or survivalist. Bullets fly, without consideration of collateral kills or damages. I don’t have to think twice about reading other works by this author.
The Black Flagged series is absolutely DOPE. This book was even better than I anticipated! Konkoly is one the best discoveries of 2017.
The series is heating up as the Black Flag Operative program develops in Buenos Aires, South America and sent on a series of impossible missions. Daniel and Jessica Petrovich are very unique, but there's plenty of other interesting characters, agencies, agents, groups that deliver some delicious conflict and tension throughout the book. Don't miss it!!
Steven Konkoly turns in a taut and compelling thriller that, despite a slower start, quickly surpasses the first book in the “Black Flagged” series. The cast and geography are bigger, though by no means overwhelming, and the plot ticks along like a well-crafted watch. Konkoly has a real knack for putting the reader right into the thick of a firefight, maintaining a fine balance between description and detail that never gets tedious or repetitive. His characters are distinctive and enjoyable and, best of all, are drawn in (realistic) subtleties of grays rather than blacks and whites.
I particularly enjoyed the team’s foray into the doomed city of Monchegorsk, Russia, whose water supply has been poisoned by a weaponized grade of encephalitis, causing violence and madness on a massive scale. It would have been easy for Konkoly to have turned this into a zombie thriller at this point, but to his credit he maintains a plausible realism that serves the book much better, instilling it with a chilling touch of outright horror (ie - Dr. Valeria Cherkasov’s apartment) before moving on.
I’m giving this book 4 ½ stars, my one complaint (being a personal bias) was that the description of weapons, transports, tactical equipment (right down to the model number) was distracting, nudging me out of the story at times. Very likely, this won’t bother most readers; in fact, hardcore readers of the genre will probably consider it a plus, but I don’t have the military background for such subtle distinctions, and would have preferred more general terms that flowed better with the prose of the story.
A fun, fast paced, multi-faceted, action packed, military, CIA, al-Qaeda, covert, shoot em up, espionage, death, destruction, terror plot, world spanning adventure. Yep, that about covers it.
Of course, being Book #2 in a trilogy, there is much unfinished business, and a "what is that all about" epilogue. But I enjoyed the wild ride of this story, and especially enjoyed the parts with my favorite character, Jessica. In fact, I hope she gets more scenes in Book #3, which I look forward to reading when it comes out.
Another great book in the series. The attention to detail is amazing without being overbearing or boring. Great character development and fantastic action. On to the next book in the series.
Nothing replaces real-life experience in writers of military black-ops adventures. Steven Konkoly’s in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of the ordinary Special Forces soldier’s life as well as his well researched exposition of Pentagon and Washington politics and bureaucracy make the author a rising star. More importantly though is the plausible reality of the premise of his book and the boots-on-the-ground descriptions.The author manages a complex plot expertly and does not get bogged down in the technical detail. The story races ahead and keeps the reader's interest. Enough of the reviews have detailed the story, so I wont be a spoiler. The action takes place, most of the time, in the mouths of the characters and the pace is usually breathtaking. Sometimes the author belabours connections to the first novel in the series and filling new readers in with explanations about what happened in the earlier book become over detailed and longwinded. I am looking forward to the next installment. I could not put it down.
First off, a thousand apologies to the author, Steve Knonkoly. I had brought the bundle containing the three books which cover a story arc in the hope that it would somehow make me finish faster. It didn't. This review is the first of three steps in clearing that backlog. Biological warfare. Compared to nuclear weapons, it has not been used as much by spy/military thriller authors for an epic threat. Which is a bit of a shame. Cheaper than nukes, it's a whole lot more flexible for any antagonist to utilize and deploy. In "Black Flagged Redux", the author uses biological weapons as the threat of the novel, but instead of it being your usual counter-terrorist thriller, he spins a story of a duel between titans and how an aggrieved man wants to burn down his country with one of the most rare and horrific biological weapons ever devised. Now to the review. What happens when to save yourself, you need to make a deal with the devil you know?
The story starts a year after the first book. The main character, Daniel Petrovich is taking out the trash for an "investor" of the Black Flagged organization he's a member of. The trash being some Chechen gangsters who are attempting to muscle in on an Argentinian port run by the investor. Using a sniper rifle, he completes the task in an efficient fashion. We then cut to three men on a private jet. One of them is a Russian scientist on the run, the other two are Al Quaeda terrorists in the market for a biological weapon. The scientist suddenly kills them and vanishes into thin air. In America, the FBI, who were utterly screwed over in the first book, gain leads to the location of the party responsible and begin clamoring for a rendition operation to be set up. And in a Northern Russian city, a whole town goes insane forcing the Russian military to conduct a mop-up operation of horrific proportions. All these threads come together in a deliciously murky cocktail of morally ambiguous decisions, gunfire and biological warfare, perfectly setting up a three book story arc.
In terms of plot, Black Flagged Redux tops its predecessor like any second book should. It's grander in scope with a bit of Vince Flynn coming into the original mix of Ludlum and Forsyth. The settings are more varied and fun. From a violent road trip into Central Asia, a tense infiltration of a Russian city full of the truly walking dead and with a race across Stockholm to acquire one of the most dangerous men in the world, it's a major step up from the original book which was set in the American Eastern Seaboard. The action has also been ramped up from the previous book. Two standouts are the violent Central Asian road trip where Petrovich and his colleagues resort to a UAV in order to get themselves out of a jam and the Stockholm climax, which is perhaps one of the best gunfights in post 9/11 spy fiction. The research is also fantastic. I commend the author for not falling for the usual mistake of using the FSB for Russian foreign intelligence. That falls under the SVR who, while not the antagonists, have their own agendas to pursue, and to do that, they have the SPETSNAZ unit no one knows about. Forget Spetsnaz GRU and FSB ALPHA. Meet ZASLON. They're basically the Russian federation's version of the CIA's Special Activities Division and while they do all they can to prevent information leaking out, Konkoly gives them a pretty plausible portrayal.
In terms of characters, Konkoly maintains the Forsyth-like moral ambiguity of the previous book. There are only the quick and the dead in the world of Black Flagged. This is best exemplified by Daniel Petrovich and his wife Jessica, both who rival Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill for post 9/11 spy fiction's deadliest couple. Mr Petrovich continues to fascinate. Is is a sociopath or merely "pathologically pragmatic"? The one thing that can be certain is that 3/4 of his moral compass has been ripped out, with the most important 1/4 remaining. He's well intentioned but some of the things he does might turn you off. His wife is also no slouch. When she's caught in a literal bind, she doesn't beg or cry. Instead, she works through all the options she has and once she's free, doesn't mess around with killing the ghosts from her past.
Next, there's General Terence Sanderson, one of my two favorite characters in the series. "Affably Evil" doesn't even begin to describe him. While a patriot who wants what's best for his country, he's the "devil you know", a good but amoral man. A innovator who was thrown into purgatory by more mediocre enemies who clashed with his vision for what the next generation intelligence operatives Sanderson outplays his enemies and those who, while desiring those who get results, hate and complain about how the results were gained. He's also incredibly funny to boot and pulls off a prank on some Navy SEALS, with...baking.
The third standout in this book is FBI director Shelby. He exemplifies that clash between traditional law enforcement and intelligence gatherers who work in the shadows. His morality is traditional black and white. And in a book where the main protagonists are in a profession that is a dark shade of gray, it leads to problems, with him being a whole block behind General Sanderson and company. Konkoly does well in portraying how his desire to bring down Sanderson evolves into a full blown obsession due to the colossal failure that ensures.
Overall, Black Flagged Redux is a fantastic start in what is known as the "core bundle". The plotting is top notch. The action is downright brutal and visceral. Konkoly has raised the stakes for his characters who apart from saving their own hides, have to contend with a very horrific threat to the west. And it is one of the few spy thrillers out there that focus on the SVR and ZASLON, a group who the author manages to make worthy foes for the formidable Black Flagged operators. There are two more books to review. In the meantime, read this one. It's as good as a Vince Flynn novel, but goes into far darker places.
This is a wonderful writer. I just recently found Steven Konkoly but this series has become one of my favorites. It follows plots that can be truly upsetting because it's so believable.
This is the second in the series and it was very good. Not quite as good as the first one, but very close...maybe more of a 3.8 than a 4.0. Konkoly is very good at keeping the story moving with realistic "special ops" action and supplying ample twists and turns of the plot to keep you interested. He's not too much into going in depth into characters which is very good if you prefer action and story that moves to the navel grazing that seems to interest some authors of the "psychological thriller" genre.
I'll certainly be back for the third book in the series.
Very good espionage/military action thriller in which an outlawed off-the-books crew tracks down and attempts to neutralize a terrorist bio-terror plot. One of the sub-plots deals with the FBI and the CIA each secretly working at cross-purposes. Another sub-plot deals with the main protagonists, a married couple, who are unsuccessfully trying to quit their special-forces team for a quiet life in retirement. I found the plot moved right along and the various political and bureaucratic subtleties added much interest. One VERY annoying habit this author has is to periodically throw in way too much technical detail about weapons and equipment. I don't think most readers care much about the specific pros and cons of each automatic weapon and throwing knife (or at least, I don't care!)
Before you read this book, you need to read the first book in the series: Black Flagged
Steven Konkoly writes a pretty darn good mystery / thriller, and I am glad I picked this one up. The author does a great job of getting you into the character's heads and what they are thinking, and the action is pretty much non-stop and not very many times where you will say "b.s." in terms of believablity from a layman's perspective. Similar to the first book in the series, this was one of those thrillers I couldn't put down. I'm looking forward to starting the next book in the series
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! Another editing project is now a published book. Black Flagged Redux is Book 2 in Steve Konkoly's Black Flagged series, and the adventures of Daniel and Jessica Petrovich continue with a vengeance.
The author is sponsoring a charity campaign, and a large portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Wounded Warrier Project (https://support.woundedwarriorproject...), so every little bit helps!
Black flagged Redux builds brilliantly from book one in the series. The action is almost non stop as our characters fight back against an Al Qaeda plot that will threaten millions across the western world despite the fact the US government are trying everything within their power to eliminate them. A complex and intriguing plot that will guarantee to thrill the most discerning thriller readers. Just make sure to read Black flagged first and I'm sure you'll be hoping, like me, Mr Konkoly has the next instalment available sooner rather than later.
This was the second book in his Black Flagged series and had even more action than the first! All the characters that I liked from the first book were in here with new challenges and adversaries. It was a really great (and almost stressful) read! Everything happening at once; who knows what's going to happen? What about these guys? Is she going to make it? What about the terror plot?
The questions were non-stop and I had to race through the excitement and watch multiple events unfold! It was amazing. I'm moving on to the third book asap!! Excellent book!
Redux doesn't move along at the same fast pace as Black Flagged did. Over all I was a little disappointed, but as Konkoly mentioned in his afterword, he changed his concept of where he wanted to go with this book. Hopefully he is setting up a third book with a faster paced plot.
I like his writing and he keeps it interesting but if I wanted to read a book about zombies I would get a book about them. Too much of the chemical aftermath. Wouldn't recommend
The first "Black Flag" book is a non-stop thrill ride. This second one gets there, but is a bit slower than other Konkoly books I've read because it goes all over the place, from country to country, from character to character, whilst setting the scene. And to be fair, there are a lot of scenes and characters to set, which will be the focus of this book, the following Black Flag book, and the crossover series as well.
The situation is that a nasty bio weapon has been created. It is stolen by its creator -- who is not quite right in the head -- and put to nefarious use.
As I say, once the setup is out of the way, we return to Konkoly's non-stop action style, laden with weaponry details, and tactics to stop the bad guys and whilst trying to stay alive.
It's tense and fast-paced and should appeal to lovers of action thrillers.
This is the second book in the series and it really helps to have read the first one, beforehand, so that you can get a better understanding of the main characters and what they've already been through.
To me, this is a mixture of Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Military, International Intrigue, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Agency type of Thriller genres.
A mentally deranged scientist is used by a terrorist group to formulate a compound to be utilized in turning a population into something unrecognizable. A group of highly trained former military are sent to find him and prevent an apocalyptic event. Will they be in time or is the world at risk?
Warning: There is Adult Language and Situations as well as lots of Violence.
Wow!!!!! Absolutely one of the best " tales " I have read not only word loaded from start to finish but intelligently word loaded. I needed a story like this right now in my life to keep my mind off real world issues and just read myself away into an alternative universe where every moment seem real and believable Thank You for that vacation from reality I am looking forward very much to book number three.some people write stories however you my friend create an alternate universe. See you on the other side Steven
Wow!!! Absolutely one of the best " tales " I have read not only for word loaded from start to finish
Redux is the second book in the Black Flagged series. You can read this as a standalone. But each book builds on the previous storylines so I suggest you read them in order. There is a lot of violence.
The book blurb adequately describes the storyline so I'm not going to repeat that all of that info here. This is a fast paced action packed book. There are clues in the storyline that keep you guessing what will be revealed next. As usual, not everyone and everything is as it seems. I'm looking forward to reading more of these books.
When.I first started these books, after seeing the amount in the series, I expected some hastily written and poorly plotted books much skin to several other series out there. This is not the case! The books are engaging, well plotted, and most importantly, do not involve non stop superhero type physical abilities and scenarios. I am a now a fan of Mr. Konkoly and his work! there were a few minor editing errors and some awkward sentences but over all well paced engaging read. good work I recommend these books.
I found this a difficult book to read because the story-line is complicated and the number of characters in the book made it difficult for me to remember who was who. The story also moves across the world from South America, to Russia, Kazakhstan, Sweden and Germany. I found that I had to go back and re-read parts just to understand who the characters were and what their role was in the story. On the whole it had some interesting parts and characters, but I do wish it hadn't been quite so complicated with so many characters.
Did the publishers cheque bounce? Never before have I read a book that came to such an abrupt and unexpected end. The start of this novel has problems as well. Readers are bombarded with so many characters that they are likely to just abandon this in confusion. The funny thing is, if you can manage to sort out all the players, you get a story with a couple of interesting and entertaining plot lines. The author left so many questions unanswered here that I feel compelled to continue with the series.
It is not a surprise that the multiple intelligence agencies secretly plot against each other. Personal gain, power, the countries benefit is generally not on their agenda. A clandestine organization is the only viable resource to eliminate a very deadly virus that was placed in the reservoir in a Russian city with catastrophic results. Now terrorists have the canisters. Non stop action. A tremendous read. Enjoyed immensely!
A little drawn out but not bad. Jessica is a fruitcake who thinks she's invincible. She either needs to get a clue so she'll stop being a danger to everyone else around her, or she needs to get dead. Hopefully this latest bit of Highjinx will give her a clue. She's not good for Daniel or any of the other team that works for Sanderson in her present attitude of narcissism. She really needs a good psychiatrist and some meds! Overall interesting storyline.
As a life long thriller reader, I'm glad I found this writer and series. However, I must admit the Washington Post has read like a thriller this past year. This writer can not only spin quite a story without getting bogged down in weapons, he can also write and develop characters. Unfortunately, current writers like this one...and the newspapers... make this Texan think the conspiracy goofballs we live among could be on to something.
As this book starts it is hard to follow as we go all over the place. I did read Black Flagged but it was 2 years ago, my fault. This story unfolds across numerous countries and time zones. It is a thriller encompassing terrorist, military and political action. Once you get hooked on it you want more
I just stopped. The entire premise that the entire CIA would go rogue and interfere with a massive military operation to protect known terrorists operating against the interests of the United States is just too much for me to swallow. That the President would even entertain negotiations is further beyond the pall.