Black Ops: Libye

Black Ops #1

by Matt Lynn

Tripoli, 2011. L’endroit le plus dangereux au monde. La Cinquième Unité, l’une des Forces Spéciales de l’OTAN, spécialisée dans les opérations secrètes, envoie deux de ses hommes les plus expérimentés à Tripoli. L’ancien SAS Alex Marden et un ex des Navy-Seal, Jack Rogan. Ils sont chargés de récupérer des documents compromettants qui, s’ils tombaient aux mains des rebelles, pourraient causer la chute des gouvernements anglais et américain. Ils vivent l’enfer qui accompagne la fin de régime du vieux dictateur, le Colonel Zayed. Et ils sont entrainés malgré eux dans une étonnante conspiration.
Black Op’s Libya est un roman terriblement réaliste, inspiré de l’actualité.

84 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 9, 2011

About the author

I am a thriller writer, living near London. 'Death Force' is the first in a series of books following a group of mercenaries around the world. It owes a lot to action, adventure writers like Alistair MacLean, and World War Two writers like Sven Hassel. It also owes a lot to Westerns. When I'm not writing thrillers, I write a financial column for Bloomberg, and I write for The Spectator.

Reviews

[TC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Libya, 2011. The regime of The Colonel is about to collapse. NATO's secretive Unit 5 sends in a team including former SAS man Alex and former Navy Seal Jack to retrieve a secret document that could cause problems for the UK & USA were it to fall into the wrong hands.

This novella is so topical it sounded like a great read and for me this is one of the beauties of e-books, the speed with which an author can respond to world events and have a work published. The material, a black ops team sent into hostile territory then forsaken by their masters needing to cover up dubious politics, has been done before but I have no problem with variations on a theme when they are done well.

Unfortunately, while there were some good action parts, had this been a full length novel I'm not sure I'd have persevered with it. There were issues with spelling, grammar and punctuation, and in places the narrative could do with some tweaking. I found myself getting really exasperated with basic errors like the use of "you're" rather than "your". I found myself wondering if proofreading was sacrificed in favour of making the book available as soon as possible.

I didn't feel any connection with the main characters, and other than knowing that Unit 5 was made up of personnel who had been in some sort of trouble I didn't get any real feeling for who they were or what they looked like. Finally the ending seemed weak and wasn't particularly satisfying. I don't like to include spoilers in my reviews so it's hard to explain exactly why, but the bottom line was it didn't seem credible.

As it was topical and had some nice action it wasn't a 1* book, but I'd struggle to say more than it was okay.

[Artur · Rating 2 out of 5]

3* dropped down to 2* due to multiple grammatical errors and typos. Nice, short, generic action thriller to pass the time.

[Diana Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pathetic, tries to explain the unexplainable of why America & the Zionists invaded Libya. Reminds me a little what they did to the Red Indians & to the Palestinians! They stole our country that is a FACT.