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Hunting Four Horsemen : A Dangerous Clique Novel
The coronavirus pandemic is over, but it inspired a sinister plot.As a bruised, wary world tries to return to something resembling normal, the CIA’s Katrina Leonidivna and her Dangerous Clique team are in hot pursuit of a rogue Iranian spy with ties to the now-mostly-forgotten Atarsa terrorist group. But that spy reveals a terrifying new someone calling himself Hell-Summoner has approached Tehran – and other rogue regimes – offering to sell them a deadly virus that would make the first pandemic look tame and plunge a world already on the brink into total chaos.Katrina, Alec, and the rest of the team learn, to their horror, that the technology to engineer a virus targeting a particular gene is very real and, if used, could launch a cataclysmic new era of biological warfare. The hunt to find Hell-Summoner is on, at a breakneck pace. As they race around the world trying to avert disaster, the Clique must square off against numerous ruthless Russian mercenaries, cutthroat Serbian war criminals, cruel animal smugglers, and every other extremist who would want to turn a virus into an unstoppable, invisible, and unnervingly precise weapon of war.For the Dangerous Clique, the stakes have never been higher – the barn door is wide open, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are already riding. This mission is to win or die trying and every breath they take may be their last.HUNTING FOUR HORSEMEN is the next volume in the action-packed Dangerous Clique Series that will leave readers on the edge of their seats. Praise for Hunting Four “Geraghty has hit another homerun! Hunting Four Horsemen is an absolutely electrifying thriller. Fantastic plot, pacing, and characters. Bravo!” – Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Near Dark"Jim Geraghty is one of the most fiendishly clever novelists out there—and he proves it again in this breakneck thriller. Read it now." – Ben Shapiro, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com, and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Right Side Of History"Is there anything Jim Geraghty can’t write? First, there's the Morning Jolt newsletter. Then there's his hilarious satirical novel, The Weed Agency. Then there's his podcasts, and somewhere in the middle of all this, he writes maybe the hardest, gutsiest—you'll see why when you read it—speculative fiction to write and that is a near-future, a semi-post-COVID thriller, which simultaneously reads our times perfectly and gives us a glimpse into what we hope isn't coming. Now, stop reading my blurb and read the book. Now, before the future takes you by surprise.” – Flint Dille, screenwriter and game designer, known for Transformers, G.I. Joe, Ingress"Geraghty has portrayed a post-pandemic world with unparalleled authenticity and research that rivals the best thriller writers in the business. He foreshadows the next possible pandemic with a thriller of a tale injected with facts, science, and knowledge that only a writer like Geraghty could make equally entertaining and incredibly informative. A must-read for those who want to know what comes next." – Matt Betley, critically acclaimed author of Overwatch and the Logan West series“You might say Hunting Four Horsemen is ‘ripped from the headlines,’ which is true but trite.
- GenresFiction
263 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 17, 2020
57 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Jim Geraghty
7 books24 followersJim Geraghty is a conservative blogger and regular contributor to National Review Online and National Review, and a former reporter for States News Service.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 12, 2021
Cursing the lack of half stars again and also wrestling with judging a book by the genre it is or the appeal of that genre to you personally... Which is to say I enjoyed the second Dangerous Clique book but realized these books really aren't my prefered genre. Having known Jim for some time, and appreciating his writing, I wanted to buy and read his novels. And they are full of his research, knowledge and sense of humor, which is why I enjoyed reading them. But they are also action focused, thrillers - the point is to find and kill the bad guys. These are what used to be classified as beach or airport type reads, and I don't mean that pejoratively. If that is what you are looking for you will enjoy this series. I have just realized that I like my espionage with a little more literary style and a touch of noir.
January 26, 2021
Get. A. Proofreader.
Mistakes every few pages - missing words, extra words, words that don’t make sense in context, math that doesn’t work (a guy born in 1983 is referred to as an old guy, and he has a 17 year old daughter - certainly possible, but unlikely given the description of his early life).
The story was okay, but felt rushed and underdeveloped. This was the first I’ve read that incorporates the pandemic and tries to create the post-pandemic world. Characters and circumstances have changed since the first book, but we get a lot of information, right up to the baddie’s reveal of the evil plot, by being told instead of being shown. Overall ... meh.
Mistakes every few pages - missing words, extra words, words that don’t make sense in context, math that doesn’t work (a guy born in 1983 is referred to as an old guy, and he has a 17 year old daughter - certainly possible, but unlikely given the description of his early life).
The story was okay, but felt rushed and underdeveloped. This was the first I’ve read that incorporates the pandemic and tries to create the post-pandemic world. Characters and circumstances have changed since the first book, but we get a lot of information, right up to the baddie’s reveal of the evil plot, by being told instead of being shown. Overall ... meh.
January 2, 2021
National Review writer Jim Geraghty had some moderate success with his initial spy thriller, Between Two Scorpions. In it, he introduced us to the Dangerous Clique, an ad hoc team of United States agents aimed at only the most dangerous international baddies. The book did well enough that Geraghty was writing a sequel, set to be released in 2020. Then a worldwide pandemic happened, and the plot of the novel didn't work right in a world of COVID-19. So Geraghty shelved the story he had to that point and began a new one, this time taking the pandemic into account as he wrote Hunting Four Horsemen.
The Clique learns of a rogue biological weapons expert going by the name "Hell Summoner" who is offering his services to the highest bidder. Those services involve tailoring a virus to a population with shared genetic characteristics, even down to a single shared gene. The list of evil people who would love to possess a plague that would kill their enemies and not endanger their own population -- or at least, not endanger more than a small percentage of them -- is long and the only reason that someone hasn't gone ahead and hired this mysterious fiend is because he wants more money than all but a few players on the world scene have to hand. But a couple of them may get together and the Hell Summoner may lower his price, so the Clique have to move fast to track him down and learn who's hired him if they want to stop his horrifying plan.
Plenty of thriller authors will probably not write the pandemic into their storylines, but Geraghty is smarter than a lot of them are and he not only includes the reality of COVID into his fictional world but also into his plot. Unfortunately he does so with massive sections of tell-not-show infodumps that stall out the narrative almost to a dead stop. Obviously a world of travel limitations and widespread sickness and death would have an impact on everyone, including spies and operators. Among the Clique, the devil-may-care Alec has always been the group comic relief, but the weight of the devastation wrought by COVID leaves him uncharacteristically quipless for most of the book. Again that's not at all unusual, but Geraghty just tells the reader this rather than showing it.
Geraghty did an immense amount of research into the pandemic and possible causes for the viral spread during its early days. Unfortunately more than one chapter of Hunting Four Horsemen reads more like a good magazine or newspaper article than a suspense thriller. Horsemen has some good action sequences, a great in-joke nod to listeners of Geraghty and Greg Corombos' podcast The Three Martini Lunch and a marvelously inventive twist. Perhaps more time could have helped Geraghty work his extensive research more naturally into the other elements.
Even though Horsemen isn't as much of an improvement over Scorpions as a reader might want, it still gives some reason to look forward to the third outing of the Clique and not give up on them yet.
Original available here.
The Clique learns of a rogue biological weapons expert going by the name "Hell Summoner" who is offering his services to the highest bidder. Those services involve tailoring a virus to a population with shared genetic characteristics, even down to a single shared gene. The list of evil people who would love to possess a plague that would kill their enemies and not endanger their own population -- or at least, not endanger more than a small percentage of them -- is long and the only reason that someone hasn't gone ahead and hired this mysterious fiend is because he wants more money than all but a few players on the world scene have to hand. But a couple of them may get together and the Hell Summoner may lower his price, so the Clique have to move fast to track him down and learn who's hired him if they want to stop his horrifying plan.
Plenty of thriller authors will probably not write the pandemic into their storylines, but Geraghty is smarter than a lot of them are and he not only includes the reality of COVID into his fictional world but also into his plot. Unfortunately he does so with massive sections of tell-not-show infodumps that stall out the narrative almost to a dead stop. Obviously a world of travel limitations and widespread sickness and death would have an impact on everyone, including spies and operators. Among the Clique, the devil-may-care Alec has always been the group comic relief, but the weight of the devastation wrought by COVID leaves him uncharacteristically quipless for most of the book. Again that's not at all unusual, but Geraghty just tells the reader this rather than showing it.
Geraghty did an immense amount of research into the pandemic and possible causes for the viral spread during its early days. Unfortunately more than one chapter of Hunting Four Horsemen reads more like a good magazine or newspaper article than a suspense thriller. Horsemen has some good action sequences, a great in-joke nod to listeners of Geraghty and Greg Corombos' podcast The Three Martini Lunch and a marvelously inventive twist. Perhaps more time could have helped Geraghty work his extensive research more naturally into the other elements.
Even though Horsemen isn't as much of an improvement over Scorpions as a reader might want, it still gives some reason to look forward to the third outing of the Clique and not give up on them yet.
Original available here.
June 30, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
Jim Geraghty is a longtime favorite of mine, ever since he took up the task at National Review of reporting on John Kerry. More recently, he deserves plaudits for his skepticism about the once-prevailing conventional wisdom about the origin of Covid-19. His carefully laid-out reasoning convinced a lot of people (whether they admit it or not) that there might be something to Explanation B: an unintentional leak of the virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But Jim writes fiction too, and this is the second book in (so far) a two-book series. It's billed as "A Dangerous Clique Novel", referring to a (fictional?) CIA team that's called on to terminate terroristic threats with extreme prejudice, and zero regard for due process. I read and reported on the first one back in 2019. And the Kindle version was, for a time, just $3.99 at Amazon. So…
It's set in a slightly-alternate universe where the recovery from the Covid pandemic is much less robust than what we're actually experiencing. The world is fragmented and paranoid. And then comes word that a mysterious evildoer, who's adopted the moniker "Hell Summoner", has engineered an even worse virus: one that can be targeted against those carrying a specific genome. And he's offering to tune it up and sell it off to whatever rich madman can give him $20 billion.
So the team is off globe-hopping, following up leads as they present themselves. A lot of gunplay, fisticuffs, and other miscellaneous violence occurs. And (of course) it comes down to a thrilling climax at Nakatomi Fox Plaza in Century City.
It's a page turner and a decent read. Jim (I call him Jim) has obviously done some globe-hopping himself, and describes many scenes with I've-been-there detail.
Downside: same as in the previous book. Some typos. Dialog that is sometimes clunky, sometimes didactic, and often just non-credible. Numerous shout-outs to pop culture, especially movies. And when I say "numerous", I mean "way too many." You know that Nakatomi Plaza reference? It's worked into the ground, especially when an FBI agent shows up named… yup, Johnson. To Geraghty's credit, he resisted giving him a partner also named Johnson. And thereby avoided the inevitable line "No, the other one."
December 1, 2020
Electrifying! Crackling! Deeply Satisfying!
Geraghty does it again. The action picks up and does not slow down - and, being a Jim Geraghty novel, there's an additional layer of fun to be had in the pop culture references sprinkled everywhere. The key for these is that they're solid enough to be recognized but not enough that they overwhelm the narrative.
I have a few that I caught but I won't spoil them here.
References, however, are everywhere - they're the glue which helps bind our pop culture together.
The bigger question, bigger than "how awesome are these references?", is, "is this a good story?"
The answer is an unequivocal yes. Geraghty treats his protagonists as real people with real reactions to unreal problems. The characters and settings are grounded by hard data and solid research - never was I tempted to say "no, that sounds like hogwash, there's no way that could have happened like that". Its grounding in reality makes it far more entertaining than any current Hollywood tripe (though I do hope he's able to translate this into a movie or movie series eventually, or even a Netflix miniseries) where outlandish situations, cookie cutter characters, and paint by number plots rule the day so far.
Enough from me - go buy it and read it!
(I do plan on buying hard copies and, God willing, finding a way to get them signed by Mr. Geraghty, but who knows if that'll be possible with our New Normal)
Geraghty does it again. The action picks up and does not slow down - and, being a Jim Geraghty novel, there's an additional layer of fun to be had in the pop culture references sprinkled everywhere. The key for these is that they're solid enough to be recognized but not enough that they overwhelm the narrative.
I have a few that I caught but I won't spoil them here.
References, however, are everywhere - they're the glue which helps bind our pop culture together.
The bigger question, bigger than "how awesome are these references?", is, "is this a good story?"
The answer is an unequivocal yes. Geraghty treats his protagonists as real people with real reactions to unreal problems. The characters and settings are grounded by hard data and solid research - never was I tempted to say "no, that sounds like hogwash, there's no way that could have happened like that". Its grounding in reality makes it far more entertaining than any current Hollywood tripe (though I do hope he's able to translate this into a movie or movie series eventually, or even a Netflix miniseries) where outlandish situations, cookie cutter characters, and paint by number plots rule the day so far.
Enough from me - go buy it and read it!
(I do plan on buying hard copies and, God willing, finding a way to get them signed by Mr. Geraghty, but who knows if that'll be possible with our New Normal)
December 7, 2020
Always glad for Geraghty's writing...his political reporting is excellent...this book is not as strong as his earlier _Between Two Scorpions...it has a darker tone, perhaps fitting the darker days around COVID...as a result, the characters are less likable and less relatable...a lot of research went into the book, but too often it's presented as research, rather than organically within the story...there's too much "telling" (rather than showing), too many digressions...put another way, this entry needs more art and less data...I was very annoyed by the lack of quality copy-editing in this volume...it made the product appear less-finished and less professional.
January 10, 2021
If you are in the mood for an up-to-the-minute thriller, Hunting Four Horsemen is the book for you. Set in 2021 when vaccines have corralled COVID19, but nothing is quite back to normal yet. Now the CIA's "Dangerous Clique" team of special operatives, lead by Katrina Leonidivna, must track down a new threat -- an anonymous arms dealer trying to sell a new bioweapon to terrorist organizations. This deadly virus would make corona look tame and plunge the world into chaos. It's non-stop action as the Clique races around the globe tracking bad guys, saving humanity, and trying to avoid some pretty nasty monkeys.
January 17, 2024
This is another relatively fun read, but I would hardly call it a "thriller" or a "page-turner." It's also a bit strange to be reading this several years out from the COVID-19 pandemic as the book takes place as things are beginning to somewhat normalize after COVID shutdowns, but the plot relies heavily on the recent pandemic. And as with the first in this series, the editing is atrocious if it was edited at all. The jokes are a bit corny at times, and some of the things that take place aren't very believable. That said, it's a light read that's fun and fast, making for a decent sequel.
December 6, 2020
A great afternoon read. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as Between Two Scorpions, but it was a fun action thriller.
June 15, 2021
A great spy thriller, even better than the first. The action is intense, including one scene written so well I felt a bit panicky and found I was holding my breath. The team has been affected by the worldwide pandemic in different ways and their behavior changes accordingly, making them very relatable.
Loved it and looking forward to the next one!
Loved it and looking forward to the next one!
June 23, 2021
I like Jim's articles in National Review. A lot. I wanted to like this book. I stopped half way through. Maybe it's me. But I felt like I was reading a recap of the current Covid episode with a bit of an ancillary plot thrown in. Didn't grab me. I was looking for a thriller. Based on other reviews I'm an outlier.
January 4, 2021
2nd in the series it does take some departures from the 1st using the cover of the pandemic while throwing in a few obvious teasers for the intended next book in the series. Its an enjoyable book that does occasionally make you think, if you want to.
January 22, 2021
Another thriller!
What happens after the pandemic is over? Will we learn anything from the last year, or will we blightly move on as if it never happened? Could a mad scientist with a super weapon wake up the world?
What happens after the pandemic is over? Will we learn anything from the last year, or will we blightly move on as if it never happened? Could a mad scientist with a super weapon wake up the world?
July 18, 2021
I enjoyed it the first one more, but I think that may just be due to virus fatigue. Jim continues to develop the Clique characters ann infuse his novels with weird geographic and cultural facts with pip culture references thrown in for some levity.
December 27, 2020
Another fun read. Some solid social commentary peppered with fun pop culture references. A great diversion in our current time.
February 9, 2021
Great fun
November 16, 2022
Jam packed with actiony goodness
I love the Alec character. I want to be him when I grow up. He's the master of the non-corny Dad joke.
I love the Alec character. I want to be him when I grow up. He's the master of the non-corny Dad joke.
March 3, 2021
I understand the concept of "character development", but this is only the second book in the series (of however many he decides to produce) and some of the characters are substantially changed, and (to me anyway) weren't as enjoyable as in the first book.
Generally though, if you liked the espionage travelogue of the first book, you'll like this one.
Generally though, if you liked the espionage travelogue of the first book, you'll like this one.
December 27, 2020
Another good entry in the series
This is a fun group to keep up with. Maybe a bit too much on the references to cultural icons and events, but fun none the less.
I’ll read the next installment.
This is a fun group to keep up with. Maybe a bit too much on the references to cultural icons and events, but fun none the less.
I’ll read the next installment.
March 28, 2021
Entertaining. Quick read. My version had several typos which I thought odd. Seems rather contrived to some extent but an interesting book if you can suspend disbelief or at least hope you are suspending disbelief.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews