Flashpoint

by Richard Aellen

Katherine Cahill's life is shattered forever when her three young children are killed on an airplane that is blown to pieces by a terrorist bomb in the skies over Italy. Determined to make the terrorists pay for this savagery, Katherine circumvents the frustrating bureaucracy of the State Department and heads for Syria in search of their leader, Tayib. She joins forces with Donna Winn, whose husband has been taken hostage, and with Sam Gaddis, a photo-journalist familiar with the country and its people. This unlikely group infiltrates the terrorist's mountain fortress and becomes entangled in power struggles within the Islamic Jihad and a secret U.S. plan to capture Tayib alive and bring him to justice.

Genres: Fiction

305 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[William Kozy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toward the end of this exhilarating action thriller I felt like, this is a sure-fire 5-star book. Just one scene though (midway between the first and second climax) made me feel, uh oh, maybe this is just a high 4-star rating. But the story overcame that misstep (a love scene) and resumed its sure-handed grip on the suspense and action.

Speaking of action, that's one aspect of the book that made me respect it very much. In so many action scenes in thrillers, even some good ones, it seems to me I have trouble picturing the action in my mind's eye. The choreography and props and all the physical elements involved in such scenes seem hard to imagine as written. I don't mean hard to imagine as in hard to believe, no I mean hard to imagine in the sense that the writer hasn't done a good job of getting me to see the physicality as though I were watching a movie. But in this book Richard Aellen overcame that pitfall, and I appreciated being able to picture what was happening, whether in a battle scene, or a more contained gunfight amongst 10 or so characters, or a torture scene.

The book starts out with an intense heartbreak that serves as a solid foundation you feel for the rest of the reading. It propels your emotions as the story unfolds. It's essentially a revenge tale, and you may find yourself quite possibly setting aside your sense of civilized propriety to hope for that revenge being exacted. Or...you may not, and that wouldn't be a bad thing either because as seemingly sociopathic as the bad guy is, he's a terrorist after all, Mr. Aellen does try give a fair shake in terms of the political motivations behind the cause of an oppressed people, despite their ghastly ideas of what their sense of righteousness justifies. To that end, there is somewhat mature approach to the writing here in keeping a wide-angle perspective on international relations between the West and the Mid East.

Katherine Cahill is our lead character, and Aellen has shown great discipline in maintaining a solid consistency in her character's tone and bearing throughout. I never felt "Well, that's a little out of character seeing as what she's all about now." We're never in doubt about how true her depiction is being written. Along for the ride is a news photographer, Sam Gaddis, who has suffered his own personal tragedy. He has adopted a highly sardonic and actually very witty cloud of snarky dialogue that he carries with him throughout. His one-liners and comebacks are truly laugh out loud funny sometimes. Again, Aellen shows a broad range of writing talent in that he has come up with genuinely terrific repartee. Together, Cahill and Gaddis are a great literary thriller pairing, and later on Tracy Winn, the wife of a kidnapped American petroleum industry specialist working in Syria, joins Sam and Katherine and she serves as a very useful foil, both narratively and for the overall character chemistry.

And about that bad guy, Imad Tayib, head of the terrorist organization Rih Asfar (Yellow Wind)--he is as compelling a villain as you'll find. It's hard to dismiss him altogether as a "sociopath" though because he has such a total breadth of knowledge about his religion and politics. And that all just makes for a very tension-filled confrontation.

And after all the mayhem and dust has settled the book's coda presents us with a moving and enlightened change of path in a key character's life journey.

[Knivens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when I first read Richard Aellen's Crux and was amazed by it. I then thought 'well I'm wondering what his other books are like' and bought 2 others some time afterwards. I took few years to start another one actually and I have to say it was really good, too. Similarly to Crux, Flash Point is a pretty intense action reading, containing elements of adventure where an author does not abstain from his witty style of creating dialogues. This brings to mind one of my favourite authors, N DeMille. Some moments may look a bit like cliches from 80's action movies though, but they way the storyline is constructed and style of Aellen make it easily bearable. I really enjoyed this one and one day will surely check another book of his.

[Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel that is set in the late 20th Century that portrays a sociopath in his sadistic pursuit of terrorist acts that supposedly serve his Allah! It is satisfying that he receives his final reward as a result of the resolve of the divorcée who was in pursuit of this terrorist who was responsible for the death of her children in an airplane bombing. The CIA had fortunately provided her with a lethal montblanc pen which she deluded the sociopath into allowing her to use for what he thought was a charitable act.