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Tommy Carmellini #3
The Assassin: A Tommy Carmellini Novel
From Stephen Coonts comes a novel of high octane excitement, featuring Tommy Carmellini in his most dangerous mission The Assassin . In the finale of Coonts's last novel The Traitor , the ruthless and brilliant Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the Group of 7 in Paris slipped the noose and escaped. But Abu Qasim has another trick up his he has offered to pay the Mafia a fortune to help him bring New York to its knees. The CIA learns that something is up and a worried president sends his best--Jake Grafton and his secret weapon, Tommy Carmellini. Tommy is soon in grave danger as he tries to piece the deadly puzzle together. Set amidst ticking bombs and flying bullets, the stakes have never been higher. Will Tommy put it all together in time t stop the disaster? Or will the terrorists set events in motion that will leave America reeling?
512 pages, Paperback
Published August 4, 2009
190 people are currently reading
791 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Coonts
181 books757 followersStephen Coonts (born July 19, 1946) is an American thriller and suspense novelist.
Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town and earned an B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968. He entered the Navy the following year and flew an A-6 Intruder medium attack plane during the Vietnam War, where he served on two combat cruises aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). He accumulated 1600 hours in the A-6 Intruder and earned a number of Navy commendations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he served as a flight instructor on A-6 aircraft for two years, then did a tour as an assistant catapult and arresting gear officer aboard USS Nimitz (CVN-68). His navigator-bombardier was LTjg Stanley W. Bryant who later became a Rear Admiral and deputy commander-in-chief of the US naval forces in Europe.
After being honorably discharged from duty as a lieutenant in 1977, Coonts pursued a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree at the University of Colorado, graduating in 1979. He then worked as an oil and gas lawyer for several companies, entertaining his writing interests in his free time.
He published short stories in a number of publications before writing Flight of the Intruder in 1986 (made into a movie in 1991). Intruder, based in part on his experiences as a bomber pilot, spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists in hardcover and launched his career as a novelist. From there he continued writing adventure-mysteries using the character from his first book, Jake Grafton. He has written several other series and stand-alone novels since then, but is most notable for the Grafton books.
Today Coonts continues to write, having had seventeen New York Times bestsellers (out of 20 books), and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and son.
Taken from Wikipedia
Learn more about Stephen Coonts on the Macmillan website.
Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town and earned an B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968. He entered the Navy the following year and flew an A-6 Intruder medium attack plane during the Vietnam War, where he served on two combat cruises aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). He accumulated 1600 hours in the A-6 Intruder and earned a number of Navy commendations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he served as a flight instructor on A-6 aircraft for two years, then did a tour as an assistant catapult and arresting gear officer aboard USS Nimitz (CVN-68). His navigator-bombardier was LTjg Stanley W. Bryant who later became a Rear Admiral and deputy commander-in-chief of the US naval forces in Europe.
After being honorably discharged from duty as a lieutenant in 1977, Coonts pursued a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree at the University of Colorado, graduating in 1979. He then worked as an oil and gas lawyer for several companies, entertaining his writing interests in his free time.
He published short stories in a number of publications before writing Flight of the Intruder in 1986 (made into a movie in 1991). Intruder, based in part on his experiences as a bomber pilot, spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists in hardcover and launched his career as a novelist. From there he continued writing adventure-mysteries using the character from his first book, Jake Grafton. He has written several other series and stand-alone novels since then, but is most notable for the Grafton books.
Today Coonts continues to write, having had seventeen New York Times bestsellers (out of 20 books), and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and son.
Taken from Wikipedia
Learn more about Stephen Coonts on the Macmillan website.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
March 6, 2018
Aside from lamentable dialogue, a lot of this was laughably bad. One example - the "hero" is guarding two of the primary characters after they were nearly killed (four others were gunned down at their house) - and after driving them from Paris to London to keep them safe, they want to GO SHOPPING, and he LETS THEM GO.
Coonts draws on recent headlines for his plot line and that becomes a part of the problem. Coonts uses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium-20 as the weapon. Not a good thing to do since anyone who followed the news of that truly unique act knows that Coonts is simply borrowing it for the story. There is no credibility to Coonts' backstory. To be believable, Coonts should have invented his own narrative from the same base.
The main characters, Grafton and Carmellini, are back again, and tiresome. Grafton, the retired Admiral and intelligence czar, was at one time a formidable character. Now, frankly, his dialogue bounces mercurially from all-knowing to plain stupid. Carmellini, who speaks to us in the first-person while everyone else uses third-person, needs help with his sex addiction. The plot device of a privately financed, government-executed campaign against Muslim terrorists is unbelievable from the very first words describing it.
The Abu Qasim character, supposedly the world's most feared terrorist, whom no one can identify by sight is - here's that word again - unbelievable. His alleged daughter, who is now a French socialite (and, of course, rich and stunningly beautiful) is also unbelievable.
All of this mind numbing, silly nonsense comes in the first couple pages. Then Coonts unloads on his technically literate audience with the introduction of Robin Cloyd. The stereotyped description is enough to cause teeth grinding: "Robin was a technical genius, a tall, gawky young woman who lived in jeans and sweatshirts because the rooms where she spent her working life were filled with computers and heavily air conditioned. She also wore glasses, large, thick ones . . . " Most people who do what are soon described as Robin's work, would not be in a computer room. Coonts obviously doesn't understand what computer networks are all about. Within moments, however, Coonts goes from awful to horrible. Robin is described as a "data-mining exert who had been working for NSA. She had been temporarily transferred to the CIA and assigned as Jake's office assistant." Office assistant? Coonts obviously is clueless as to what data-mining is, which he demonstrates in the very next sentence: "One of the many things she did for the admiral was to hack her way around the Internet, which was, of course, illegal." Of course, Coonts doesn't know what hacking is. Coonts doesn't know what the word Internet means. Coonts doesn't know what he is talking about. Coonts has his "office assistant" on a moment's notice "hack" into the computers of the three of the richest people in the world, all leaders of large businesses. No problem. Takes only a few seconds. Nonsense. But Coonts keeps right on going. Having cracked these systems in seconds, Robin isolates their email accounts, saying "They're using a fairly sophisticated encryption code . . ." Of course, she cracks it in seconds.
The plot and characters went from dumb to dumber. Two Special Ops counter-assassins are themselves assassinated because they are too obtuse to take precautions against being followed after eliminating a terrorist in his homeland. One of these operatives is so witless that he doesn't bother to warn his girlfriend that she might become a target for the pursuing jihadists. Similarly, a Special Operations sniper team shoots a target terrorist (who is visiting a jihadist village), while knowingly being observed by an enemy counter-sniper, whose movements they lose track off during their hit. After completing the assassination (and somehow re-finding the counter-sniper), the pair blows up their 50-caliber rifle, rather than pack it out. Though I can see circumstances in which that might be necessary, Coonts' explanation does not justify losing the range advantage that the supreme sniper weapon would have given the pair as they try to outrun the target's jihadist "brothers." Professionally worse, the sniper team inexplicably splits up during the villagers' pursuit. And one of them is too incompetent to recognize that the point man for the pursuers, whom he lets go by him, will double back to kill him, after he engages the rest of the villager group. The other of the sniper team is too far away to prevent his death.
In a similar "how stupid can one get" vein, four Special Operations soldiers are assigned to protect a house, which they know to be the subject of a coming jihadist attack. Two of these gems go to sleep in the hay loft of a barn, without first setting up a perimeter warning system. Both are easily killed. One of their comrades, sensing that something wrong is afoot, dumbly goes into the barn through the main door. Natural selection has no empathy for him, either.
Carmellini, is a mediocrity of such proportion that one wonders how ex-Admiral CIA operative, Jake Grafton, could possibly consider him to be up to performing the ridiculously difficult tasks that he is assigned. Even one of the book's main characters tells Grafton what an incompetent Tommy is. Carmellini, for example -- in addition to getting shot a couple of times because he is obtusely unaware of his surroundings -- shoots an innocent man. Though assigned to protect a houseful of people, he apparently does not recognize that one of these same people might trip over the booby trap bottle he plants on the stairway. When he hears the person trip over the bottle, Tommy blasts him to death. The guy turns out to be the chauffeur for one the main characters. Grafton, himself, is such an arguable bonehead that he puts some of the people he is supposed to protect inside a multi-story apartment house that even the most ignorant of readers would recognize can't be protected. What happens next is so ridiculously improbable that experienced military and police will cringe in reading it.
Elsewhere, Grafton tells Tommy Carmellini to make sure that driver for the four-man team of jihadists who attack the indefensible apartment house is captured.Coonts, of course, doesn't tell us how Tommy is supposed to kill the four-man team (who are inside the building) and catch the driver (who is on the street outside the building) at the same time.
Tommy brilliantly dashes out onto the street, dives headfirst into the driver's car, seizes the car keys from the ignition with one hand, and beats up the driver with the other elbow. The way this is described is implausible. Tommy then leaves the driver unconscious, but unsecured. Naturally, when Tommy leaves to deal with the four-man team of killers inside the building, the driver he was supposed to capture runs away.
The anti-terrorist CEOs that Grafton leads are too brain-dead to take precautions against being murdered, even after repeated warnings. They are "offed" one-by-one in a tedious exposition of the Darwinian principle of "survival of the fittest" by "elimination of the stupidest." After his colleagues are murdered one by one of, one of this CEO group eventually decides that he does need two bodyguards. But he foolishly rides around in an "unhardened" limousine that he apparently left parked somewhere where bad guys could plant a bomb on it. Guess what happens.
And Grafton's own CIA-recruited Arab anti-terrorists are equally careless. One is assigned to give poison to a terror-plotting imam. He does, but he foolishly allows some of the imam's followers see him dispose of the poison bottle in a dumpster just outside the spiritual center. Heh, whoops.
Coonts, not understanding how professionals actually interview and interrogate, inserts numerous purposeless conversations in the book. These often revolve around suspected double-agent "Marissa." Carmellini and Grafton both have aggravatingly airy conversations with her that lead nowhere. The talks aren't even interesting for the irrelevant content that Coonts does include in them. The author apparently adopted this "nothing happens" conversational style, so as to preserves Marissa's mystery to the end. But, given the law enforcement and anti-terrorist nature of the plot, real professionals would never have let Marissa skate untouched for so many pages.
There are only two central bad guys. This apparently unsupported pair manages to put the entire American intelligence and counter-terrorism elite on the defensive. The shadowy one of the two operates independently and knows everything that is going on, even inside the American intelligence community. He supervises a non-jihadist mercenary killer, who also knows more than anyone could know and, thanks to the incompetence of his targets, has no trouble introducing numerous folk to the Great Beyond.
The novel's plot is preposterous, whatever Coonts' storytelling strengths are.
Coonts draws on recent headlines for his plot line and that becomes a part of the problem. Coonts uses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium-20 as the weapon. Not a good thing to do since anyone who followed the news of that truly unique act knows that Coonts is simply borrowing it for the story. There is no credibility to Coonts' backstory. To be believable, Coonts should have invented his own narrative from the same base.
The main characters, Grafton and Carmellini, are back again, and tiresome. Grafton, the retired Admiral and intelligence czar, was at one time a formidable character. Now, frankly, his dialogue bounces mercurially from all-knowing to plain stupid. Carmellini, who speaks to us in the first-person while everyone else uses third-person, needs help with his sex addiction. The plot device of a privately financed, government-executed campaign against Muslim terrorists is unbelievable from the very first words describing it.
The Abu Qasim character, supposedly the world's most feared terrorist, whom no one can identify by sight is - here's that word again - unbelievable. His alleged daughter, who is now a French socialite (and, of course, rich and stunningly beautiful) is also unbelievable.
All of this mind numbing, silly nonsense comes in the first couple pages. Then Coonts unloads on his technically literate audience with the introduction of Robin Cloyd. The stereotyped description is enough to cause teeth grinding: "Robin was a technical genius, a tall, gawky young woman who lived in jeans and sweatshirts because the rooms where she spent her working life were filled with computers and heavily air conditioned. She also wore glasses, large, thick ones . . . " Most people who do what are soon described as Robin's work, would not be in a computer room. Coonts obviously doesn't understand what computer networks are all about. Within moments, however, Coonts goes from awful to horrible. Robin is described as a "data-mining exert who had been working for NSA. She had been temporarily transferred to the CIA and assigned as Jake's office assistant." Office assistant? Coonts obviously is clueless as to what data-mining is, which he demonstrates in the very next sentence: "One of the many things she did for the admiral was to hack her way around the Internet, which was, of course, illegal." Of course, Coonts doesn't know what hacking is. Coonts doesn't know what the word Internet means. Coonts doesn't know what he is talking about. Coonts has his "office assistant" on a moment's notice "hack" into the computers of the three of the richest people in the world, all leaders of large businesses. No problem. Takes only a few seconds. Nonsense. But Coonts keeps right on going. Having cracked these systems in seconds, Robin isolates their email accounts, saying "They're using a fairly sophisticated encryption code . . ." Of course, she cracks it in seconds.
The plot and characters went from dumb to dumber. Two Special Ops counter-assassins are themselves assassinated because they are too obtuse to take precautions against being followed after eliminating a terrorist in his homeland. One of these operatives is so witless that he doesn't bother to warn his girlfriend that she might become a target for the pursuing jihadists. Similarly, a Special Operations sniper team shoots a target terrorist (who is visiting a jihadist village), while knowingly being observed by an enemy counter-sniper, whose movements they lose track off during their hit. After completing the assassination (and somehow re-finding the counter-sniper), the pair blows up their 50-caliber rifle, rather than pack it out. Though I can see circumstances in which that might be necessary, Coonts' explanation does not justify losing the range advantage that the supreme sniper weapon would have given the pair as they try to outrun the target's jihadist "brothers." Professionally worse, the sniper team inexplicably splits up during the villagers' pursuit. And one of them is too incompetent to recognize that the point man for the pursuers, whom he lets go by him, will double back to kill him, after he engages the rest of the villager group. The other of the sniper team is too far away to prevent his death.
In a similar "how stupid can one get" vein, four Special Operations soldiers are assigned to protect a house, which they know to be the subject of a coming jihadist attack. Two of these gems go to sleep in the hay loft of a barn, without first setting up a perimeter warning system. Both are easily killed. One of their comrades, sensing that something wrong is afoot, dumbly goes into the barn through the main door. Natural selection has no empathy for him, either.
Carmellini, is a mediocrity of such proportion that one wonders how ex-Admiral CIA operative, Jake Grafton, could possibly consider him to be up to performing the ridiculously difficult tasks that he is assigned. Even one of the book's main characters tells Grafton what an incompetent Tommy is. Carmellini, for example -- in addition to getting shot a couple of times because he is obtusely unaware of his surroundings -- shoots an innocent man. Though assigned to protect a houseful of people, he apparently does not recognize that one of these same people might trip over the booby trap bottle he plants on the stairway. When he hears the person trip over the bottle, Tommy blasts him to death. The guy turns out to be the chauffeur for one the main characters. Grafton, himself, is such an arguable bonehead that he puts some of the people he is supposed to protect inside a multi-story apartment house that even the most ignorant of readers would recognize can't be protected. What happens next is so ridiculously improbable that experienced military and police will cringe in reading it.
Elsewhere, Grafton tells Tommy Carmellini to make sure that driver for the four-man team of jihadists who attack the indefensible apartment house is captured.Coonts, of course, doesn't tell us how Tommy is supposed to kill the four-man team (who are inside the building) and catch the driver (who is on the street outside the building) at the same time.
Tommy brilliantly dashes out onto the street, dives headfirst into the driver's car, seizes the car keys from the ignition with one hand, and beats up the driver with the other elbow. The way this is described is implausible. Tommy then leaves the driver unconscious, but unsecured. Naturally, when Tommy leaves to deal with the four-man team of killers inside the building, the driver he was supposed to capture runs away.
The anti-terrorist CEOs that Grafton leads are too brain-dead to take precautions against being murdered, even after repeated warnings. They are "offed" one-by-one in a tedious exposition of the Darwinian principle of "survival of the fittest" by "elimination of the stupidest." After his colleagues are murdered one by one of, one of this CEO group eventually decides that he does need two bodyguards. But he foolishly rides around in an "unhardened" limousine that he apparently left parked somewhere where bad guys could plant a bomb on it. Guess what happens.
And Grafton's own CIA-recruited Arab anti-terrorists are equally careless. One is assigned to give poison to a terror-plotting imam. He does, but he foolishly allows some of the imam's followers see him dispose of the poison bottle in a dumpster just outside the spiritual center. Heh, whoops.
Coonts, not understanding how professionals actually interview and interrogate, inserts numerous purposeless conversations in the book. These often revolve around suspected double-agent "Marissa." Carmellini and Grafton both have aggravatingly airy conversations with her that lead nowhere. The talks aren't even interesting for the irrelevant content that Coonts does include in them. The author apparently adopted this "nothing happens" conversational style, so as to preserves Marissa's mystery to the end. But, given the law enforcement and anti-terrorist nature of the plot, real professionals would never have let Marissa skate untouched for so many pages.
There are only two central bad guys. This apparently unsupported pair manages to put the entire American intelligence and counter-terrorism elite on the defensive. The shadowy one of the two operates independently and knows everything that is going on, even inside the American intelligence community. He supervises a non-jihadist mercenary killer, who also knows more than anyone could know and, thanks to the incompetence of his targets, has no trouble introducing numerous folk to the Great Beyond.
The novel's plot is preposterous, whatever Coonts' storytelling strengths are.
March 12, 2015
Another page turner from Stepen Coonts! This book is very enjoyable and entertaining. It kept me up late two nights and was worth it!!
May 24, 2022
I can't believe this piece of neocon tripe has averaged four stars in reviews. I didn't make it past the first CD. Why, you ask? The very beginning characterizes all Middle Easterners as "towel head" terrorists. The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, imams are the root of all evil, the US is the only truly righteous country on Earth, etc., ad nauseam. When I heard the story heading in this Glen Beckian rightward direction, I popped the CD out of the car player and started listening to old Bob Dylan songs. Look out kid/They keep it all hid./Better jump down a manhole/Light yourself a candle.
January 29, 2014
Gave up, not interested enough to try to finish the story. Started well, but got bogged down by odd switch to first person of ex-thief Tommy Carmellini, whose inner thoughts offer no fresh perspective. If the author maintained 3rd person and just let us observe his thoughts instead of getting inside his head, he would have seemed far more intriguing, instead of slowing the story to a halt with his personal narrative that seems full of clichés. Interesting story about the dirty side of counter-terrorism via assassination, but not enough to sustain the story through the long dull parts with Carmellini. Sorry.
August 14, 2013
Where to start, where to start. The writing. Didn't like it. Too self-conscious. Too creative writing 101. And what can be more trite than to call TV commentators "talking heads." And, it's politically naive. And biased. In passing, the author claims that the idea that there were WMDs in Iraq wasn't a fabrication hatched by the Bush Administration, but, rather, a massive screw-up by the CIA. Yeah, sure. And I'm not really into politics, but when an author tries to shove something down my throat, I can't ignore it. And, it's always a bad sign when you start questioning the moves of your main characters. Usually, everything flows along and we understand the how's and why's of the unfolding plot. But, here, I kept asking myself, "Why did he do that?" and "Why didn't he do it this way?" That's really bad. I actually think I should receive some kind of medal for finishing this book - maybe a purple heart.
February 9, 2012
Finished "The Assassin" by Stephen Coonts. One of these days I will figure out where to look and see that a book is part of a series. I don't recall the cover saying anything about it being the third in a line. Anyway, since I skipped the first two books, take this with a grain of salt. I wasn't overly impressed with this one. I can't point to anything terrible about it except for maybe a couple pet words ("erect!"), or maybe referring to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise as the "cockpit." I also can't point to anything awesome or memorable.
January 7, 2016
The novel moves along at a good pace with adequate suspense and drama throughout. Unfortunately the plot lacks logic in many places and gets downright silly on a couple of occasions (ie. murder by icicle). Character development beyond the Tommy Carmellini figure is razor thin, and as a result, readers are unlikely to care one way or another what happens to the secondary figures.
June 2, 2024
This is another in the Jake Grafton series (starts with Flight of the Intruder). It is action packed, fast moving with, of course, violence. There is even some sex. I recommend Stephen Coonts works.
March 11, 2015
The last (that I'm aware of) Jake Grafton novel. Decent, and it was nice to catch up with some "old friends," but there really wasn't anything at all new here to make it stand out. "Serviceable" comes to mind.
November 25, 2008
Even though fiction, this novel and those of the type make one thing clear, the war on terrorism is a fact of life that is here to stay.
July 19, 2014
This wasn't too terrible, but it wasn't his best work.
December 7, 2025
I couldn’t finish this book. I think I’m done with this Tommy Carmellini series. I struggle through the last two books in the vain hope this third one was better. It’s worse. The story is weak at best, and just doesn’t make any sense in places. As an example of this, Tommy Breaks into a house to spy or and protect its occupants. In the process of sneaking around he sees a bad guy crossing the snow covered ground outside and enter the darkened house, and in response to that get comfy in a chair in an unused room and goes to sleep. When he wakes up 4 people are dead, and he struggles to find said bad guy. Ultimately the bad guy escapes, and Tommy accidentally kills an innocent bystander. This may make sense to some, but not me.
Sorry if this offends those who enjoy the author, but his stories don’t have what his earlier work did. (The Jake Grafton series) 😐
Sorry if this offends those who enjoy the author, but his stories don’t have what his earlier work did. (The Jake Grafton series) 😐
December 26, 2023
This is the best spy novel I've read in a long time. But up front I've got to give a lot of the credit to the Narrator of this audiobook, Dennis Boutsikaris. He gives such a life to Tommy Carmellini that I so enjoyed. Tommy reminded me so much of Jim Rockford from the 70's TV show. There's even a character much like Angel.
I loved the parts of the book where Tommy narrates. He's a competent agent but no superstar. The only parts of the book I didn't like so much was that the antagonist is pretty much a super terrorist striking with impunity from the dark. Pretty much the equal but opposite of Tommy's boss, Jake Grafton. There's a pretty high body count and there's no investigation to speak of. But I loved the telling of the story by the cavalier Tommy.
I loved the parts of the book where Tommy narrates. He's a competent agent but no superstar. The only parts of the book I didn't like so much was that the antagonist is pretty much a super terrorist striking with impunity from the dark. Pretty much the equal but opposite of Tommy's boss, Jake Grafton. There's a pretty high body count and there's no investigation to speak of. But I loved the telling of the story by the cavalier Tommy.
July 15, 2024
This is one of the best Coonts’ books that I have read. The action is nonstop. There is a high death count so be forewarned. Both the good and bad have casualties. Tommy is the main character, but Jake and Cassie are there. I could hardly put it down. No sooner did I start it than it ended. I hate when that happens. The Islamic terrorists are active and the President agrees to a highly illegal method of combating them.
February 23, 2024
Fast paced spy thriller - enjoyed!
July 7, 2024
It had been awhile since I had picked up a good cloak and dagger book… Coonts delivers once again
May 22, 2025
I did enjoy it, but I think it dragged on at times. Overall, a good series.
November 11, 2025
disappointing.
July 19, 2015
The headlines only reveal half the truth. Here’s the real story. . . .
Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it’s clear that there’s a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals---it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill.
Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a Frenchwoman who may be Qasim’s daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive---or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve---one that he’s been planning for years.
Who is behind the methodical assassinations of the wealthy and powerful Western vigilante team? Will Abu Qasim slip the noose once again? In this pulse-pounding thriller, Tommy Carmellini must put a stop to a master of terror before he unleashes even more death.
**
From Publishers WeeklyBestseller Coonts's exciting third thriller to star reformed burglar turned CIA operative Tommy Carmellini (after The Traitor) raises a timely issue—the lack of well-to-do Americans on combat duty in the war against terrorism. When an Iraqi bomb kills Huntington Winchester's only child, a Harvard med student who joined the navy out of patriotism, the grieving father decides he and his privileged friends aren't doing enough to defend civilization against the jihadist threat. Winchester gets tacit approval from one of those friends, the unnamed U.S. president, for him and some other well-to-do types to finance their own private war. When al-Qaeda mastermind Abu Qasim discovers the identities of those in Winchester's group and targets them, Carmellini and his CIA boss, Adm. Jake Grafton, determine to set a trap that involves Qasim's possible daughter. Though the constant switching between various points-of-view distracts at times, the action moves swiftly to its Hollywood ending. Author tour. (Aug.) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."
CIA agents Tommy Carmellini and Jake Grafton return in this follow-up to The Traitor (2006). A ruthless terrorist, Abu Qasim, escaped their clutches in the earlier adventure, and now they are desperate to capture him. When a Russian dies of radiation poisoning, it’s clear that Qasim may be in possession of a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, Carmellini finds himself falling in love with a woman he has been assigned to protect, even though she may be working with the terrorist. Coonts has never been known for graceful prose, and this time that flaw is particularly evident in a series of similarly worded death scenes. In addition, the narrative never really catches fire, plodding along to its obvious conclusion. Still, Coonts’ fans are legion, and they are sure to be forgiving. --Jeff Ayers
Read
February 16, 2012This is another in the long series of Coonts’s novels about Jake Grafton, who now (as of 2008) is a retired admiral serving as a contractor for the CIA, with the help of a variety of underlings, including Tommy Carmellini, former jewel thief/burglar now serving as a CIA special agent and Jake’s right-hand man (This the third novel in the series to feature Tommy as co-protagonist). The novel begins with a brief scene in which a typically nice young American boy gets killed by scumbag Al Quaeda terrorists in Iraq. In this case, however, the father of that nice young boy happens to be a very wealthy businessman who happens to be a good friend of the President of the United States, and who happens to have several very wealthy friends who are just as enraged as he is. They come up with the idea of financing a special military team to assassinate the real leaders of Al Quaeda … and Jake Grafton is put in charge of that operation. One of the people they particularly want to get is Abu Qasim, who led the attempt to assassinate the G8 leaders in the previous novel in the series. When Abu Qasim finds his key people getting knocked off, however, he decides to get revenge by taking out the group financing this new military effort. This means that Tommy Carmellini is again involved with the very beautiful Marisa Petrou, who happens to be the step-daughter of one of the financiers in question, and who just may be the loyal daughter of Abu Qasim. By the end of the book there is a very real question as to who is the real assassin of the title.
Coonts has a very readable style, producing a real page-turner. One interesting aspect here is that the novel is written in the third person when we are being told what Jake Grafton and Abu Qasim are doing but in the first person when Tommy Carmellini is reporting his own doings. Since the novel is mostly about Tommy’s actions, then, our knowledge is largely limited to what he knows or believes, although we get a little added information from the omnipotent third-person view of the other characters, to add to the excitement. At the same time, this is more than just a thriller story, as it presents a detailed study of what can happen if true patriots with money set their mind to it, along with the eternal question of whether the end justifies the means.
Coonts has a very readable style, producing a real page-turner. One interesting aspect here is that the novel is written in the third person when we are being told what Jake Grafton and Abu Qasim are doing but in the first person when Tommy Carmellini is reporting his own doings. Since the novel is mostly about Tommy’s actions, then, our knowledge is largely limited to what he knows or believes, although we get a little added information from the omnipotent third-person view of the other characters, to add to the excitement. At the same time, this is more than just a thriller story, as it presents a detailed study of what can happen if true patriots with money set their mind to it, along with the eternal question of whether the end justifies the means.
July 23, 2014
The headlines only reveal half the truth. Here’s the real story. . . .
Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it’s clear that there’s a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals---it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill.
Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a Frenchwoman who may be Qasim’s daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive---or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve---one that he’s been planning for years.
Who is behind the methodical assassinations of the wealthy and powerful Western vigilante team? Will Abu Qasim slip the noose once again? In this pulse-pounding thriller, Tommy Carmellini must put a stop to a master of terror before he unleashes even more death.
I am enjoying this series
Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it’s clear that there’s a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals---it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill.
Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a Frenchwoman who may be Qasim’s daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive---or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve---one that he’s been planning for years.
Who is behind the methodical assassinations of the wealthy and powerful Western vigilante team? Will Abu Qasim slip the noose once again? In this pulse-pounding thriller, Tommy Carmellini must put a stop to a master of terror before he unleashes even more death.
I am enjoying this series
February 5, 2012
What a great audiobook.
I enjoyed this one better than any of the other spy/assassin thrillers I've listened to lately. This one had a lot more action, which really kept up the pacing and held me in suspense. It also had a lot more humor, which was woven very well and was mostly when we are in the main character's head, a character who has an interesting back-story to explain his attitude. He's also far from perfect and makes plenty of mistakes, which make him more believable.
Coontz writes well, and took a number of unconventional methods with this one. It switches between first person for the main character Tommy, to third person for everyone else. This worked well with the narrator. He did a really great job embodying the main characters. Some of his accents didn't sound right to me, but he definitely got the humor right and spoke in a way that I feel I might not have taken if I had been reading.
Another strong point is the mystery concerning the mysterious Marisa. It keeps you guessing right up until the end. I think that Coonts demonstrated a rare talent, which is to combine well-written action, dialogue, mystery, and storytelling all in a single package.
After listening to this, I definitely want to read or listen to more of his books.
August 20, 2016
Although a relatively simple story, Coonts makes The Assassin an edge-of-the-seat read. Once again, Tommy Carmellini provides most of the narration in his wise-guy, give-a-crap manner!
Admiral Jake Grafton along with Carmellini (each working independently of the CIA and with Presidential approval) must stop Islamic terrorist Abu Qasim who had escaped after trying to blow up the G-8 leaders in Coonts' The Traitor. This time, Qasim is attempting to kill each of the members of a wealthy group of westerners who want him dead. Grafton has Carmellini try to figure out where and when Qasim will strike. There is also a beautiful woman who plays a part and provides some mystery: Is she the daughter of Qasim? Is she working with him against this wealthy group of which she is a part?
Jake Grafton, as usual, figures out many mysteries without having any advance information. This makes Coonts' stories a little hard to believe.....but still a lot of fun reading.
Admiral Jake Grafton along with Carmellini (each working independently of the CIA and with Presidential approval) must stop Islamic terrorist Abu Qasim who had escaped after trying to blow up the G-8 leaders in Coonts' The Traitor. This time, Qasim is attempting to kill each of the members of a wealthy group of westerners who want him dead. Grafton has Carmellini try to figure out where and when Qasim will strike. There is also a beautiful woman who plays a part and provides some mystery: Is she the daughter of Qasim? Is she working with him against this wealthy group of which she is a part?
Jake Grafton, as usual, figures out many mysteries without having any advance information. This makes Coonts' stories a little hard to believe.....but still a lot of fun reading.
June 4, 2009
In Stephen Coonts' new thriller The Assassin, Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it's clear that there's a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals--it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill!
We met Stephen Coonts when he visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. You can listen to him talk about The Assassin here:
http://www.authorsontourlive.com/?p=166
We met Stephen Coonts when he visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. You can listen to him talk about The Assassin here:
http://www.authorsontourlive.com/?p=166
February 19, 2011
This was the first Stephen Coontz novel I read, and I was pleasantly surprised. His characters are engaging, and he skillfully wove the first-person character,Tommy Carmellini (a reformed crook turn CIA operative), with third-person characters like Admiral Jake Grafton (CIA handler and friend to Carmellini), gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, and the arch villain Abu Qasim, a ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader. The plot is predictably formatted (CIA vs Al Qaeda vs politicians and businessmen)but Coontz does a good job of creating twists and turns, never letting the story sag anywhere in the novel. I appreciated Coontz keeping profanity to a minimum, and sex behind closed doors (yes, I am rather old fashioned)It would be novel I could recommend to my young adult daughters, as well as to general adult readers. I will make sure more Coontz novels get on my to-read shelf.
June 17, 2012
A very good read in my first Stephen Coonts experience. A bit different from other spy/espionage/intrigue novels I have read in that the protagonists in the story do not always win and, in fact, lose many as the story plays out. A story of murder, and terrorism, where it is not always clear which side the characters are on, in some cases appearing to be on both sides. That uncertainty affects the characters and how they deal with each other as the story reaches its ultimate end. Even to that point, it is not clear whether the main female character is on the side of good or evil.
A good story and certainly one that will have me backtracking to read more of Coonts' books. The characters are rich and I personally enjoy the use of continuing characters and watching them develop over the course of the novels.
A good story and certainly one that will have me backtracking to read more of Coonts' books. The characters are rich and I personally enjoy the use of continuing characters and watching them develop over the course of the novels.
February 19, 2016
Coonts has continued his saga of Grafton and Carmellini with "The Assassin." This novel seems to be told from two primary levels: one from Grafton's view of events (with his thinking process largely untold) and the other from Carmellini's view where the reader is allowed into the thinking process of this character.
I am wondering just what Coonts has next in store for the Grafton-Carmellini duo. In any case, this novel was an extremely easy read. The plot and story-telling held me in a grip that, had I not been tired, would have led me to read the novel straight through. As it was, the novel was basically completed in two periods.
In some ways, Coonts' Thomas Carmellini reminds of the John Sandford character, Joe Kidd. Both characters come across as individuals with a criminal mentally who some how end up fighting on the side of what is morally and ethically correct.
I am wondering just what Coonts has next in store for the Grafton-Carmellini duo. In any case, this novel was an extremely easy read. The plot and story-telling held me in a grip that, had I not been tired, would have led me to read the novel straight through. As it was, the novel was basically completed in two periods.
In some ways, Coonts' Thomas Carmellini reminds of the John Sandford character, Joe Kidd. Both characters come across as individuals with a criminal mentally who some how end up fighting on the side of what is morally and ethically correct.
September 7, 2009
I really like Tommy Carmellini as a character. He's quirky and daring and not necessarily all that smart, but he makes for enjoyable reading. This book switches back and forth between the 3rd person narrative and first person narrative from Carmellini's point of view. I can't remember any other books that switch between first and third person and back again - it's an interesting change.
Carmellini survives a couple of situations where he probably shouldn't - and those cases make the book feel a little far fetched. There are a couple of other situations that made me feel the same way. The rest of the plot moves along pretty well. The "is she or isn't she?" story surrounding Marisa Petrou makes for some interesting reading for a while. Overall this was a good quick read.
Carmellini survives a couple of situations where he probably shouldn't - and those cases make the book feel a little far fetched. There are a couple of other situations that made me feel the same way. The rest of the plot moves along pretty well. The "is she or isn't she?" story surrounding Marisa Petrou makes for some interesting reading for a while. Overall this was a good quick read.
January 16, 2010
The Assassin by by Stephen Coonts
Jake Grafton is back! Once again Coonts creates a cliff hanger that you really don’t want to put down. The reality of terrorism is one of the things that makes this book truly sobering. Tommy Carmellini and Jake Grafton team up to stop a radical Islamic assassin.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Much of this book could be true. I understand the feelings of frustration and anger portrayed by the characters when dealing with the mindless fanaticism of terrorists. As in all of Coont’s work, the action rocks and the plot rolls. It moves at warp speed and entertains while in some ways depresses. Once again the only solution to a problem seems to be the application of judicious violence.
I recommend the book.
Jake Grafton is back! Once again Coonts creates a cliff hanger that you really don’t want to put down. The reality of terrorism is one of the things that makes this book truly sobering. Tommy Carmellini and Jake Grafton team up to stop a radical Islamic assassin.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Much of this book could be true. I understand the feelings of frustration and anger portrayed by the characters when dealing with the mindless fanaticism of terrorists. As in all of Coont’s work, the action rocks and the plot rolls. It moves at warp speed and entertains while in some ways depresses. Once again the only solution to a problem seems to be the application of judicious violence.
I recommend the book.
September 23, 2009
This was a decent spy thriller that started out kind of slow then really held my attention for the second half of the book. I might have given it 3.5 to 4 stars, but major plot holes ruined its plausibility. In Coonts' later books in the Jake Grafton series, his characters effortlessly seem to accomplish feats of amazing mental and physical prowess. Although they do seem a little James Bondish, that's part of the fun. In these earlier books, the protagonists are very flawed, make consistently poor decisions, and yet somehow seem to miraculously triumph in the end. Still, it was kind of fun if you don't mind another frightening tale about Islamic terrorists.
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