The Cabal

by Marc J. Ritorto

A Senator's murder leads a group of 4 people including a Ninja, a FBI Agent and local DC cop into an adventure then will never forget.The investigation of the murder uncovers a secret society that controls the world in ways unimaginable. This book introduces several main characters that will spawn future books in their own series including FBI Special Agent Marc Delfino and Ninja Assassin' Ryu Tanaka.

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2019

Reviews

[Dwayne Fry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This will be a long review, though I can sum this book up in one word: Problematic.

If you need two words: Overpriced and underwritten.

It’s been some years since I read Dale M. Courtney’s “Moon People”. This book is much like that one, horribly written to the point of being entertaining. I am not sure if that was Marc Ritorto’s intention or not. If so, well done. This may surpass Courtney’s book in being so bad it’s entertaining. I have a feeling Ritorto meant this to be a serious book. And that’s the problem. You can’t write a serious book until you take writing seriously, which he doesn’t. The book is lazy, sloppy, and sad. The worst part is, the Kindle version is selling for 7.99, a very steep price for a short story. Yes, don’t be fooled by the page count. Ritorto managed to get a very few words on each page. I estimate the word count to be roughly twelve thousand words. That’s not a novel and shouldn’t be selling at the price of a novel.

That said, this book could work as a novel. It really could. It reads like a rough draft of a novel. It has enough plot and characters to make a novel, if the author would take the time to flesh things out. As it is, we have a long string of characters here: John, Marc, Laura, Rachel (whose name changes every couple of chapters), Ryu, Mei, and so on. These are the good guys. Yet, they all lack any personality, and all have very little backstory to them. The author took no time to flesh these characters out, making them all feel like nothing but faceless puppets running about. There’s no strong sense of setting. They go from this place to that place and nothing is really described. The plot isn’t terrible – a senator is killed and while investigating his murder, the good guys become aware of a much, much more sinister plot developing, a secret society bent on taking over the world. Yet, even this plot is underdeveloped, and the entire book feels rushed.

All the characters seem to have incredible powers that are not really explained. Ryu has this ability to toss smoke bombs around and, apparently, turn invisible or teleport. He says he’s a Ninja but seems to be more of a wizard. Laura has this amazing ability to somehow control everything electronically with no explanation given. The saddest case of the heroes is Mei. She’s brought into the story as a stooge for the generic bad guys, yet the good guys convince her to join them. The bad guys figure this out and instead of just killing Mei, they drag her off to France. Good guys follow so they can rescue her and… then she kind of disappears and is forgotten. A generic bad guy drags her off by her hair while Ryu lays on the floor laughing at a joke and Mei is gone. Forever. I guess this is a Ninja power – to find humor even when you know you’ve totally messed up.

There’s another weird case like this. The good guys show up at the apartment of a girl named Aiko. She is killed right in front of them. They realize the killer is probably just outside the window. Do they investigate? Chase him down? No. They kind of shrug it off and go to FBI headquarters. That’s right. One of the heroes, Marc, is an FBI agent, so everyone kind of uses headquarters as their hangout.

Another amusingly ridiculous hole in the story comes when the heroes realize Rachel / Rachael looks exactly like a woman who was just hired to work with the bad guys. So, the plan is to have Rachael / Rachel go to the bad guy’s hideout, which is disguised as a financial institution, and pretend to be Lisa Robbins, personal assistant to the company’s CFO. She pulls it off without a hitch. Yet, I had to wonder what would happen when the real Lisa Robbins arrives for work. Fortunately for our heroes, Lisa apparently didn’t care about her job and decided to stop showing up the very day Rachel / Rachael took over pretending to be Lisa. A good writer would have addressed this problem. A great writer might have used this as a place to throw a curveball to the reader, having the real Lisa kill the real Rach(a)el and pose as her, infiltrating the good guys. A lazy writer doesn’t bother with such problems and just hopes the reader won’t notice.

This brings me to another issue, a huge one, that runs all through the novel. The good guys have little to no trouble accomplishing almost everything they set out to do. There’s a lot of points where the good guys knock out bad guys and take their clothes with ease so they can dress like the bad guys – and somehow no one notices. Quite often the good guys seem to pull out the exact item or weapon they need in any given situation, as if they’re Bugs Bunny or something.

Then there’s a priceless moment where one of the good guys, John, is apparently inducted into the FBI as he’s invited to come to a meeting at FBI headquarters. They’re discussing the murder of John’s friend, Senator Michael Jones. Michael appears as a ghost in the scene and begins to speak and hang pictures on the wall. At least, that’s how it reads. I think what happened is this – the book is chock full of bland characters and it’s hard to keep them all straight. I think even the author could not tell one character from another and started calling Marc or John “Michael”. There’s a moment late in the book in which Marc is held captive by the bad guys and John and Rachel / Rachael are trying to find his cell. A moment later, Marc is with them, talking to them, knocking out guards and dragging them to a bathroom. Another moment later, he’s back in his cell being beaten to a pulp.

The way the good guys were captured was the most pricelessly idiotic moment in the book. As previously mentioned, a stooge named Mei is dragged off to France and the good guys fly off to rescue her. Somehow, they pinpoint she must be in some nightclub near The Louvre (hey, it’s France. Everything is near The Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, right?) Marc, John, Rachel / Rachael, and Ryu go into the nightclub and split up. At the same moment, trap doors open under all their feet and they fall into cells and are knocked unconscious. So, either the bad guys were clever enough to know exactly where the good guys would be standing, or the entire floor of the nightclub fell in, which means all the nightclub patrons were also in cells and unconscious and our heroes didn’t bother to do anything about it.

The evidence abounds that this author wrote a rough draft and published it and is now expecting people to pay a high price for his laziness. The author couldn’t even be bothered to number the chapters correctly. There are two chapter nines, two chapter twelves and no chapter seventeen. Another lazy moment comes from a bad guy falling ten feet. A few paragraphs later, it changes to one hundred feet.

There is one positive thing here. I didn’t find many spelling mistakes. On the other hand, the punctuation is so bad I must wonder if the author paid any attention in grade school when they taught punctuation. When a character speaks in multiple sentences, the author chose to put each sentence between quotation marks, rather than the entire quote. It’s very confusing to the reader as it looks as if multiple people are talking, when it’s only one character speaking.

I realize this is the author’s first attempt at writing a book. It’s a shame he didn’t learn the art and craft of writing first and it’s too bad he isn’t aware that a writer must rewrite, edit, edit, rewrite and even hand the book to beta readers, an editor, etc. I hope if this author continues to write, he will take things more seriously next time and not publish another rough draft.

This book reads as if written by a ten-year-old who has never read a book, yet has seen a handful of CSI episodes and thinks that’s enough to make him a writer. I did enjoy it, in the way I enjoy watching cheesy horror and science fiction films. Fortunately, I read it through KDP Direct. Had I spent money on this, I would be asking for a refund.

[Kristina Ritorto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is great. The action and everything about this book are altogether wonderful. If you like action books, you should definitely read this book. Everyone must read this book. It has a touch of romance, good humor, action, and what makes it really great is the ninjas.

[Marc J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is great. It has tons a non stop action in it.