Not the best installment in the series, this book is choppy, uneven, with so many flaws even a 10-year-old would be pointing them out.
The setup was fine, but the entire plot was not credible to me. Less than 1/3 of the way through, the holes are so gaping its hard to believe no editor objected to them!
An ex-military pro initiates father-and-son cross tracking technology. An AGENT doesn't know that screams "kidnap my son (again) to find me?" The tracker will surely become a pivot point in the story, but who cares, its clumsy and amateur and a step NO good agent would take. If one Agent can find someone with a tracker, anyone who thinks to look can find it. And with the tracker for that chip on the phones, you don't even need the other person, just clone the phone standing next to them in line, or switch a spoofed phone for their actual, or hack the app, or hack the cell signal... Definitely don't want THIS protagonist anywhere near MY security plans!
spoiler>HOW many days does it take someone to notice the 'terrorist' had the means to suicide the whole time, and waited until after the 'interrogation'? HOW many dozens of 'analysts' are working on the data, and NO ONE mentions the guy had his operation SO well hidden, but does all this work to implicate the Chinese? The previous book mentions the internal US actors creating the look of hostilities to support their own agendas and their own coffers - did everyone forget the reason for the assassinations in just a couple of months?
Will anyone tell this writer to stop trying to write women characters? They seem to be a foreign country to him. A whole page on the female President's workout issues - she's an ex model and doesn't know how to schedule that in? Or the benefits? Exercise releases endorphins, so EVERY time she's stressed, she would likely be doing something - a treadmill, weights, a bicycle... instead, she's worrying about becoming flabby? Just NO. And EVERYONE calls her Susan? Really? Model=appearances count, she'd be very attentive to how she's coming across, that would be first nature. Walk a catwalk some time, Mr. Author, and learn what it takes to COMMAND a room. Because that control of the room by just walking is what it takes to be a 'top model'.
The author repeatedly writes the President was always the most beautiful woman in the room, but was clearly not interested enough in the character or women in general to notice that "the most beautiful" is not about just features, it takes poise and command to 'communicate' that.
And the conversation between the President and potential VP after a meeting is ludicrous. These people aren't in their 20s, 'it looks like the military just pushed you around' and then an explanation of the thinking....is this a YA novel? He's getting into a power-pissing-contest with her? So the VP is going to try to macho-wrestle power from her, and neither she nor her staff had any expectation of that? Again, just not credible. The nonsense "he knows ev-e-ry-thing " about her - guess what, in the USA, if she even considered running for office, EVERYONE already knows everything discoverable about her, and plenty of fabricated stories, too.
This book has good sections, it brings truths some already know and most don't front and center, and its worth a read, but imo it is also more of a fairy tale than the first two, and does not deliver at the level of the first two in the series.